I was thinking that Williamson County might be wise to ask Bradley Armoster to come back and administer some more spankings, considering that they’ve got a teenager called “Cooter”–a self-avowed white supremacist–running around a local high school with his truck full of Confederate Battle Flags and a noose.
I know we’re supposed to tolerate the Confederate Battle Flag because of this heritage, not hate nonsense (though, you’d think, if that were the case, the heritage-not-haters would fly the flag of the Confederate States of America, because being proud of their heritage, they would actually know said heritage, but whatever.), but a noose?
Come on.
A noose is a threat. In conjunction with a truck full of Confederate Battle Flags and a white supremacist driving it around? It’s a threat.
Tennessee State Code says that it’s a crime to engage in any activity that “injures or threatens to injure or coerces another person with the intent to unlawfully intimidate another because that other exercised any right or privilege secured by the constitution or laws of the United States or the constitution or laws of the state of Tennessee.”
There’s not any prosecutor in Williamson County who can make an argument that hanging a noose in your truck is a threat to injure black kids and that such noose-hanging constitutes an unlawful intimidation because some of those kids might not feel safe going to school?
I mean, really.
Filed under: America how can I write a holy litany in your silly moo
Sorry, i gotta disagree. Sure, I agree that it’s an asshole thing to do, but it is not an OVERT threat, and it is not a direct threat. Sure, it can be interpreted as a threat, but then again, maybe not.
How about an Israeli flag? Doesn’t that imply the genocide of the Palestinian people? How about a Palestinian flag? Hamas? Hezbollah?
I’m not comparing the confederate states to those organizations. I’m saying that dispaying a symbol of an organization is not the same thing as a threat. If it is, then you can start taking down flags all over college campuses. Start with UC Irvine.
I don’t think the Confederate Battle Flag is an overt threat. I think that’s an act of idiocy. I think the noose is an overt threat, especially when read against the Battle Flag and the overtly racist asshole.
The flag itself isn’t a threat. The flag accompanied by the noose hanging from the rearview mirror constitutes a threat.
Sorry. Aunt B’s comment hadn’t appeared when I posted mine.
How about if he hung a bowline from his rear-view mirror? Is that ok?
Yah. Fly all the Confederate flags you want to. The more the merrier, in fact, so I can see you coming. But the noose moves things into a different category. (I wouldn’t bother posting this so redundantly, but I wanted to register that I disagree with Ex so the world doesn’t come to an end; we actually agreed about economic motivations over at Mack’s, and that worries me a tad.)
You know, I’ve never been to Germany, but some how I doubt I’d see a deluge of Nazi flags with “It’s heritage, not hate” printed underneath them.
Threat implies some impending danger. This does not meet that standard.
A person has the right to defend themselves against immediate threats to their well being. Would it be acceptable to shoot Cooter (hehehe. good band name. like Nashville Pussy) because he and his tacky truck ornaments are such an ominous threat?
How about if he loaded up a few guns but only shot negroes? Would that be okay with you, Ex? After all, it’s only a threat if it isn’t threatening to you, right?
Correction: it’s not a threat if…
Well, that would be due to the schwatchika (sp?) being banned in Germany.
CS, get a hold of Evel Knievel’s Sky Cycle for that kind of leap in logic.
Not being able to tell the difference between shooting negroes and having an offensively decorated truck explains your worldview in a nutshell.
Yes, Lee, and Germany banned that symbol only because of its poor aesthetic appeal, not because of, oh, you know…
I believe all Nazi paraphernalia is banned in Germany, so, yeah, no, they’re not going to have a similar problem.
Sarcastro, hence the reason I suggest he just be spanked in public by Mr. Armoster. But I do think there’s a difference between immediate danger and impending danger. No, I don’t think folks have the right to shoot Mr. Cooter, but I sure do think that, if I had a permit, I’d want to be armed against him if I had to be near him.
New euphemism.
Shooting Mr. Cooter.
If I saw that truck parked in front of my house, I’d call the police. I wouldn’t wait for some racist asshole to decide he was going to pelt me and mine with gunfire. If he turns out to be a harmless asshole, fine, but he’s going to get checked out by Chicago’s finest. Being in a Northern city doesn’t mean we don’t have deadly racists. I guess you can smirk it off as a leap in logic if you don’t think you’ll ever be the target, soul brother.
