Posted on 10/13/2003 7:07:18 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
When George Ewert , director of the Museum of Mobile, wrote a stinging movie review of the Civil War film "Gods and Generals," he likely did not expect an equally harsh critique from Mayor Mike Dow .
Ewert's review, "Whitewashing the Confederacy (SPLC link)," was not kind to the Ted Turner film.
"'Gods and Generals' is part of a growing movement that seeks to rewrite the history of the American South, downplaying slavery and the economic system that it sustained. In museums, schools and city council chambers, white neo-Confederates are hard at work in an effort to have popular memory trump historical accuracy," the city employee wrote.
And this: "It is cloying and melo dramatic, and its still characters give an endless series of ponderous, stilted speeches about God, man and war."
In turn, Dow was not kind to Ewert, reprimanding the city employee in a Friday letter. The mayor called Ewert's review unnecessarily strongly worded, inflammatory and counterproductive.
"Why, in your very public position with all the local 'Southern Heritage' controversy that city leaders have had to manage and after several years of a hard-fought political calming of this issue, would you inject yourself so strongly and carelessly into this topic in this manner?" the mayor wrote.
"I need for you to use your better judgment and please cease and desist publishing potentially inflammatory articles of this nature without your board chairman's or my awareness and approval. Leave that to others who have less to do."
The city, particularly Dow, has come under fire in the past from Southern heritage groups claiming unfair treatment.
Ewert's review was printed in the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report. The Montgomery-based organization's Intelligence Project monitors hate groups and extremist activities.
At the end of the movie review, there is a line that notes Ewert's position with the city.
Mobile City Council President Reggie Copeland also scolded Ewert, saying at last week's council meeting that he "would accept nothing less than a public apology. ... I am very displeased with that gentleman, and I want some action taken."
Copeland made the comments after hearing about the review but before reading it. He later told the Mobile Register that the review was "not as strong as I thought it would have been. ... I just wish he would have kept his mouth shut."
Ewert, contacted last week, declined comment except to say that he would be preparing a statement for Dow. In a letter to Dow dated Oct. 9 -- one day before Dow's letter -- Ewert said the review was written in his capacity as a historian and private individual.
"I regret that anyone may have taken my comments in a 'personal' matter," Ewert wrote. "My intent was not to offend but to offer a legitimate criticism and context for the movie in question, a privilege that should by rights be open to anyone. If, again, there were those who were offended by the movie review, I offer my apologies."
Don't shoot ...:
Area veterinarian Ben George , a Confederate Battle Flag and Confederate-heritage advocate, praised Dow for his response to the review. But George said Ewert did not apologize and should resign or be fired.
"He (Ewert) shot somebody; he said he's going to shoot somebody again," George said.
George in the past has made himself something of a thorn in Dow's side, organizing demonstrations in front of Dow's house, plastering posters criticizing the mayor during the last city election and using other tactics to push his Confederate heritage agenda.
George complained to Dow after reading Ewert's article. "My staff and I have had to deal with an unnecessary and increased fallout as a result of your article," Dow stated in his letter to Ewert.
George compared the situation to the firing of a Mobile police officer, accused of using the n-word and expressing a lack of interest in helping evacuate public housing residents in case of flooding.
Ewert, like the police officer, George said, has proven himself intolerant toward part of Mobile's population, namely Confederate heritage proponents like himself.
George said he and several others planned to speak at Tuesday's City Council meeting about Ewert's comments, along with concerns that Dow has not kept his word on settling previous disputes. But, he said, the speakers may reconsider.
But enough of this tiring game...
That is not for you to decide.
"there is no legal way..." "Justice seems to be a government monopoly"
Some are just born to, and militantly demand to be slaves.
Freemen that wrote our wonderful Constitution. Freemen that established justice. Freemen that established the Union. Freemen that were slavers, in that Union, before the Confederacy ever existed. Freemen.
What Wilson wrote was that some of the states would 'withdraw themselves from the Union' - secession.
Marshall is referring to the people taking back power NOT States seceding.
Justice Marshall in stating, 'It is the people that give power, and can take it back" was referring to a secession by the state of Virginia if the new government abused the powers delegated.
Madison's prerequisite that the Union become "inconsistent" with public happiness was not met merely because the Slavers decided in a hissy fit to try and illegally remove their States from the Union.
Madison stated that if the new union were unsatifactory, because the yankees refused to abide by it or any other reason, then he would 'Abolish the Union'.
The authority Paterson was referring to was the PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES not a group of States.
No, Paterson was referring to the state Constitutions and the federal, 'In America, the case is widely different: every state in the Union has its constitution reduced to written exactitude and precision.' The case properly recognizes that the people of the state are sovereign over their legislatures. 'The life-giving principle and the death-doing stroke must proceed from the same hand' - the several states independently ratified the Constitution and independently secede.
There was no "secession" from the Articles, the constitution even included some of the same language. Changing a government is NOT secession from the UNION. It is a LIE to claim that was secession.
Madison in Federalist No. 43 disagrees,
'Should it unhappily be necessary to appeal to these delicate truths for a justification for dispensing with the consent of particular States to a dissolution of the federal pact, will not the complaining parties find it a difficult task to answer the MULTIPLIED and IMPORTANT infractions with which they may be confronted? The time has been when it was incumbent on us all to veil the ideas which this paragraph exhibits. The scene is now changed, and with it the part which the same motives dictate.'They were discussing the withdrawal of the states from the existing union, which formerly consisted of 13 members, but now could consist of only 9. The idea which had "been" veiled was that of secession, which "scene is now changed" so that secession may be exercised.
Standard sophistry from justshutupandtakeit will not change the facts.
Your gall in speaking for other men, and countries, does not alter the facts you so desperately refuse to face:
1) The Union was heavily invested in, and enjoying the profits from, slavery before the Confederacy even existed.
2) The Union kept slaves after those in the Confederacy were freed.
3) The Union has deeper roots in slavery than did the Confederacy.
Your sophistry & dancing betrays the shame you so frantically scamper around.
What is it with you & men's underwear analogies?
Where have you been? His right to free speech is now limited to ten words, following a 14-day waiting period, after he's bought a license. It only applies, of course, if he's a member of the National Guard.
But not impossible. Thus, Das Boot.
Which raises an interesting "what if"...
If Dubya shut down newspapers and threw publishers editors and reporters in jail for lying about the Iraq war and aiding and comforting the enemy, would he be praised by the left for emulating the great emancipator?
Or would he be chased out of town for gross human rights violations?
The PC morons of today are still unaware that the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave north of the Mason Dixon line.
No, but I'm sure he'd find some sycophants on this board to celebrate the act. They could pile on historical precendents of tyrannical presidential overreach for cover and call anyone that questioned the course 'traitors', etc.
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