Don't spin the Civil War

Washington Post ^ | 12.27.10 | E.J. DIONNE jR.

[trumandogz]

The Civil War is about to loom very large in the popular memory. We would do well to be candid about its causes and not allow the distortions of contemporary politics or long-standing myths to cloud our understanding of why the nation fell apart.

The coming year will mark the 150th anniversary of the onset of the conflict, which is usually dated to April 12, 1861, when Confederate batteries opened fire at 4:30 a.m. on federal troops occupying Fort Sumter. Union forces surrendered the next day, after 34 hours of shelling.

[lentulusgracchus]

And this is sufficient for you to come to the conclusion that "Hitch hated Southerners with a passion."

You think not? Your support?

Put up time. Yes, this is your homework.

[lentulusgracchus]

Now, before we go further, do you still insist that I "fabricated" U.S. history?

Yes I do. Multiple times on this thread alone.

Prove it, troll.

Oh, and I noticed your weasel phrase, btw ..... demanding your counterparty prove everything beyond peradventure of historical doubt (guess we could never have a classical or medieval history thread here, then, could we? -- according to you), while you just sit back, idle as a welfare queen, and snipe, sneer, and snicker.

But prove it, troll. Go ahead, knock my socks off, Professor. You set the standard at proof. So I'll settle for nothing less than elenchus, Q.E.D., game-over proof, case closed.

Now I'm going to kick back and watch your mouth break your back.

If I didn't know better I'd say you were trying to hide behind him.

But you did know better, and you said it anyway, for the sake of the libel. No wonder they call you dump_truck.

"Another aspect of your posting style I suppose."

Back at you, dump.

Now get busy, slug. Post up.

Oh, and let me know when you're done writhing. Then I'll let you take down your comments and apologize.

[MikefromOhio]

ummm yeah....

psycho....

[MikefromOhio]

You are an idiot.

That's humorous coming from the idiot who thinks the country is going to divide into regions that agree 100% of the time in politics LOL

[MikefromOhio]

I didn't think that I needed a sarc tag for that but, considering the collective intelligence of the coven, and especially when your room temperature IQ is averaged in, I should have known better.

Whatever. You have ZERO credibility. We both know you weren't joking at all.

[MikefromOhio]

You need to worry yourself about what you’re going to do in 10 years to split the country.

I’m sure it has a lot to do with bags of Fritos, Mountain Dew and your internet connection LOL

[Ditto]

You say that Douglas and Davis had a cloak room deal that in exchange for slavery North of 36'30' the Eastern rail head would be in Omaha and that agreement was reached in 1854.

But there was no movement on the T-C railroad in that congress whatsoever. We move to 3 years later and the Lecompton constitution which caused a fracture among the Democrats in congress, (and the final death of the Whigs as a national party,) with still no railroad approved by congress.

If there was some agreement between Douglas and Davis to fast track the T-C railroad in 1854, as you contend, I sure see no evidence of it in the record.

What sources can you cite as to this 1854 back room agreement between Davis and Douglas?

[rustbucket]

Rustbucket doesn't recall such a thread as you described either, although he helpfully provided the brief that supports your side of the arguement.

Such a thread or a series of posts on the topic could easily have escaped my notice. For a long time I held off joining stainless banner's ping list, so I probably missed some threads in my early years here. Plus, I often skipped hundreds of posts on long threads when I was busy with other things.

Like lg, I do have a vague memory of a discussion about the NWO. For some reason, I did save the NWO article I linked to above. It was not saved in my files of individual posts but was in a separate history file. FYI, I do not archive whole threads, just my posts, posts of others that interest me, and interesting history. Perhaps I saw the article on the constitutionality of the NWO in the discussion that lg was referring to or perhaps I found it in a search and thought about posting it to that discussion but never did. Or perhaps the discussion in question was in one of the threads the Mods or Jim nuked before I archived any NWO posts in it. There was a nuked WBTS thread near the date in question.

My archived posts show there were at least two WBTS threads open on the day I saved that article on NWO constitutionality. I pulled up those threads today from the archive maintained by FR. Neither of those threads had a discussion of the NWO.

[lentulusgracchus]

There was a nuked WBTS thread near the date in question.

I remember that one, it was heroic. Over 4400 posts. It was from 2003, I think ..... got nuked for reasons I can't recall, but which had to do with Sidebar throwing hands up. Think JR will have had to pull a thread that big himself. Wish I could remember why it was pulled, but I was offline when it happened.

