I got into a discussion on a message board about how the Confederate flag is inextricably associated with racism in general, and the Ku Klux Klan specifically. In the discussion, I did some little research, and I felt it a shame to waste it on an ephemeral forum topic.

I’ve lived in the South my entire life (42 years). I lived in small towns for a sum total of about 23 years, a university town for about 6 years, and the state capital area for about 13 years. I’ve seen the Confederate flag flown here and there, and its image displayed in many places and worn by many people. But I’ve never met someone whom I knew was a member of any organized racist group, KKK or other.

Now, this is not to say I’ve never met a racist — I’ve known many through the years (and not just white folk). And I can’t say that someone I met or knew wasn’t a closet member of some organization. But I can say, self assured, that the KKK (or similar) was never a major factor in my personal culture.

I never saw anything “KKKish” in my world. I knew about the organization, just as I knew of the FBI and NASA, but the group had no place in my real life. We occasionally (once a decade or so) heard of a news report mentioning something the KKK did. Looking back at the historical record, now, I see there was a “massacre” (5 deaths) in my state back in 1979.

And I find it hard to believe that living through the 70s and 80s in my hometown with its Southern quota of rednecks, that I would completely miss the presence of a truly ubiquitous organization.

In the discussion I mentioned at the beginning of the post, a few people mentioned the KKK being active and “stronger than ever.” And since it is always assumed that the KKK is a Southern “tradition” I had to look into this — surely my lack of experience with the group through the years wasn’t because I wore blinders. Maybe my family especially worked to shield me from any such experience. But even if so, that shielding can only last so long. Eventually, a child grows up and learns the truth about the world.

In the 1920s, there were 4-5 million KKK members.
In the 2000s, there are 5-8 thousand.
Compare this to the US membership in Mensa: 50 thousand.

Hardly “stronger than ever.” Now, this suggests that the KKK has become more boogeymen legend than active real men. With the estimate that two-thirds of KKK members reside in the South, that’s 5,280 members (using 8,000 max-range total) out of a total Southern population of 109,083,752 — that’s 0.00004% (four hundred thousandths of one percent).

Since there are many other racist groups besides just the KKK, let’s multiply the numbers by ten. It’s still a very tiny relative number: at most 80,000 — less than the number of SAG members (139,000), school principals (~130,000), NAACP members (300,000), lawyers (~1.2 million), and NASCAR fans (~75 million).

Back to the original issue: that the Confederate flag got coopted as a racist symbol.

The Confederate flag should be an American historical icon, in the same category as the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag, the cavalry bugle call, and the girly nose art on WWII bombers. But when it was claimed by the KKK as a symbol for them, it became tainted. That’s a damn shame.

But since the KKK seems to have been dying out as a viable cultural force over the past few decades, I got to wondering if they still use the Confederate flag as a symbol. Just because everyone else still identifies that flag with that group doesn’t mean the group still uses it.

So I went to the KKK’s main web site to see what imagery they use there. (I’m not going to link to the site, but I’m sure you could easily find it if you wanted to look for yourself.) What I found surprised me. I was even surprised to be surprised. That site is pretty damn pathetic. It looks like something a teenager designed for a personal geocities web site in the 1990s. My local game store has a better, more professional looking web presence — and it’s just one store with maybe a couple hundred regular customers. You’d think a national bugaboo would have something more sinisterly impressive.

But I did find a Confederate flag at the top of their page. It was part of a collage of images including the American flag, the U.S. Capital building, and Mount Rushmore. So, damn, they do still show the Confederate flag.

But now that the racist organization seems to be dying a quiet and lonely death, how long will it take for the Confederate flag to air out the taint they’ve smeared on it? It would be nice to have it among the mostly-politically-neutral icons of American history. Something a Southern good ol’ boy could paint on top of his orange Dodge Charger as a fun and cool symbol of Southerness without getting branded a racist asshole.

Bullgrit

I just bought the Watchmen DVD (widescreen edition). I love this movie, and I can’t wait to get a chance to watch it again.

Looking at the DVD cover, front and back, I see that whoever wrote the blurb material apparently didn’t bother watching the movie. This kind of sloppy marketing work is pathetic, especially for a blockbuster hit like this.

The front cover blurb says, “WHO WILL SAVE US NOW?” Huh? That doesn’t really make sense for this movie.

Then on the back, there’s this description of the movie:

Someone’s killing our super heroes. The year is 1985 and super heroes have banded together to respond to the murder of one of their own. They soon uncover a sinister plot that puts all humanity in grave danger. The super heroes fight to stop the impending doom, only to find themselves a target for annihilation. But if our super heroes are gone, who will save us?

Aha. The front blurb is just taken from this back blurb, which also doesn’t make sense. Whoever wrote this copy didn’t bother to watch the movie, and apparently didn’t even bother to get someone who had seen it to explain the general premise to him or her. I hate when a marketing writer does crap like this.

This kind of writing shows a complete lack of interest and responsibility, and it pretty much insults the movie’s fans and potential purchasers. Either the copywriter thinks the movie isn’t worth the effort to get the blurb at least relevant, or he/she thinks anyone checking the packaging before renting/purchasing isn’t worth the effort to give accurate information.

For those who don’t know anything about the movie, it’s useless at best, and misleading at worst. It’s written like a horoscope; it’s vague, but sort of sounds like a general plot for the genre.

“Someone’s killing our super heroes”? One guy is murdered. (I won’t even bother quibbling over the fact that only one of all the heroes in the movie is actually super, and he isn’t the one murdered.)