[...] Aunt B. argues that a Williamson County School’s crackdown on Confederate symbols is not a case of violated free speech: A noose is a threat. In conjunction with a truck full of Confederate Battle Flags and a white supremacist driving it around? It’s a threat. Tennessee State Code says that it’s a crime to engage in any activity that “injures or threatens to injure or coerces another person with the intent to unlawfully intimidate another because that other exercised any right or privilege secured by the constitution or laws of the United States or the constitution or laws of the state of Tennessee.” [...]
If it’s not a threat, it’s at least a symbol of violence. You can’t hunt or protect your home with a noose – it’s one of those items that doesn’t lend itself to many subjective opinions.
I think our legal definition of a threat would say he has to be more specific with the noose (ie, writing someone’s name on it).
That said, I can’t think of a good reason this Cooter shouldn’t be taken into a back room where Marsellus Wallace can go medieval on his ass.
I will say just this one thing in defense of Mr. Cooter. At least he’s open about being a racist asshole and we don’t have to put up with any hand-wringing about whether he means to offend anyone. He does. So, it’s nice to have that out of the way.
I know what you mean.
Calling the cops is my first instinct when black teenagers approach me at the ATM.
The trick is to have 9 and 1 already punched into the phone and be ready to hit that last 1, brother.
And you’d be within your rights, CS, to call the police on the ’suspicious person’. The cops could have a nice talk with him and better determine his state of mind, intentions, etc. You would not have the right to start blazing away at Mr prick.
Again, how about a bowline? It’s also a loop of rope. Is that bad? No? What if he HAD a noose that kinda looked like a hangman’s noose, but was not properly tied?
See the idiocy of this slippery slope?
Yes, he’s an asshole, not illegal.
Oh, really? Are men in your line of work known to have lots of money in the bank? I’d bet those kids are probably coming up to you to complain that the fucking on-demand is neither on nor carrying the things the customer demands. I mean, who’s going to waste their time trying to rob a broke guy?
Exador, he acknowledges it’s a noose. He’s not trying to claim it’s something other than that. He intends for it to be threatening and to convey a meaning that it’s dangerous to mess with him. Why are you struggling to find a way to interpret his actions as harmless? If they are, it’s only because he’s failed to be effective at his purpose.
I believe all Nazi paraphernalia is banned in Germany, so, yeah, no, they’re not going to have a similar problem.
Yeah, I actually knew that when I made the comment, but my point was really that I don’t believe that many Germans would proudly display a Nazi flag as “heritage” (even if their laws allowed it). I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
That’s my thing with the “heritage, not hate” justification. Confederate artifacts are part of all Americans’ heritage and especially the heritage of those in the south, but the fact that something is part of your heritage doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something you would want to be proud of. I’m not PROUD that at one point in my nation’s history a large portion of the country thought that slavery was so necessary and worthwhile that they were willing to attempt to found a new nation just to maintain it.
I don’t have to prove his actions are harmless. You have to prove his actions are a threat.
This being America and all, comrade.
Come on, Exador. Now you’re just being pedantic. If a dude can say, “I hate black people” and drive around with a noose in his truck, isn’t that the same with saying “I hate black people and I want them to know they have reason to fear me?”
How is taking the man at his word and believing that his actions have meaning communist?
We’ve had three Nashville techs robbed at gunpoint in the past year. But please do go on. I’m fascinated by ignorance.
The on-demand works when you pay your bill. Post that on the fridge so you don’t forget.
I drive around with an Apple sticker on my car and books in the backseat – does that mean racist rednecks should fear me?
You have had three Nashville techs robbed at gunpoint at the ATM? Or now we’ve moved on to just talking about violence against y’all in general?
And I pay my bills, sweetie. I don’t want to go a day without seeing Mike Rowe.
That would be some coincidence. Not at the ATM, but saying ‘black neighborhoods’ seemed to border on race-baiting.
Crime against the cable man is a hate crime.
It is not illegal to hate. You hippies seem to be all for criminalizing opinions you disagree with.
Besides, did the kid SAY he hates black people? Your leap of assumptions have no place in law. Despite that, it’s not illegal to have a bumper sticker that says I hate black people, or hippies, or the Irish.