[lentulusgracchus]

If there was some agreement between Douglas and Davis to fast track the T-C railroad in 1854, as you contend, I sure see no evidence of it in the record.

I'm sorry -- did my links not post? Or did you read them?

Or are you now demanding a memo? Something like Ward Lamon's book? An eyewitness account by either a) Douglas or b) Jeff Davis?

Did you want that notarized, or will a Xerox of the original daybook from the National Archives do?

This is history, not newspapering, not a court of law. These guys had a deal, and it fell apart on the way to a much, much bigger bustup. That's the story.

Or do you simply refuse to believe the sources I posted in support? At some point that becomes slothful induction.

How would you write up the 1854 deal for a textbook on U.S. history? You've got 250-300 pages to work with, about 120 of them for the 19th century. How much space will you give the 1850's efforts do put together a transcontinental railroad, and how would you characterize the negotiations, and whom would you name as the leading characters? Are you going to explain how Louis Cass had a part, and Thomas Hart Benton had a part, and Stephen Douglas had a part, and Franklin Pierce had a part, and who all the players in the "F Street Mess" were, and what parts they played?

So if I read an account of the negotiations 25 years ago and brought that in, you're going to demand the original article and original documents in support of the article's lacunae, right?

There was no public law that ensued from the failed deal. No file at Interior Department for article writers to mine. It was a political deal, something off the books that was never born. So now you want the participants' pocket notes, the cocktail napkin notes, in support.

Only if you're trying to screw the other poster, and I'm not going to let you give me a Ph.D. dissertation for homework to defend my point.

Is there anything else I can do to help illuminate this point?

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

You think not? Your support?

Okay, I'll play, although you must know that it's impossible to prove a negative. But unlike you, I've actually seen almost all of Hitchcock's films. Let's start with BLACKMAIL (1929). Set in London, no southern characters.
JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK (1930) based on a Sean O'Casey play, set in Ireland. No southern characters.
MURDER! (1930), set in Britain. No southern characters.
ELSTREE CALLING (1930) Musical comedy revue. No southern characters.
THE SKIN GAME (1931) Based on a John Galsworthy play. Set in Britain. No southern characters.
RICH AND STRANGE (1931) Set in Britain, Paris, aboard a ship, and the Far East. No southern characters
NUMBER SEVENTEEN (1932) Based on a play by J. Jefferson Farjeon. Set in Britain. No southern characters.
WALTZES FROM VIENNA (1934) The story of the writing of "The Blue Danube" (and the movie Hitchcock most hated of his oeuvre. Set in Vienna. No southern characters.
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934) Set in Britian. No southern characters.
THE 39 STEPS (1935) Set in Britain. No Southern characters.
SECRET AGENT (1938) Based on a Somerset Maugham storyt. Set in Britain. No southern characters.
SABOTAGE (1936) Based on a Joseph Conrad novel. Set in Britain. No southern characters.
YOUNG AND INNOCENT (1937) Set in Britain. No southern characters.
THE LADY VANISHES (1938) Set in some imaginary Eastern European country. No southern characters.
JAMAICA INN (1939) Set in Britain in 1819. No southern characters.
REBECCA (1940) Set in Britain (after a few opening scenes on the French Riviera. No southern characters.
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (1940) Set in a European capital and in Britain. No southern characters.
MR. AND MRS. SMITH (1941) Set in New York CIty. No southern characters.
SUSPICION (1941) Set in Britain. No southern characters.
SABOTEUR (1942) Set in California. No southern characters.
SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943) Set in California. No southern characters.
LIFEBOAT (194) Set in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. No southern characters.
SPELLBOUND (1945) Set in Vermont. No southern characters.
NOTORIOUS (1946) Set in Miami and Rio de Janeiro. No southern characters.
THE PARADINE CASE (1947) Set in London. No southern characters.
ROPE (1948) Set in NYC. No southern characters.
UNDER CAPRICORN (1949) Set in Australia. No southern characters, except southern hemisphere.
STAGE FRIGHT (1950) Set in London. No southern characters.
STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951) Set in the New York area. No southern characters.
I CONFESS. Set in Canada.No southern characters.
DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954) Set in Britain. No soutbern characters.
REAR WINDOW (1954) Set in NYC. No southern characters.
TO CATCH A THIEF (1955) Set in Monaco. No southenr characters.
THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (1955) Set in Vermont. No southern characters.
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956) Set in Morocco and London. No southern characters.
VERTIGO (1958) Set in San Francisco. No southern characters.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Set in NYC, Chicago, and South Dakota. No southern characters.
PSYCHO (1960) Set in Calfifornia. No southern characters.
THE BIRDS (1963) Set in San Francisco and Bodega Bay, CA. No southern characters.
MARNIE (1964) Set in Philadlephia, and nearby locations. No southern characters.
TORN CURTAIN (1968) Set in East Germany. No southern characters.
TOPAZ (1969) Set in NYC, Cuba and Paris. No southern characters.
FRENZY (1972) Set in Britain. No Southern characters.
FAMILY PLOT (1976) Set in California. No southern characters.
Of the 17 (out of 363) episodes of ALFRED HTICHCOCK PRESENTS that Hitch actually directed, not a single one has a southern character, much less one like you describe.

