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'Gods and Generals' ... and an angry Mayor Dow
Mobile Register ^ | 10/13/03 | Jim Van Anglen

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: Alabama
KEYWORDS: alabama; dixie; generals; gods; godsandgenerals; moviereview; museum; splc
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To: Gunslingr3
The people trying to act like the war wasn't about more than just slavery are guilty of rewriting history, but the victor has that perogative...

I don't know -- sometimes it looks like Gods and Generals was guilty of saying that the war was about less than slavery.

41 posted on 10/13/2003 9:48:40 AM PDT by x
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To: x
"But Black slavery was certainly taken to heart in the American South..in a way that it never was in the Northern states."

It is true that both the Union, and the Confederacy both had slaves.

The Confederacy put them to real use. For the most part, they were not kept as house servants, or status symbols, but; because there was real work to be done, they were utilized "in a way that it never was in the Northern states."

Despite not having a real use for them, except as an industry, the North was quite adept at keeping, and selling slaves.

42 posted on 10/13/2003 9:53:32 AM PDT by laotzu
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To: x; laotzu
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.

I assume this is where I come in? I can hardly sum it up better than Alexander Stephens, vice president of the confederacy, did:

"But again, gentlemen, what do we have to gain from this proposed change of our relationship with the general government? We have always had control of it, and can yet, if we remain in it, and are as united as we have been. We have had a majority of Presidents chosen from the south; as well as the control and management of most of those chosen form the North. We have had sixty years of Southern Presidents to their twenty four, thus controlling the Executive Department. So too of the judges of the Supreme Court, we have had eighteen from the South, and but eleven from the North; although nearly four-fifths of the judicial business has arisen in the Free States, yet a majority of the Court has always been from the South. This we have required so as to guard against any interpretation of the Constitution unfavorable to us. In like manner we have been equally watchful to guard our interest in the Legislative branch of government. In choosing the presiding Presidents (pro Tempore) of the Senate, we have had twenty-four to their eleven. Speakers of the House, we have had twenty-three, and they twelve. While the majority of Representatives, from their greater population, have always been from the North, yet we have so generally secured the Speaker, because he, to a great extent, shapes and controls the legislation of the country. Nor have we had less control in every other department of the general government. Attorney-Generals we have had fourteen, while the North have had but five. Foreign ministers we have had eighty-six, and they but fifty-four. While three-fourths of the business which demands diplomatic agents abroad is clearly from the Free States, from their greater commercial interests, yet we have had the principle embassies, so as to secure the world markets for our cotton, tobacco, and suger on the best possible terms. We have had the vast majority of the higher officers of both army and navy, while a larger proportion of the soldiers and sailors were drawn from the North. Equally so of Clerks, Auditors, and Comptrollers filling the Sxecutive department; the records show that for the last fifty years, of the three thousand thus employed, we have had more than two-thirds of the same, while we have but one-third of the white population of the Republic." - Alexander Stephens, January 1861

So it would appear that it was the Federal Government of the South, not the North, who nurtured, grew, defended, bankrolled, and built an entire empire on the importing of slaves.

The North had slaves before the South, and kept slaves after those in the South were freed.

Wrong on both counts. Slavery started in North America in Florida, grew in Virginia, and ended in parts of the south at the very same moment that it ended in the North, December 1865.

43 posted on 10/13/2003 9:55:02 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Impeach the Boy
I beg your pardon...Lincoln's seizure of powers not delegated to him by the Constitution, in the name of "saving" the Constitution ? destroyed constitutional government in America, and opened the door to the Progressives and the Democrats.