Ex, no worries for you. Georgia still doesn’t have a hate crimes law — their Sup Ct. threw it out in 2004 and their legislature can’t agree on what constitutes a “threat” (among other things). The legislators have said things like “I’m convinced that hate crimes legislation is pro-homosexual legislation,” — Sen. Nancy Schaefer (R-Turnerville)” and “If you mug somebody because of the color of their skin, it’s no different than if you mug somebody to steal their wallet,” said state Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah).
However, Tennessee does. The key thing here is that a redneck is trying to intimidate black kids who are exercising their legal right to public education. The setting — a public school parking lot — is significant. And I think this was B’s point in the first place.
Sarcastro, you have been reading this blog very regularly, or you’d know that she bitches about paying her bills ALL THE TIME.
just to jump in here – the civil war wasn’t fought just to create a new nation so that slavery could be kept alive. There were many reasons and slavery was a driving force by politicians, but not by the majority of the soldiers who fought and died on both sides of the issue. http://www.greatamericanhistory.net/causes.htm – One thing I hate is the fact that we can condemn what people believed 100 years or more ago based on the belief systems of today. Girls as young as 13 and 14 were married in this country and having children 100 years ago, but no one labels there husbands today as pedophiles. It was the norm, as was slavery to many. It was more of an economic issue then, not completely a moral one. A person can be proud of the heritage even if you don’t think they should be. It one of those crazy things about being an American, we can be proud of what we want.
As for the actual topic at hand, the noose goes a bit far. The flag is normal for southern boys in this area. A lot of them get out of the flying it with pride as they get out of high school and into the real world.
You make skinheads sound like they are in Up With People — just a little harmless noose swinging, kids being kids. Yes, depending on what organizations he’s in or supports, he need not say he hates black people for a court to conclude that he’s a member of a racist hate group.
What part of slavery wasn’t completely a moral issue? The part where some white people willfully blinded themselves to another group’s essential humanity for the sake of economic gain? That was the economic part you were referring to, correct?
Re-read my post – 100 years ago it wasn’t a completely moral issue to the people who lived at that time. As I said, you can’t paint history with today’s moral beliefs and suddenly make them out to be the most horrible people ever made……..
Exador, as much as I appreciate how carefully you read me, if only so that you can snark about it later, I would also ask that you at least cursorily glance at the links I provide so that you can see that Mr. Cooter says, himself, “I am extremely racist. So if you got a problem with that, then don’t talk to me.” and therefore, I do not have to guess that he hates black people. I can take him at his word.
Forgot to address the second part of your post – Slavery had been a major part of a lot of the worlds greatest economic systems for hundreds of years before this war. England had them as serfs, as did Russia, Egypt, Rome and on and on and on…. They were the “machines” before we developed them. Slavery would have died out over time regardless of this war and if the South had won.
Mgal, but, if you read history you can see that people of the time did believe it was a moral issue. Many of them, even slaveholders, felt that what they were doing was wrong, they just didn’t see how they could continue to make money without the free labor of black people.
So, even if you say “Well, we can’t judge them by our standards,” we can judge them by their own standards and find that what they were doing was evil.
I’m really, really curious about marriage at 13 or 14 being the norm a century ago. Mgal, do you have any facts to back up that assertion? Because I’ve got a lot of facts that say it wasn’t so. And I think that your assertion that slavery wasn’t the main factor in the founding of the Confederacy is just as flimsy.
If only you’d read my comments more carefully.
It’s not illegal to be racist. If it was, there’d be folks of all colors in jail for it.
And bridgett, while the school can impose all sorts of laws to preserve ’safety’ including restricting free speech, B’s opening paragraph dealt primarily with citing TN state code on what is prosecutable and asking if there’s a prosecutor out there to take this case.
Criminal conduct outside the current example of the school parking lot.
Also, U.S. chattel slavery was remarkably different from European serfdom. Which is why ’slavery’ and ’serfdom’ are different words.
I also just as seriously advocate that he be spanked, and yet you seem less hung up on that, Exador. Just saying.
Us Rebs suck at designing flags, B. That’s why nobody uses anything other than the battle flag. The others either looked too much like a yankee flag when it wasn’t windy or looked like a white surrender flag. Everybody understands battle.
A noose isn’t illegal to display but it implies you’d like to hang people, which is sorta illegal, and also implies you might have a hard time adjusting to playing well with others.