So to sum up, Hitchcock never directed a single film or TV episode with a southern character, and yet you are able to come to the conclusion that he hated southerners with a passion. I guess you have a point if you feel that completely ignoring you constitutes evidence of passionate hatred. And that's actually pretty typical of the southern thin-skinnedness I see around here all the time.

[lentulusgracchus]

Of the 17 (out of 363) episodes of ALFRED HTICHCOCK PRESENTS that Hitch actually directed, not a single one has a southern character, much less one like you describe.

Look, it isn't right to exclude everything he didn't direct personally. He was a control bug like lots of other directors, and even took a hand in the screenplay writing. He would describe scenes and dialogue so closely to his script writers that they almost became stenos at times -- he had very strong inputs at all levels. Just because he didn't direct an episode, doesn't mean he wasn't fully involved, esp. when eyewitness recollections say he tended to exert very firm and comprehensive control.

Now if he actually walked away from his TV project at some point, then that's different, but I'm not aware he did. And several of the episodes as I've described them did use Southern characters, tho' I'd have to find the one episode that I do remember strongly, and I think it was one of this series (that, or some film you didn't list -- ?), that presented that "cracker" stereotype. And I've read elsewhere that he had very strong likes and dislikes (he was very afraid of policemen and sirens and found several references, including quotes on IMDB.com, to those fears and dislikes; and he hated eggs, loathed them), and that Southerners were among them. No, I didn't see any big analysis or breakdown, no attempt at sidewalk psychoanalysis as in the case of some of his other tics (as about policemen, which went back to an episode precipitated by his father in collaboration with a local police booking sergeant). Just the statement, which I put together with that episode or film or whatever it was of his that I'd seen. And he had a lot of marked tics -- he wouldn't tolerate extraneous people on set, and had eyes in the back of his head -- he once had a person ejected from a set, without ever looking to see if that person was actually there (this was a first-person eyewitness recollection I saw on TV ages ago). And so on. He was actually a bit creepy.

s So I'm not giving up on the point, I'm not going to bend or break, so flame on, I know where you're coming from and I'm not going to enable your grift.

Especially after seeing Pumpkinhead tonight on late-nite TV. What a classic (not!).

So what's next on your Netflix list? Texas Chainsaw Massacre? If so, which version? So many choices .....

[central_va]

Just a desire to see your Lost Cause revisionist history discredited before it subverts any young minds full of mush.

Well now, a little truth spills out.

There is nothing wrong with defending the South and states rights. There is nothing un-conservative about it at all if you love the republic that our founders created. It is you guys that need to explain the how the Civil War perverted forever the natural balance between the States and FedGov™.

Since you guys never seem to give up, we must be doing a pretty good job.

Continue in your fools errand.

[Ditto]

There was no public law that ensued from the failed deal.

Then the 'deal' obviously failed for some reason other than Lemptcom since that didn't happen till 3 years later.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Just because he didn't direct an episode, doesn't mean he wasn't fully involved, esp. when eyewitness recollections say he tended to exert very firm and comprehensive control.

Except that those eyewitnesses are talking about his feature film work. His role in the TV series was much more limited because he was directing the features at the same time:

For support, Hitchcock turned to someone he could trust: Joan Harrison, who had worked on screenplays for several of his movies in the 1940s, would produce the series, with actor/director Norman Lloyd serving as associate producer. Hitchcock’s involvement with episodes he did not direct was fairly limited: He would review the stories briefly and watch screenings of the finished episodes; reportedly, he had two responses to the screenings. He would say either “That was interesting,” meaning he liked it, or “thank you,” meaning he did not.