Lincoln's usurpation, and his fundamental alteration of the American political system, destroyed the structural barricades which protected the United States from the horror of unlimited democracy, i.e., from a government which used success at the ballot box as a justification for reshaping society in its own image. Do you think 'Liberals' in their present incarnation spontaneously appeared? THAT is 'silly' sir.
44 posted on 10/13/2003 9:56:08 AM PDT by Lee Heggy ("the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free."H L Menken)
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To: laotzu
Actually, you had responded to my question posed to Redleg in Post #25. I wanted to know, other than slavery, what State's Rights he was refering to as a cause of the war.
45 posted on 10/13/2003 9:56:17 AM PDT by PaulJ
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To: x
Was it really trying to say the war was about "less" than slavery? Or perhaps, trying to show how people could be so devoted to causes on both sides?
46 posted on 10/13/2003 9:56:25 AM PDT by Moby Grape
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To: carton253
Yes, Stephen Lang is a good actor, but the script didn't help him. Perhaps those scenes might have made a good play focused on the death of Jackson, perhaps not. But they looked excessive in a movie with other things in focus.

Good is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

No argument there.

47 posted on 10/13/2003 9:56:57 AM PDT by x
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To: x
In War and Peace, a nobleman is injured. He lies on the ground, looks up at the sky and the scenery, sees some soldiers walking over here, talking over there. It seems rather pleasant. And why are these fellows running? Why, he realizes, it must be to kill me, me whom everybody likes! (Tolstoi fought in the Crimean war.)

G&G gives that sense of the 19th-century battlefield, the cross between the usual-war-story bullets flying, a mechanics convention, and a large faire.

Clearly, it will not appeal to most filmgoers; it's not really a film. The teenagers sitting across from us said, "Geez. They couldn't even make the battle scenes exciting."

48 posted on 10/13/2003 10:02:50 AM PDT by monkey
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To: Lee Heggy
Lincoln's seizure of powers not delegated to him by the Constitution, in the name of "saving" the Constitution destroyed constitutional government in America...

What seizures were those?

49 posted on 10/13/2003 10:04:20 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Impeach the Boy
"Gettysburg" did a good job of showing why both sides fought. "Gods and Generals" was overkill. Pumping up the Confederate view so much, it was less convincing in the end. Maxwell kept hammering away at his points, rather than making them and letting them sink in.
50 posted on 10/13/2003 10:05:54 AM PDT by x
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To: Non-Sequitur
What seizures were those?

You can find the answers to that at this Anti-Lincoln Web Site. The same place he's getting them from.

51 posted on 10/13/2003 10:10:08 AM PDT by PaulJ
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To: All
Gods & Generals was about the men and their battles - it was not about politics of which slavery was a key issue. Any American would be hard-pressed to leave the movie without a heavy heart.

Ewert is unsure if he wants to give his readers a dissertation on "revisionism", a history lesson of the Late War, or a movie review. Ewert attacks the "causes of the war", but fails to notice Gods & Generals begins after the War has begun. Ewert mocks "the army of the Lord", referring to the strong Christian leader Gen. Thomas J. Jackson as well as the "didactic sermonizing" throughout the film.

Ewert goes on to criticize the production as "highly unrealistic to anybody familiar with real war" and "serious historians know such scenes are hogwash", when, in fact, leading Civil War historians were consultants for the movie.

Rotten Tomatoes, a movie review website, is noted with negative reviews of the film from authoritative sources such as the NY Times and LA Times. A conservative movie with Christian undertones got bad reviews from liberal media outlets -- I'm shocked! The fact the SPLC carries his review adds more credence to Gods & Generals being a great film and an honorable attempt to portray a complex time in America's history.

Gods and Generals is not for the sitcom crowd that enjoys homosexual jokes and "reality" tv hows. It is a deep look into the men who fought, the reasons they did, and the result of their fateful decisions. If you want a great production to spur conversation, thought, and research into America's past, watch Gods & Generals.

Bottom Line: Ewert should read the book on which the movie is based and reconsider his unfounded review.

52 posted on 10/13/2003 10:10:54 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
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To: carton253
It's true to the book in what it showed.

Please. There were 54 or 55 chapters in the book. There were more chapters where Lee was the central figure than where Jackson was the central figure. There were more chapters where Hancock was the central figure than where Jackson was the central figure. Yet there is more screen time for that ludicrous Bonnie Blue Flag scene than for Hancock. The movie was a poor, over-long, over-blown interpretation of the book. IMHO, of course.

True story. The movie did such a poor job of telling the story that as I was walking out after it was over I heard a 20-something girl ask her 20-something companion. "So who was Stonewall Jackson anyway?" He didn't have an answer.