But it’s notional. If you were black, it would remind you of how blacks used to be treated in the far distant past when white people would take black people on little joyrides enging in a hanging or in being dragged behind a truck, Now, that’s long gone out of favor, why, it’s probably been a whole decade, so hardly worth considering a real threat. That kid could demonstrate his freedom of speech and take his message where it would be heard. What would be really symbolic would be if he did a night ride. He could start at 8th & Jefferson and head out towards Centennial Blvd. and the prison.
It means you’re bordering on being an antisocial psychopath. Now, that’s still perfectly legal, but the point when the line between being perfectly legal and being a danger to others is real close together.
Jim, I especially like that even Confederates at the time thought the battle flag was silly looking “like crossed suspenders.” and yet here it lives on. And yes, the white field was probably ill-thought-out when one was at war.
I would suggest that you do some reading in the primary sources, friend. It was a completely moral issue even to slaveholders, who thought quite deeply about the moral dilemma of slavery and wrote about it at length. They went to incredible lengths to justify what they were doing Biblically, they frantically rationalized their actions, but the central horror of slavery is that the wrongdoers actually knew they were doing wrong and did it anyway. The reason that threatening to sell someone’s family away worked as an extortive punishment is that the slaveowner knew that the enslaved black was fully human and loved as tenderly as the white owner. The full recognition of human subjectivity — and requiring the slave to be complicit in his or her own sale (as property that could talk) — was central to the national slave trade. We’re talking over two million individuals sold in interstate, local, and estate sales. Two million times that a buyer and a seller had to recognize that person as property and write out a bill of sale. That’s not even taking into consideration all the daily interactions.
Lots of shit that humans do to each other is horrible. Was then, is now. Let’s not discount what the historical record says about slaveowners’ own knowledge of wrongdoing because we want our relatives to be specially insulated from making profound mistakes.
Come on, Exador. Now you’re just being pedantic. If a dude can say, “I hate black people” and drive around with a noose in his truck, isn’t that the same with saying “I hate black people and I want them to know they have reason to fear me?”
That’s a non sequitur or at the very least hyperbolic. Just because a person says they hate black people does not automatically mean that any weapon they may carry is an implied threat against black people.
What about a gun rack? What about a pocket knife? How about a really big rock? What about a chain or length of rope NOT tied in a noose?
You may find those things offensive, but neither you nor black people or any other group have any right to not be offended. People have the freedom to state their dislike for a person or for an entire race of people. Sometimes I think busybodies spend way too much time looking for things to get upset or offended about.
A person feeling threatened is not the same as actually being threatened. You have to prove intent. Nobody has succeeded in doing that in this case.
There were many reasons and slavery was a driving force by politicians
I figured somebody would bring that up (I had even typed my disclaimer, but then deleted it for fear of running on too long on an already slightly off topic comment). Fact is, there were many reasons the South seceded, but you take slavery out of the equation and it’s a safe bet it would have never happened.
It was the norm, as was slavery to many.
What percentage of people have to practice something to make it “the norm” and therefore ok in your book?
There are many things that used to be the norm but I have no problem saying that (then or now) they are WRONG.
A person can be proud of the heritage even if you don’t think they should be.
*yawn* Here we go. I’ve not said you can’t be proud of whatever you want to be proud of. Do I not have the same freedom to call you out on your inaccuracies? “It’s one of those crazy things about being an American,” I can point out inaccuracies in somebody else’s professed belief system if I so chose (or do you believe in freedom for me, but not for thee?)
It’s not your pride that I have the problem with. It’s the justification of “heritage, not hate.” When the part of your heritage that you are so proud of IS the hateful part, then the statement is just plain inaccurate.
What I am was saying is that to abolish slavery was not just a moral issue. As you said, even though they knew it was wrong, economically they didn’t see how they could continue to survive without them. I didn’t say morality was taken out completely, just that it took a back seat economically at that time. Northerners had issue with this too,
“Most of the original Northern colonies implemented a process of gradual emancipation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, requiring the children of slave mothers to remain in servitude for a set period, typically 28 years.”
