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.
The trouble with Gods and Generals, us that they tried to reconstruct the speech patterns of folks in the 1860's. This made it boring beyond belief, something that would have been much better read over a couple of days than watched over four hours.
Stephen Lang, crippled by a ponderous script, nevertheless was able to convey a picture of Jackson which I imagine is correct: a brilliant religious lunatic with a warm heart.
What the movie did, or should have tried to do, was portray the "cloud cuckoo-land" mentality of ardent Confederates. For a better understanding of that, Experiment in Rebellion is an excellent work, describing the policies and personalities of the Confederate government in Richmond.
These people were mad as March hares.
And by the way, have you turned in your SUV yet? Your smoking materials? Have you installed all of the alternative power systems yet also and block off your property as a wetland?
The south, like the North, already owned slaves. That's not what the fight was about.
The North was so in favor of owning slaves, they kept theirs after those in the South were free.
Similarly, anything less than the Glorious Warriors in Gray fighting for God and Country doesn't seem acceptable to those on the other side. I'm sure that the motives of many on both sides were far more pragmatic than the myths of either side allows for.
If history must be re-written, if socialism needs to be heralded; whatever is required.....all must be educated to hate the South.
The problem is the overt racism in the South, in the form of Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and the Klan, that extended well into the middle of the 20th century. That kept race and discrimination front and center long after the Civil War ended. Sure, you can give me any number of explanations justifying what happened after the war but I suspect that the Klan, more than Plantation owners and slavery, is what gives modern Notherners their view that the South is racist. That many blacks how have lived in both the North and South seem to agree is not helpful, either.
Yes, I'm aware that the Klan has/had chapters in the North. And those places are often well known and have the same sort of reputation for being racists that the South, as a whole, has.
If only the South had first freed their slaves, the North would not have had any problem with secession. (/sarcasm)
The biggest question, which I've yet to see answered with any satisfaction, in the threads that I've read and participated in dealing with this subject is, if only the South had first freed their slaves, why would they have had any desire to secede? No, I don't think the North would have let the South go, regardless of the justification. But that avoids the question of why the South seceded and that does seem to point back to slavery. as a root cause.
To be free of a federal govenrment that has an insatiable appetite for power.
Conversely, the North fought so that all would be ruled by that same federal government.
"I don't think the North would have let the South go, regardless of the justification"
Which illustrates, just as did the North keeping their slaves, that slavery had little to do with the fight.
Having prevented secession, and, by the barrell of a gun, dragged the South, bleeding, back into the Union; the North absurdly now refers to this as the "United States".
Why, do you think, is such a mis-representation called for?
They were first introduced by British and Dutch slave traders. The vast majority of slaves brought to America's shores were brought by British slavers not "Northerners". Read Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the DoI.
The North had slaves before the South....
Jamestown Virginia had the first slaves in North America in 1619 --- a year before the Pilgrims reached Plymouth Rock and 20 years before the first slaves in New England and at the same time Virginia enacted the Black Codes that codified slavery as intergenerational based upon race as opposed to a position of indentured servitude.
I.e. my friend, there were slaves in the "south" before there were even any white people in the north, and it was in the south that the legal and racial framework of the institution was created.
and kept slaves after those in the South were freed.
Name one NORTHERN state that had slaves after those in the South were freed. Just one! And exactly what law freed slaves in the south? Did southerners just suddenly become emancipationists?
The guy has a real point about the depth of the historical myth perpetuated by the Neo-Confederates. Take all the pride you want in being a Southerner, (there are many things to be proud of) but don't rewrite history. It makes you look foolish and makes the south look foolish.
Is the concept of fighting for freedom that alien to you? Are you really only able to grasp, and support, individual examples rather than the larger concept.
Does the movie drag? Only in the sense that the filmakers took their time to allow the story to unfold. For some in the crowd who are use to getting the story in a 23 hour sit-com, it might have dragged. To me it did not...
Next summer, there is going to be a six hour's director cut... I'm going to buy it and watch it as many times as I have seen Gods and Generals and Gettysburg. My only regret is that the Last Full Measure will not be made due to the poor box office receipts.
I think the movie addresses the "slavery" question... from the South's side, from the North's side, and from the slave's side.
What most critics wanted was for a Jackson or Lee to rip his cloak and offer a mea culpea for the fact they owned slaves. This, they did not do... I can live with that. Mostly because the issue has been resolved. The slaves are free and have been free for 150 years.
It doesn't have the Pennisula Campaign or the Valley Campaign, nor does it have Antietam.
It focuses on Stonewall Jackson (brilliantly played by Stephen Lang)... the battles are First Manassas (true to the book), Fredericksburg (true to the book) and Chancellorsville (true to the book).
But, as you know, books are different than movies. There have to be some changes to accomodate the media. I saw the movie before I read the book and was pleasantly surprised to see dialogue and actions lifted directly from the book.
Ah!! Word games. I love it.
Are you saying that Virginia, in 1619, was part of the Confederacy? Is that what we are pretending?
Slavery was nurtured, invested in, and profited from by the Union before there was even such a thing as the Confederacy.(the "south" is a point on a compass, and did exist at Jamestown: the "South" was the Confederacy, and did not exist at Jamestown)
"Name one NORTHERN state that had slaves after those in the South were freed. Just one! And exactly what law freed slaves in the south?"
Pennsylvania. If I'm lieing, does it matter. Would it still matter if you find I'm telling the truth?
Do your own studying. At least, start with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.
Good is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.
Which statement is that?
Please. Check out how many Presidents, Vice Presidents, Cabinet Members and Speakers of the House before Lincoln came from slaveholding states before you make such claims.
Slavery was introduced to the South by the North. The North had slaves before the South, and kept slaves after those in the South were freed.
The first African slaves arrived in Jamestown on a Dutch ship in 1619 before the Pilgrims landed. There was Negro slavery throughout the New World. The phenomenon goes far beyond our North and South. But Black slavery was certainly taken to heart in the American South in the years from 1830 to 1860 in a way that it never was in the Northern states.
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