“Super heroes have banded together to respond to the murder”? Only one of the living heroes “responds” to the killing in any way more than just speaking of it.

“A sinister plot that puts all humanity in grave danger”? The grave danger is the general threat of nuclear war between the US and the USSR — this was the “grave danger” that we all lived through in 1985.

“The super heroes fight to stop the impending doom”? No they don’t. The doom is decidedly over by the time the heroes learn of it.

“Find themselves a target for annihilation”? Oh come on. This might arguably describe just one guy.

“But if our super heroes are gone, who will save us?” Geez. Maybe the same someones who’ve been saving us over the past several years since the “super heroes” retired? Only one of the characters has been active as any kind of “hero” when the movie started.

There is a big plot to this movie, and the central characters are sort-of super heroes (they call themselves “costumed adventurers”), but the description on the box is so unrelated to the actual story as to be false advertising. Here, let me try:

The murder of a costumed adventurer brings his old compatriots together again. The year is 1985, and the United States and the Soviet Union are reaching a boiling point for a global nuclear war. The reuniting members of the costumed hero group known as the Watchmen uncover a plot connecting their friend’s death and the threat of world annihilation.

There, I just wrote a more relevant and accurate description for the movie with just few minutes of thought. All it took beyond these few minutes is 2 hours to actually watch the movie. Is that too much to ask a marketing writer?

Bullgrit

Me and the boys had a fun time this weekend, just the three of us (it was Cowgrit’s weekend to work at the hospital). Going to a couple of parks to play, going to the pool to swim, going to a picnic with his Cub Scout Pack, reading comic books, watching cartoons, playing Bionicles, playing Pokémon, so on and so forth.

The building permit for our new house just finished its trip through the red tape last week. It normally takes 3 weeks, but this took 7 weeks — so we’re 4 weeks behind schedule. OMG! We had our initial sit-down talk with the building supervisor this morning. I like him. Actual construction will be starting this week. Yay!

Our Disney World vacation is just two weeks away! Oh god, we need this fun, so much. I’m almost shaking in anticipation.

I really don’t have anything insightful, interesting, or even funny to say today, but I have to post something if just to bump the whole “The Gay Lifestyle” post series down the page. All the ads popping up here are for gay and lesbian cruises or dating sites. Someone coming here for the first time might think this is a gay-blog.

What do y’all think of how I broke that series up over several days, instead of posting it all in one or two longer posts? I didn’t initially intend to have it run five days, but there were some natural breaks in the narrative that let me spread it out for a week’s worth of posts.

Does breaking longer stories up over multiple days make for easier or more difficult reading? Is it helpful or annoying?

Bullgrit

Continuation of The Gay Lifestyle.

This guy came up and stood beside me for a moment before speaking. The moment couldn’t have been more than three or four seconds, but it felt a lot longer. Oh geez, this guy’s gonna hit on me, I winced. And he did.

“I see you lusting over him,” he said, meaning the current strip dancer.

“Not really,” I answered, “I’m not gay.”

I didn’t want to be an ass, here. I was trying to be polite while straight forward. I mean, after all, I was at a gay/lesbian club, so I had no right to be rude to a gay guy approaching me. And so far, for the couple of hours I’d been there, no one had made a move on me. (I figured my woman-shield had been working as planned.)

“You’re not gay?” he said. “What’s a straight guy doing at a gay bar?”

I avoided looking at him as I said, “I’m with my girlfriend.”

He made an obvious show of looking around me, and then noted, “Where is she at?”

“Yeah,” I sighed, “I think she went up to the bar. She’ll be back in a minute.” I hope.

He continued, “So what do you think of the dancer, as a straight guy?”

“Well,” I said, “he’s not in really good shape.”

“Yeah, they don’t get the high-end dancers for places like this,” he said.

“And,” I said, “he’s kind of staring off into space. I thought the dancers were supposed to play to the crowd.”

“He’s not gay,” he said, “so he’s not really into it tonight.”

He continued to chat, friendly, not aggressive. This experience taught me something about personal interaction that I have never forgotten. No matter how much someone doesn’t want to have anything to do with you, if you are friendly, polite, and persistent, you can win that someone over. In the five minutes this guy stuck there with me and chatted, he got me to actually like him, despite my initial revulsion over being hit on by a gay guy.

He was sort of becoming a new buddy. I even eventually turned to face him as we talked, rather than continuing to keep my eyes averted and my expression neutral. It was like just talking with any other guy, in any other venue. We could have been chatting about watching a baseball game or listening to an opera (two things I have about as much interest in as watching male strippers — all not exciting to me).

“Well,” he said, to end the encounter, “I hope you enjoy the club with your girlfriend.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Just don’t ever tell a gay man that your not gay,” he advised.

“Huh,” I said, “OK, but why?”

“It’s a turn on.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Have a good night,” he said. He patted me on the chest and then turned and walked away.

The pat on the chest surprised me.

A moment later, all three of my female companions came back to me. “Sorry we left you alone, there.”

“Yeah,” I said, slightly perturbed at them. “I got hit on.”

“We saw it.”

Turns out, they hadn’t meant to leave me alone, against their promise, but when they saw the guy talking with me, they decided as a group, to watch how the situation played out. Errr.

Anyway, nothing else interesting occurred for me at the gay and lesbian club that night. We didn’t stay much longer, and I never went to such a place again. If the experience did anything for me other than give me a fun story to tell, I guess it disensitized me to any “fear” of gay men.

Bullgrit