They just turned into an industrial nation faster than the agricultural region of the south and turned more to child labor than to slave labor to run their mills. The 1900 census revealed that approximately 2 million children were working in mills, mines, fields, factories, stores, and on city streets across the United States. Were these people evil for making children work in horrid conditions for little pay. I don’t think so – it is the way that a capitalist system grows – we figure out the cheapest way to make the most money. We still do it today, we’ve just been able to advance to machines – and outsourcing to other countries to do this.
You can’t say southerner’s were evil because they weren’t willing to give up something that enabled them to survive. The mentality of that time was completely different than today. I know that when most people think of plantations they see Tara and Scarlett O’Hara at the big house, but the majority of southerns didn’t own slaves and those that did owned very few.
Its also the fact that the war wasn’t just about slavery, which everyone seems to always over look. It was also about States vs Federal rights. It was these other reasons which caused the majority of southerners to fight, seeing as they had no slaves to worry about the northerners setting free.
Ex, the school can expel him for being a shit-stirring dumbass, but that’s not what I’m talking about. TN state code speaks to trying to intimidate someone from exercising a right secured by law. The right in question here would be called “attending a public school.” (See also Civil Rights movement, desegregation…any of this ringing a bell for you?) If Cooter (boy has bigger problems if he thinks that’s a good nickname for a teenage skinhead, just sayin’) drives his truck and parks it in the public school parking lot, one could legitimately question what his intentions were.
And the state right that they were most concerned with was…holding slaves. Yes, you heard it here first. Read the SC, Alabama, Texas, and Mississippi articles of secession and get back to me about the cause of the war. If you won’t hear it from the horse’s mouth, you probably just aren’t willing to hear it.
Its the feeling behind the person displaying the flag. In this case – hate – I won’t deny it. But in my case, Southern heritage which I am proud of would be the reason behind why I flew a confederate flag.
I never said you couldn’t believe what you wanted to believe. Just that I didn’t think that just because its your opinion it should be the correct one. As my opinion is not the correct one for you. I’m not here to get in a fight about whether I’m right and your wrong or vice versa. I just think all view points should be covered.
What is unfair is that in most cases people who do show southern pride by flying the flag or singing dixie – whatever – are labeled as racist and hicks half the time. What you don’t think about was there was more to the South at the time of the war than a bunch of white people running around whipping slaves from the top of their Tennessee Walkering Horses. I just wish there was more tolerance is all and a willingness to listen to another person’s side without jumping to conclusions.
Yes, that’s about what I said, Exador. But this:
I’d say you created your own slippery slope of idiocy. You and the Straw Man have fun sliding down that there, ya hear?
But Sarcastro, homey, were they robbed by wild-eyed negroes wearing Nat Turner t-shirts and screaming “Black power!”?
That state right is what stirred the debate, but I think they were more worried about the fact of if the federal gov’t is going to remove my right on this issue, what will be next.
because the examples of the american north, the british empire, and all of western europe would have been totally impossible for them to emulate, i take it. well, if you want to argue that the antebellum southerners were all just plain stupid and unimaginative, who am i to disagree?
that said, i do believe the “Lawyers, Guns and Money” group blog (lefarkins.blogspot.com) has hashed this subject into the ground. by way of conclusion, they’re consistently running a search-and-replace on their blog posts, replacing “confederate” with “treason in defense of slavery”. having read their archives, i agree with both that consensus and the reasoning by which they arrived at it.
It was these other reasons which caused the majority of southerners to fight, seeing as they had no slaves to worry about the northerners setting free.
Not to mention their having been drafted, of course.
Mgal, no one is saying that the past you identify with was uniquely evil; no one is saying that it was only evil; no one is saying that the only thing worth knowing about it is slavery. But look: you started out by responding to Dolphin’s statement: at one point in my nation’s history a large portion of the country thought that slavery was so necessary and worthwhile that they were willing to attempt to found a new nation just to maintain it. And in your response you start throwing around a lot of nonsense about early marriage ages (incorrect), European serfdom (irrelevant), and the horrors of early capitalism (quite accurate) in an attempt to make U.S. slavery seem less bad, you are sort of admitting that, yes, it was bad enough to need all your comparisons, true and false. Which was Dolphin’s point. And that history might resonate with some people as a source of something other than pride. Or in addition to pride.
