Commentary: Truth blown away in sugarcoated 'Gone With the Wind'

sacbee ^ | 11-13-04

[LouAvul]

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Based on Margaret Mitchell's hugely popular novel, producer David O. Selznick's four-hour epic tale of the American South during slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction is the all-time box-office champion.

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Considering its financial success and critical acclaim, "Gone With the Wind" may be the most famous movie ever made.

It's also a lie.

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Along with D.W. Griffith's technically innovative but ethically reprehensible "The Birth of a Nation" (from 1915), which portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as heroic, "GWTW" presents a picture of the pre-Civil War South in which slavery is a noble institution and slaves are content with their status.

Furthermore, it puts forth an image of Reconstruction as one in which freed blacks, the occupying Union army, Southern "scalawags" and Northern "carpetbaggers" inflict great harm on the defeated South, which is saved - along with the honor of Southern womanhood - by the bravery of KKK-like vigilantes.

To his credit, Selznick did eliminate some of the most egregious racism in Mitchell's novel, including the frequent use of the N-word, and downplayed the role of the KKK, compared with "Birth of a Nation," by showing no hooded vigilantes.

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One can say that "GWTW" was a product of its times, when racial segregation was still the law of the South and a common practice in the North, and shouldn't be judged by today's political and moral standards. And it's true that most historical scholarship prior to the 1950s, like the movie, also portrayed slavery as a relatively benign institution and Reconstruction as unequivocally evil.

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Or as William L. Patterson of the Chicago Defender succinctly wrote: "('Gone With the Wind' is a) weapon of terror against black America."

[Non-Sequitur]

What, no squack?

[GOPcapitalist]

What, no squack?

I suppose you normally do talk while chewing.

[4CJ]

Your "list of reasons" is downright comical. You want us to believe that Merryman and Taney were neighbors and friends because dead people with the same last names as theirs are buried at the same cemetary! Answer me this, capitan. Do you know the names of all the people who are buried around your deceased relatives in a cemetary? Do you run around in social circles with their descendants and call those descendants your "neighbor" since their Great Aunt Thelma is buried 30 feet from yours?

They just sit around the graves and sang Kumbayah together.

[GOPcapitalist]

Given the way those Californy people do things there's probably an element of truth to that.

[Gianni]

I replied to your comment, "Slave owners were not political leaders." I said nothing about tyranny.

Check back with your high school and get a book on reading comprehension.

You jumped in the middle of a conversation about the word tyrant and tried to run it off into another El Capitan irrelevency.

Don't lecture me about comprehension when it was your ignorance that led us down this road.

[Non-Sequitur]

I suppose you normally do talk while chewing.

But I can't duplicate that neat whistle that you do after you go 'Awk'.

[capitan_refugio]

"Don't lecture me about comprehension when it was your ignorance that led us down this road."

Really? Could have fooled me.

[capitan_refugio]

"[Wildfire] had been captured a few days previously by Lieutenant Craven within sight of the northern coast of Cuba, as an American vessel employed in violating our laws against the slave-trade."

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.

What's you point?

[capitan_refugio]

"... which rests entirely upon an unspecific and now discredited newspaper editorial."

The Times articles is eminently credible. In fact, anything "discredited" by you is worth its weight in gold, as far as I'm concerned. You are the one bellyaching. I'm quite satisfied with the judgment of the Chief Justice. "The Times claimed that Taney and Merryman were neighbors, yet Taney lived in Washington and Merryman lived in the rural Baltimore County town of Cockeysville some 20 miles away from the city."

I can see why you claim to be a social scientist instead of a real one. There is no accounting for rational thought from such a narrow mind..

[capitan_refugio]

What period of time does your graphic purport to represent?

[capitan_refugio]

"Merryman lived in Cockeysville and Taney lived in Washington. Therefore they were not neighbors."

Time and space are large concepts. You are not capable of having anything but narrow thoguhts. Does the Times state when they were neighbors? No. It only indicates they had been neighbors. And that you have not even come close to disproving - or will you ever.

[capitan_refugio]

I am presuming you got it to post on the third try, because 2191 and 2190 didn't show up.

Did that come from a sixth grade history book?

did you note the caption "Early Colonial"?

[Gianni]

Rehnquist as much as says it too.

Now there's a fine appeal to authority.

[capitan_refugio]

"Damn, you're dumb."

Talking to yourself again? Sorry, you are as narrow-minded as your comrade, GOPc.

[capitan_refugio]

Tell us about your book, "Prof." coward.

[capitan_refugio]

"John Merryman was a FARMER and is listed in such in the Baltimore COUNTY census (the City of Baltimore is not part of Balimore COUNTY) - he was not a judge, lawyer, politician, doctor, banker or any other profession customarily travelling in high society."

He was a wealthy landowner from an old and prominent family. He occupied several positions of civic importance, befitting his position in society.

P.S. I noted in another post that the City Baltimore was not part of Baltimore County after 1851.

[capitan_refugio]

Buy Farber's book. It is available in paperback.

"Where is the clause allowing ANY part [of the Constitution] to be suspended or tossed aside in times of war?"

Now back to your reading comprehension problem. Did Farber write anything about suspending the Consitution itself? No. He used the term "ordindary rules." What do you think the "Laws of War" and the Commander-in-Chief's "war powers" are all about?

[4CJ]

"The Times claimed that Taney and Merryman were neighbors, yet Taney lived in Washington and Merryman lived in the rural Baltimore County town of Cockeysville some 20 miles away from the city."

Who got credit for the byline, Jason Blair or Dan Rather?