Even if this episode you decribe exists (and frankly, it sounds more like an episode of Boris Karloff's "Thriller"--"Pigeons from Hell" maybe), the presence of one episode perpetuating a stereotype you don't like, out of a pool of 363 episodes, hardly constitutes evidence that Hitchcock himself "hated southerners with a passion" except, of course, to someone like you who is looking for any slight to reinforce your persecution complex.

So what's next on your Netflix list? Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

Actually the next two things on my Netflix list are "The White Ribbon," a German film, and "The Last Station," a film about Tolstoy's last days, both of them Oscar nominated last year.

[Thumper1960]

Seems to me that anyone, president or common garden variety “Yankee”, who torques a Rebel is in serious danger of being killed by the Southerner.

You all talk with such hate filled venomous vitriol about a war that’s been over for 145 years. One would think that you guys actually lived through it. Well, you didn’t. You have some romanticized notion of what the old South was, but you really don’t know what it was like. You compare Lincoln to Hitler, but you are incapable of truly doing so since you’ve never lived under the regimes of either.

Why you all can’t get it through your thick, addled skulls is hard to understand. The war is O-V-E-R. The South lost. L-O-S-T. It ain’t gonna “rise again”. The old South of Jeff Davis and Beauregard is finished. It’s in the dustbin of history. It’s gone, kaput, dead, buried, defunct. The nation, as a whole, is better for it. The government of the Southern oligarchy was unsustainable and was bound to end. It’s simply a shame that so many fine Southern boys had to die because of the brainwashing by the elites.

Your supposed ancestors mad bad choices. One of them was to follow the Confederates into the abyss. Another really bad choice was to support the likes of the KKK and further bring hardship upon the South for their hate and stupidity.

It’s too bad that the South was crushed. really, it is. It’s too bad the intransigent Confederate leadership forced the hands of the Union armies and had your cities burned, your crops laid waste and your post-war governments controlled. And, it’s sad that you all asked for it.

Get over it, already. And, if ya can’t, just remember that past experience with derelicts informs possible future events. Being hate-filled today will lead, ultimately, to hate-filled acts tomorrow. I see more than one JWB wannabe among your ranks. The question is what president under what circumstances and with what trigger is going to get one of your JWB wanna-be’s to finally snap and start looking for the backdoor to a theater box seat. Could it happen? Perhaps. Would it? Not sure. Will it? probably not. Most of you are too yellow to do anything but bitch and moan. Hardly any of you have the stones to do more than orally fart Rebel slogans.

*I* don’t have to try to goad one of you internet Confederate Rebel pretenders to say something stupid. Eventually, by virtue of your collective mindsets, you’ll do it all on your own.

I will put in a good word in your defense, though. I’d hope that they would understand you’re all not like Tim McVeigh. More like the Dukes of Hazzard, playing Johnny Reb with a Matchbox General Lee.

[Thumper1960]

Well, graccy, when you either substantiate or withdraw the charge that I am a “troll and provocateur”, I’ll consider your request.

Until then, my dear friend, you may piss up a rope and drink from the cup below it.

Have a wondrous day!

[lentulusgracchus]

Well, graccy, when you either substantiate or withdraw the charge that I am a “troll and provocateur”, I’ll consider your request.

You supply all the substantiation necessary for anyone to reach that conclusion.

Oh, and did I mention that you're completely classless to boot? Good night. Sweat dreams.

[Thumper1960]

Since you did neither, your request is denied.

As for your other “comment”, that is merely your opinion. Opinions are like anuses; everyone has ‘em and most of them stink. Yours is particularly odorous.

I do wonder how you function in life being viewed by your peers as an idiot. It must be very hard for you.

So sad.

Have another wondrous day! I know *I* am!!!

:-D

[cowboyway]

Interesting rant, thumper. (see post#1316) How far into the bottle were you when you ground out that pile of shit?

That angry little missive from the heart of yours appears to have summed up all the poisonous hatred, using all the standard talking points and low browed baiting tactics that you South hating Reb bashers have been using for years, but it's given me an idea:

The first post in all future threads about the War of Northern Aggression should be your rant with the addition of your comrades names added at the bottom (punkrr, shitto, screwmandogz, fudge_truck, spikefromohio and the rest of your posse). Since it sums up every hate filled post that your side has ever, and ever is, likely to post, it can be your only submittal. That way the rest of us can enjoy a peaceful and intellectually stimulating discussion about the threads topic and your side can go back to whatever porn sites that you frequent because that's probably the closest that any of you ever get to a woman, except when your mother comes downstairs to do the laundry.

Is is a deal?