Again, gotta go to the primary documents on this one. The core of Southern concern from 1828 to 1860 was about slavery and its expansion, the parameters of national debate, the potential revision of the Constitution (under which if slaveholding states continued to vote their economic interests, no general abolition of slavery would have been possible — thus, the turn to extralegal means like war to get the job done). They really didn’t spend a lot of time expounding on the domino theory of rights. After most of the southeastern Indians were dispossessed, the only other thing that really moved white southerners to spill a lot of ink is national economic policy, again keeping in mind the centrality of slavery (slave trading being about 15% of the Southern GDP during that period) and slave-produced goods.
I’m all for southern pride. One of the things I think southerners do well is not to bullshit ourselves about the generally fallen state of the world — except on this issue, in which we disavow all knowledge of human moral frailty.
But Sarcastro, homey, were they robbed by wild-eyed negroes wearing Nat Turner t-shirts and screaming “Black power!”?
I would be frightened if it were an Ike Turner t-shirt. Nat Turner, nosomuch.
and about those states’ rights? yeah, the antebellum south was none too fond of those when the northern states wanted to exercise their rights to let black refugees live in peace. “fugitive slaves act” is what to go googling for. to now claim it was about “states’ rights” is to brazenly, deliberately ignore what one right the south was interested in keeping.
I’m going to indulge some racial profiling and say the mgirl is an arab.
Because she has totally hijacked this thread.
A friend of mine from NC has the picture of her couple-of-greats-grandfather in his Confederate uniform up on the mantel. And she’s proud of his having fought well. But she’s just as proud of another ancestor who spent the war hiding in a cave from the guys going around rounding up draft-dodgers, since, according to family lore, he refused to fight not out of cowardice, but because “I don’t own any g-d n*****s, I ain’t fixing to own any g-d n*****s, and I’m damned if I’ll get shot at so some rich man can keep his g-d n*****s.” There were all sorts of responses to the crises of the time, and there are all sorts of pride in the past. But if we’re not honest about what we know about the past, we’re dead now.
I’ll back out of the conversation. I never meant to imply I agreed with what happened. I forget how this topic gets people emotionally worked up on both sides and apparently I’m alone on my side of the fence here :).
Sorry Aunt B for hijacking the thread. And sorry Sarcastro, I’m just a good ol’ white girl who tends to be opinionated.
Hey, now. If there’s one thing we love around here it’s opinionated white girls. I love them so much I am one. Sarcastro loves them so much he’s married a couple of them.
A few of us just think you’re wrong. That’s all. Otherwise, glad to have you speak up.
Threat, here, I think, is what is throwing some of us off-track. Sarcastro is talking about the components of assault, and he is right. For an assault to occur, there must be a direct threat coupled with an apparent ability to carry out said threat.
Having a noose is not an assault, and implied threats are not illegal. (My criminal law training was 28 yrs ago, so, your mileage may vary).
That said, if Mr. Cooter were to approach a black man, and that black man pre-emptively struck out at him, I think i like his chances in a court of law, where the fact that Mr. Cooter is openly racist AND carried around a noose is admissible and totally relevant.
Sorry, an example. Mr Cooter drives his truck up to a gaggle of people, looks the black person in the eye and says: I’m going to hang you. Without the noose, no assault.
Exactly, Mack. Thank you for elucidating my thoughts.
mgirl, no worries. Slavery just muddies the waters when we are talking about something tangentially related to the decorating habits of one Mr. Cooter.
Mack, I suppose that would depend on the location of the crime, and therefore, the makeup of the jury.
CS: Tsk Tsk. Your caricature lacked the evil weed, or cocaine.
We would have also accepted a reference to assaulting white women.
bridgett: Come on! Having Cooter park his trash wagon in the parking lot is equivalent to blocking the schoolhouse door?!
How fragile they must be!!!
Sorry. One dipshit is a tacky truck, not specifically addressing anyone, just doesn’t measure up to that level of intimidation.
Actually, the Supreme Court has ruled that the context of threats made in a school setting has to be considered differently than those made elsewhere. That still does not make threat equivalent to assault, nor should it. But it does mean that the school has a lot of leeway in disciplining this kid.
context is everything. i tied nooses as a high school kid, and showed them off; this was nothing more than quite mild teenage rebelliousness, because the culture i grew up in never included lynching, or slavery, or institutional racism. i tied nooses because i was a depressive proto-emo before “emo” was invented, and because the hangman’s noose is an interesting knot to figure out.
but that was on the far side of the planet, in a vastly different context. had i grown up here, i could not and should not have got away with it, no matter what my reasons or intentions.