53 posted on 10/13/2003 10:11:21 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Non-Sequitur
I was walking out after it was over I heard a 20-something girl ask her 20-something companion...

Lurking, Non?!

54 posted on 10/13/2003 10:18:57 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
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To: Non-Sequitur
I thought the movie was poor, too, although not for the reasons given in this review, but for what you said. Too bad. I loved Gettysburg and hoped God and Generals would be of the same quality. I might have fallen asleep, but did the movie just pass over Antietam?
55 posted on 10/13/2003 10:20:19 AM PDT by colorado tanker (And I'll see you someday on Fiddlers Green)
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To: PaulJ
No answers there, just the same claim that Lincoln usurped powers not granted him by the Constitution and nothing to support it. You suppose he has something else up his sleeve?
56 posted on 10/13/2003 10:21:17 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Non-Sequitur
Dear Non Sequitur, I will give you one example from many. On September 15, 1863, Lincoln imposed Congressionally authorized martial law. The authroizing act allowed the President to suspend habeas corpus through out the entire United States. Lincoln imposed the suspension on "prisoners of war, spies, or aiders and abettors of the enemy," as well as on other classes of people, such as draft dodgers. The President's proclamation was challenged in ex parte Milligan (71 US 2 [1866]). The Supreme Court ruled that Lincoln's imposition of martial law (by way of suspension of habeas corpus) was unconstitutional.

In arguments before the Court, the counsel for the United States spoke to the question of "what is martial law?" "Martial law," it was argued, "is the will of the commanding officer of an armed force, or of a geographical military department, expressed in time of war within the limits of his military jurisdiction, as necessity demands and prudence dictates, restrained or enlarged by the orders of his military chief, or supreme executive ruler." In other words, martial law is imposed by a local commander on the region he controls, on an as-needed basis. Further, it was argued, "The officer executing martial law is at the same time supreme legislator, supreme judge, and supreme executive. As necessity makes his will the law, he only can define and declare it; and whether or not it is infringed, and of the extent of the infraction, he alone can judge; and his sole order punishes or acquits the alleged offender."

In this case, Lambden Milligan, for whom the case is named, was arrested in Indiana as a Confederate sympathizer. Indiana, like the rest of the United States, was part of a military district set up to help conduct the war. Milligan was tried by military commission and sentenced to die by hanging. After his conviction, Milligan petitioned the Circuit Court for habeas corpus, arguing that his arrest, trial, and conviction were all unconstitutional. What the Supreme Court had to decide, it said, was "Had [the military commission] the legal power and authority to try and punish [Milligan]?"

Resoundingly, the Court said no. The Court stated what is almost painfully obvious: "Martial law ... destroys every guarantee of the Constitution." The Court reminded the reader that such actions were taken by the King of Great Britain, which caused, in part, the Revolution. "Civil liberty and this kind of martial law cannot endure together; the antagonism is irreconcilable; and, in the conflict, one or the other must perish."
57 posted on 10/13/2003 10:21:55 AM PDT by Lee Heggy ("the basic delusion that men may be governed and yet be free."H L Menken)
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To: colorado tanker
...but did the movie just pass over Antietam?

Never even mentioned it, if memory serves.

58 posted on 10/13/2003 10:22:26 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: laotzu
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)

Ah.... more word games. By the Union do you mean states such as South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, or is Union just those damnyankees?

Pennsylvania, abolished slavery in 1780, before the United States had even officially won it's freedom Before then, the British refused to allow any colonies to abolish slavery. The slave trade was a major source of revenue for the Crown.

59 posted on 10/13/2003 10:22:56 AM PDT by Ditto ( No trees were killed in sending this message, but billions of electrons were inconvenienced.)
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To: Non-Sequitur
Kind of a glaring omission for what many historians think was the decisive battle of the war, and which victory Lincoln used to launch the Emancipation Proclamation.
60 posted on 10/13/2003 10:24:20 AM PDT by colorado tanker (And I'll see you someday on Fiddlers Green)
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