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."

[Heyworth]

I never argued that there weren't primitive, expensive, impractical steam tractors in the mid-19th Century. They weren't labor saving devices, though, because they required more men and more horses to supply them with fuel than they replaced. You keep trying to make the point that the south would have used these if only the mean ol' yankees hadn't looted massa's house, but you still can't explaIn why those steam tractors weren't used in the north to any great extent in that period. And you can't explain why, when the internal combustion tractor came along in the 1910s, both the north and the south adopted them at the same time. You concoct an elaborate conspiracy to support your delusional worldview and deny the obvious--steam tractors weren't particularly useful.

As for the cotton pickers, I similarly don't deny that there were early experiments in producing such a machine. However I do recognize, along with every single source in the world (except you and this mythical evidence that you refuse to show), that those early experiments didn't work well enough to be adopted and that it was the Rust brothers, after years of development, who produced the first practical mechanical cotton picker in the late 1930s. I've presented a dozen different academic sources that say as much while you've presented none (except to tell me to take it up with the agricultural curator at the Smithsonian, and we've all seen how that worked out for you).

I assume that this 1850s cotton picker you've talked about is the Rembert-Prescott machine. Why wasn't this machine immediately adopted by the south? Could it be because it didn't work? In the period between 1850s and the 1930s, literally hundreds of patents were issued to mechanical cotton pickers. Why weren't they adopted? You want to claim it's because the south was still too poor, but you can't explain why cotton farmers in California didn't adopt them either. You can't explain why both California and the south adopted mechanical picking at the same time. Again you concoct ludicrous theories to deny the obvious--cotton mechanized when the machines to do it efficiently appeared on the scene, at which time it mechanized in both the south and California.

The fact is, you don't even try to reconcile these problems with your theory. If you were an honest debater, I might have a shred of respect for you. But your sole technique is to assert something, then, when questioned about it, to begin spouting these tedious, predictable rants. You don't present evidence, only invective. Doesn't it tell you anything that none of the other neo-rebs, with their vast libraries of information, have ever chimed in in your defense on this subject?

[GOPcapitalist]

For Calhoun, the statement of principles at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence had no authority whatever for the constitutions, state and federal, that followed upon it

Jaffa's ignorance is showing again. A number of states had constitutions that PREDATE the declaration, thus it is impossible for them to "follow upon it." If anything, the Declaration itself "followed upon" the declaration of rights in the preexisting act of independence on June 12th by Virginia.

[Heyworth]

there are ORIGIONAL SERVICE RECORDS

Still having trouble with that spelling thing, Watie?

[capitan_refugio]

stand's reply in #664 to your post here is vintage watie!

Watch out - the jury is still out on you! LOL

[capitan_refugio]

The "United States" that the southern knuckleheads seems to revere never existed. Instead, they fantasize, in the words of Rhett, about the "States united." They deny the founding principles espoused by Jefferson and others, and they deny the nationalist "Union" principles from the Framers of the Constitution, such as Madison, Hamilton, Washington, and Pinckney.

The 13 original states never existed outside of the Union. As James Wilson noted, that "the United Colonies were declared to be free & independent States; and inferring that they were independent, not Individually but Unitedly." The were strengthened into a "perpetual Union" by the Article of Confederation, and made into a true nation by the Constitution. Although the roots of American nationalism reach back far before any formal documentation, the knuckleheads continue to insist on state sovereignty and independence - which never fully existed at any time in the history of the Union. Such people cannot honestly describe themselves firstly as "Americans."

[capitan_refugio]

Based on past practice, some of the confederate cabal will readily agree that they are not Americans "first and foremost."

[capitan_refugio]

"Worth repeating - excellent post!"

Easily refuted. Not worth the bandwidth used to post it.

The Dred Scott decision was widely anticipated and immediately criticized in the newspapers and from the pulpits - outside of the south, of course - gag rules and prohibitions on free expression, you understand.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

This guy is imminently more qualified to describe the pre-war South than Margaret Mithchell whose parents actually lived in it.

During the "The Wind Done Gone" dust up, Flo King had an article in National Review's "Misanthrope Corner" about GWTW. She maintains that GWTW was meticulously researched, including attention to the actual accents and variations. (Not that any of this made it into the movie.) Margret Mitchell had been a reported, when she was disabled by arthritis, she became an historical novelist, but with a report's eye for detail (and in that benighted time) accuracy.

[capitan_refugio]

Howell Cobb - "If slaves will make good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong."

North Carolina Standard editorial, January 17, 1865 - [The formation of black regiments] is abolition doctrine ... the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down."

Richmond Sentinel, November 24, 1864 - "If emancipation of part [of the slave population into the army] is a means of saving the rest, then this partial emancipation is eminently a pro-slavery measure."