NM, fair enough. I’d actually like to see the little turd expelled, he obviously is disruptive if not potentially dangerous.
I think the little turd should be left alone, as long as it has been established that he poses no physical threat to anyone. As I’ve said or implied before, the combination of the noose and the rebel flags is an explicit statement that, upon first exposure, could reasonably be construed as a potential physical threat by the historically established targets of the terrorism which those symbols represent. If it turns out that the asshole racist sporting the symbols intends no physical harm, and just gets off on displaying the historical symbols of terrorism and oppression, well fine. Leave him to whatever social acceptance or ostracism he’ll face from the larger community.
Holy Shit! I completely agree with CS on something?! AND a race issue!!!???
A sign somewhere just broke
Can there be hot libertarian on fireman making out then? Is that too much to ask?
B, go take a shower.
We have an accord, then. Let us celebrate with this laurel and hardy handshake.
is this all you people have to do is sit around and talk about a kid. i know cooter and yea maybe he is racist but why do you care i support us being allowed to support our heritage at school i am proud that my great grand father fought for what he thought was right and you people have no idea what goes on in that school white people are discriminated against more than blacks and hispanics and nobody will do anything about it because white people feel like they owe them somthing i think its about time they got over it the civil war wasnt just over slavery anyway. this week black people have been wearing black heritage shirts and we havent bitched about that. yea the noose was a bad idea on cooters part but that still dosnt give them any fight to take away my family history
Were these people evil for making children work in horrid conditions for little pay. I don’t think so
Well we definitely must disagree then. I always hesitate to say always (oh the irony!), but lets just say I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered a situation in which I thought human rights violations were alright. That’s the thing. I’m completely willing to agree with you that many moral issues are dependent on time period and culture, but human rights transcends both those things in my book.
I’m sorry, Sarcastro, but someone’s got to take southern man and since I’m hoping that sticking Church Secretary and Exador together will either give me something to blush about or my own private buddy movie and lord knows we can’t expect southern man to find Mack’s house and since you could use the help moving, he’s all yours.
Perhaps you could take him aside and teach him about the wonders of periods.
Am I wrong, or did ’southern man’ just imply that racism is central to his “heritage” and “family history”? See, that’s why I think folks like Cooter should be allowed to express themselves freely (short of violence). It’s good to see these unreconstructed bigots admit that they’re proud their non-slave-holding ancestors marched off to kill and die for the incremental privilege of being better than niggers. It almost makes me want to go out and buy rebel flags for the self-defeating ignoramuses who can’t afford their own.
Come on, southern man is awesome. It is like an Andy Kaufman bit. He is so into it, you can’t tell what part of it is a gag and what isn’t.
You see, southern man learned in school that the Civil War wasn’t just about slavery, yet didn’t stay awake for the punctuation part of the day.
Got a feeling, given the probable age, southern man’s great grandfather fought in WWII. Unless southern man was raised in a basement in Austria, then it could certainly be his great grandfather.
Best line was, this week black people have been wearing black heritage shirts and we havent bitched about that Until, of course, just now.
If southern man did not exist, we would have to invent him.
I’ll admit, I did check his IP address to see if he was one of you just pulling my leg.
I read it three times trying to figure out if someone was having a genius level laugh.
Where is Neil Young when you need him anyway?
Apparently, southern man don’t need him around anyhow.
His great grandfather fought in WW II? You figure? You are making me feel oooooold.
are you dumbass people still talking about this shit seriously get a job or somthin. and so i left out one great in great great grandfather my bad
Danny, get a life.
hmmm, somebody didn’t get the memo that posting on this blog without punctuation is the written equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight.
[...] discussion over at Aunt B’s place. A noose is a threat. In conjunction with a truck full of Confederate Battle Flags and a [...]
are you dumbass people still talking about this shit seriously get a job or somthin.
Amen. I get to thinking the same way when people want to talk about the glory of the Confederacy.
and so i left out one great in great great grandfather my bad
Just a hunch, but I’m guessing they were the same guy.
a rebel flag and a noose aint a threat. if u gotta problem with it do somethin
Learn some basic grammar, then we’ll talk about your logic.