Bad cause is wrongly glorified [Gods and Generals bashing mutates into Bush bashing]

Richmond Times-Dispatch ^ | Today | Michael Paul Williams

[Cold Heat]

What a maroon

A term that my late father would say frequently! I have not heard it in 20 years. LOL!

[sweetliberty]

Can I interest any of y'all in going to see this movie following the March 8 FReeper meeting in Pine Bluff?

[TheBattman]

Despite my rant for those with double standards about Ted Turner, My wife and I went to see it this evening. Very good movie - but sure is LONG!

It's 3:49 + a 15 minute intermissin - so 4 hours.

[sweetliberty]

I was a little apprehensive about seeing it given some early discussion I had seen here before it came out, but based on the FReeper reviews, especially of southerners, I am now looking forward to seeing it. I did see the previews when we went to see the Two Towers.

[Cold Heat]

Good idea! They apparently are not showing it at our multi-plex.

Methinks some liberal politics are involved. They are quiet, but manage to manipulate things.

[sweetliberty]

I will make sure that it is playing here, but I am assuming that it is since they previewed it. I will also check on the times.

[Cold Heat]

Ookeedokeee!

[Edmund Burke]

Maybe this would be a good time, while Bush and the Union army are preoccupied with Iraq, for the South to rise again! When Saddam's germ filled drones are buzzing the Yankee cities and the seeds of confusion are sown, the time to drive the oppressor from our land may finally be at hand.

[Southack]

Here's Why The Left Wants To Divide Conservatives With Pro-South Films

[4CJ]

Kudos to you all. The movie was awesome, I think it one of the best movies I have ever seen. Even at almost 4 hours, it was too short. I look forward to the directors cut.

And yes, I e-mailed a lengthy post to the author of this piece. Maybe he will respond, but somehow, I doubt it.

[4CJ]

My wife couldn't have any more children. So we named our newest dog Jackson. I wonder if the dog understands the honor with which he has been graced.

[wardaddy]

LOL...what a whiney arsewipe.....sounds like he should join the resident FR South bashing brigands

[wardaddy]

OK...one movie that treats the South objectively....the first since Outlaw Josey Wales ought not be too hard to stomach.

Rent Sweet Home Alabama...it'll make you feel better...I promise...it reverts back to the old tried and true Southerners as hicks gimmicktry ....you'll love it.

[wardaddy]

My 2 month old is Thomas Barksdale_____......his great great great Grandma was Gen. William P Barksdale's sister Virginia.

And I'm proud of it. No gang of FReeper south bashers will take that from me.

[wardaddy]

Well, it's showing at plenty of theatres here in Nashville which is about as liberal as any Southern city I know of outside of the Piedmont of North Carolina.

[Pelham]

There you go, dredging up fact. That just won't do at all.

[Pelham]

One of my ancestors was with Barksdale at the Peach Orchard. And is buried in the field at Gettysburg.

[wardaddy]

Barksdale is on my wife's side. She's a local Nashville environs gal. Barksdale and his brother left this area for Mississippi as young men to make their fortunes.

On my side, my most notable was a Capt Majure (great great great uncle..one of my Huguenot kin) killed at Lookout Mountain. My great great grandfather (paternal) worked as a boy smuggler at aged 14 during the Vicksburg siege/campaign....or so the legend goes.

Like most Southerners, I can go on and on with this stuff. Not too many Northerners except true Yankees can do the same. It's one of the qualities that makes us so chauvanistic and provincial about our identity.....even many liberal Southerners don't like being scorned over this by outsiders.

[Jeff Chandler]

There are so many thoughtful and intelligent commentary posts regarding this article that I feel compelled to add my own:

Hey Williams! Yo mama loved this movie.

[VietVet]

I am hardly a "true Yankee", what ever you might mean by that. My father's family is from Montgomery Co, MD; my mother's family had not yet immigrated in the 1860's.

Both branches of dad's ancesters seem to have stayed out of the War, as best they could. The only Civil War family story we have comes from the time of July, 1964, during Early's raid on Washington, D.C. At the time, my great-great-great-uncle Henry Fidler was delivering a mule which his father, John Fidler (Johannes Fiedler), who owned a blacksmith shop near Sligo Post Office, had reshod. He had ridden the mule out the 7th Street Pike towards what is now Wheaton, MD (named for General Wheaton of the Civil War) when he was met by people fleeing south who warned him that the secess' were coming. He turned around and rode back to Ft. Stevens and told them, thereby getting himself into the history books, but not by name. Part of the Confederate Army camped on my multi-great-grandparents farm. Their officers requisitioned the house for their staff meeting, and the enlisted men "stole all our chickens", as my great-great-grandmother used to put it.

But that was towards the end of the War. G&G is about the beginning. The movie was long enough, but even the screenplay had to leave out some of the parts of the book. (I have only read part of the book, BTW). Left out was the agonizing which Lee went through before resigning his commision in the US Army; the movie presents us with just one scene, after he has made his decision, when he announces his intention to Blair. The movie, and Stephen Lang's sympathetic portayal, actually makes Jackson a much more appealing figure than the book, pious rather than fanatic, fierce rather than vicious. Significantly missing is the scene when Jackson repremands an officer in front of his company, for the sin of ordering his men to hold their fire while a Union officer performed some conspicuously gallant action in front of them. It was just such men, the very brave, the outstanding leaders, he told the man, dressing him down publically, that he must kill first.

Also missing is the account of Jackson's Valley campaign, almost all of the book's material about Hancock and Armistead, the Peninsula Campaign (perhaps because Jackson's performance in the Seven Days Battles was somewhat less than sterling), Second Bull Run Campaign, and Anteitem. This does not even count the book's glossing over the Western Virginia/Kanawah Valley Campaign, where Lee, on behalf of the government of Virginia, attempted to coerce the western counties out of declaring their loyalty to the US, and was run out by none other than George McClelland. McClelland, in fact, does not exist, as far as the movie is concerned. A curious omission of a general whom Lee considered his ablest opponent.

Historical fiction always must short change incident if it is to do the job of fiction, which is to show us the human beings whose individual motives and choices make the incidents which history records. G&G, as historical fiction, should be judged on that basis, not on its fidelity to history, which it necessarily puts into the background, conflating time, historical figures and events to emphasize the individuals which make up its cast of characters.

VietVet