"Our southern people have not gotten over the vicious habit of not believing what they don't wish to believe." - Charlottesville Chronicle December 1864

Still haven't.

[4CJ]

Before I will take any more of your comments seriously concerning the DS decision, I suggest you either (1) actually read the book in question, or (2) cite your references as to DS's "soundness."

You would be happy reserving new territories ONLY for Democrats? The gist of the decision is that all members of the union have equal rights to the territories. Seven justices agreed. Sorry if you have a problem with that.

[4CJ]

But notables such as Thomas Hart Benton, "... smelling far too much essence of Calhoun in Taney's opinion, turned aside [from his Debates in Congress] to write 'with incredible speed' a book of 130 pages (plus a 62-page appendix'" about the failings of the decision.

If he wrote it fast, does that make it any more accurate? Benton's so called "legal examination" focused on two issues, the invalidation of the Missouri Compromise Act which reduced yankee political power ('affecting Congress in its legislative capacity, and on which the Supreme Court has no right to bind'), and the application of the Constitution to territories, which ended dictatorial Congressionl rule, and spelled the death of yankee dreams of a lily-white west.

Again, the Congress had the power to impeach any of the justices, yet none were impeached. A few hotheads that might actually have to share the territories with white or black Southerners got bent out ouf shape. Millions of yankees did not secede, nor threaten secession because of the decision.

[nolu chan]

It was a Black UNION soldier writing. The Black Confederates were in the units shooting at him.

[justshutupandtakeit]

I apologize for calling you a "lying skunk" since I should not let these discussions provoke me to insult.

However it is false that I have any sectional animousity being from the South and having most of my loved ones from the South. It is true that I have extreme animousity toward the ruling class of the Slaverocracy and see few examples of a more inhuman social structure as existed there in 1860. Most of my disgust is because of the damage they caused the South.

My feeling would be the same if the North had been the Slavers and the South anti-slavery. Nor is my statement about the particularly vicious nature of it false. Another aspect of history which makes it worse is that it came about after Christianity became dominant in the West. Thus, even if the evil were equal in Rome and Richmond the latter would be worse since its inhabitants should know better from being Christianized.

There is no anomaly in your scores since those who entered college would be expected to have higher scores than those who didn't and thus the comparision to the former would result in a lower percentile than comparision to the whole who took the test. Mine were 1964. Graduate scores 1973.

I had no doubt you were sufficiently educated.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Since the Union was all the states which composed it the Slavers tried to destroy it through insurrection.

Since, according to Madison, once a state entered the Union it was forever attempting to leave was a violation of the Constitution thus the Slavers tried to destroy the Constitution.

Slavers loved slavery since their well being was tied to it. I am sorry to hear you are in a loveless marriage that may explain many things.

Personally I wish daily my late wife was still here since I loved her more than life itself.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Where did I ever say there was no racism in the North? Who in there right mind would say such a thing? I have never even claimed that the Southerners were MORE racist. However, the Slavers did all they could to paint the region in the worst possible light.

And once again my attacks are directed at the Slavers and all their supporting apologists and ideology NOT the ordinary Southerner; the vast majority not only did not own slaves but were harmed by its existence.

Geography is not the same as population and any use of the term Southern referring to that era is used by me to refer to slavers. Most of the South's common people of that day had little power or influence over their rulers. There is nothing about the Slaver's world which is positive it was a horror for all but a tiny elite.

[justshutupandtakeit]

I have seen no "challenges" of that statement worthy of serious consideration. One might point out that there were great differences within the institution and between the states and some slaves may have been treated relatively well while others were treated abominally but as a whole it was very different from that of the Romans and Greeks. Moslems I don't know much about.

In addition, much of what you consider a "fact" seems to me to be mere grasping at straws.

[justshutupandtakeit]

While your bilge is ignorable the census data is rather interesting since it points out the very high percentage of blacks who volunteered to fight for the North.

And it proves that my statement was 100% CORRECT. There were plenty of free blacks in Illinois about 1000% more than Mississippi in fact.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Kentucky was NEVER part of the CSA except perhaps in your dreams. It was unique, of course, for being a NON-EXISTENT
member of the CSA whereas the REAL states which were a part of the CSA actually WERE in reality.

BTW I wouldn't accept your premise on anything since your view of the world indicates a mental illness of some sort.

[justshutupandtakeit]

In your hopes and dreams it was dying but to the Slavers of the time it was a vibrant structure which they could hardly wait to export to Cuba. It was so alive to them that they were willing to destroy the greatest nation in the history of mankind to preserve it.

It takes real dementia to paint Lincoln as you and the other DSs do.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Come up to Chicago sometime and I will show you what a REAL liberal thinks since obviously you have no idea.