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It's Their Right, But It Makes Us Look Intolerant

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By DANIEL RUTH

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 7, 2008

Updated: 06/07/2008 01:12 am

At least you have to admit this will make it easier to find Tampa if you are motoring along I-75 - once you reach the giant Confederate flag at Yahoo Junction head west until you arrive at Gooberville, where the strange life gets weirder every day.

A bunch of revisionist history Civil War types who like to delude themselves into believing the War Between the States was really an effort to preserve a Southern culture of mint juleps on the verandah, hoop skirts and a spat over tariffs (Do-dah, Do-dah) raised a giant Confederate flag this week in honor of the birthday of the treasonous Jefferson Davis, who proved to be an even more inept president than the current incumbent.

The brief raising of the battle flag was but a prelude to plans by the Sons of Confederate Veterans (say, that sounds like a fun group!) for what they hope will be a permanent display taking note of the losing side of the Civil War.

What's next? A tribute to the Spanish armada, the Iraqi air force and Milli Vanilli?

Sons Of Perfidy
Of course, raising a symbol of sedition, racism, slavery, lynching and those pillars of bumpkinism - the Ku Klutz Klan - inflamed the ire of those most closely identified with the horrors of the Confederacy, black people, whose ancestors bore the yoke of oppression while the forbearers of the Sons of Perfidy sipped their aperitifs on the verandah.

To be sure, the hapless Sons of the Desert have every First Amendment right to raise a banner extolling the fact they represent a losing cause. It is a right, ironically enough, their own people denied other human beings they kept in bondage, denied the right to vote, denied the right - to live free.

To its credit, the Hillsborough County Commission this week, while having no legal authority to ban the rebel flag, tried to ameliorate the brouhaha by engaging in the admirable fool's errand to reason with the Sons of the Defeated Confederate Veterans.

Flying Fig

The problem is, if their long ago relatives didn't give a rat's patootie about the dignity and humanity of its black property, why would anyone think the 2008 model of these folks would care one iota if black residents of this county and this state were offended by having a symbol of hatred thumbed into their eyes?

It's pretty abundantly clear the Sons of the Surrender At Appomattox don't give a flying fig about the potential economic damage caused to this community by its insistence on declaring to the world what half-wits they are.

If you are a black family, or any other minority, touring Florida, will an enormous virtual billboard declaring: "Hayseeds Are Us!" flying over Tampa induce you to want to stay here, spend money here?

If you are a company contemplating investing in Tampa, does not a gigantic symbol of intolerance suggest to you: "Good grief, don't they teach history in the schools there?"

And if you are a planning a convention, or a Super Bowl, or some other event, do you want to spend your money in a place, which is fairly or not viewed as a haven of hate?

It's pretty evident the Sons of A Parallel Universe never pondered these questions.

That would require a functioning brain stem. That would require the ability to care.

Keyword: Book of Ruth,

to read and comment on Daniel Ruth's blog.

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