01/21/00
I just read Mat Honan’s online piece about the South Carolina and Georgia flag debate, and I’m a little taken aback. I’m a white female Southerner whose ancestors died in the Civil War. I’m also a politically active college graduate married to a black man and a mother of mixed children. I have covered the flag debate as a freelance writer for years. Almost every assumption made by Mr. Honan about the reason Southerners cling to their symbols was completely off the mark. It makes for funny press, but it’s misleading and poor journalism. It also alienates people who know what the real issues are.
I’m Southern and not proud of losing. I’m also not proud of my history regarding race relations, but my husband, while a member of the NAACP, respects the reasons I feel the way I do. Please tell Mr. Honan that he cost MoJo a longtime fan with his flippancy and yellow journalism. I expect better from y’all.
Jennifer Smith
Honan the Barbarian
RE: “ Flying the Flag of Fairness”
01/20/00
Mat Honan is leading the charge of anti-racism by calling white southerners “toothless crackers.” Of course, it’s alright since only the South is racist, right? Open your goddamn eyes, Mat — racism is everywhere. Every ethnic group has members that are racist. Even you, Mat, are racist. You showed that plainly enough in your essay.
Do you honestly think the whole Civil War was about slavery? Do you think that the North wanted to keep the South as part of the country to free slaves or for the food producing farms? Slavery was just an issue used as propaganda against the Confederacy during the war. The USA has done it in every single war since. We demonize our enemies to dupe our people.
We’re not proud of losing, Mat. We’re proud of standing up against the nation when the government didn’t meet our needs. The South stood up and tried to break away from a nonrepresentative government.
Harry Arnold
Not fair, not funny, not worthy of Mojo.
Sure there are evil people out there that do terrible things and wear the flag while they do so. But it meant something once. There were grandmothers (non-slave owning grandmothers) who stitched those Confederate flags in dim evening light for hours, believing in their husbands out fighting for freedom. Honan managed to desecrate that emblem with a few lines of Microsoft paint.
And what kind of authoritative credit does Honan claim besides growing up in Alabama and Georgia?
Doug Prouty
Corporations + Prisons = Fewer Murderous Kids
RE: “ Money + Politics = Jailed Kids”
01/20/00
Wow, the article on jailed kids is a good reason to appreciate big corporations. I applaud and thank Chevron and Trans-America and all the rest. This way, the murderers and thugs won’t be out in a couple of years to kill even more innocent people. And it’s a good assumption that they will kill and harm others again when you consider we lead the world in murder, rape and recidivism — all a result of the total failure of left-wing ideas.
Kirk Zimpfer
Muncie, Ind
Flying the Double Standard
RE: “ Flying the Flag of Fairness”
01/19/00
I found this article mildly amusing, if somewhat crude. I thought the “X” flag idea was right on, but “Darkieland”? Come on, surely you can do better than that.
I do have a rhetorical question: why is it humor to say “toothless crackers [in] greasy baseball caps and Lynrd Skynrd concert T’s”? It is amusing, if a little disconcerting, that epithets for white people are humorous, but the opposite will lead to psychological evaluation (a la John Rocker), labeling, and threats.
William Giles
Opposition 21
RE: “Money + Politics = Jailed Kids”
01/18/00
I think that if Proposition 21 passes in California, it will be a mark against our favored status in the world as a civil and progressive country. In the majority of this world, children (people under the age of 18) are treated as children — not cast in with the undesireable adults of a country. It is sad to see the growing trend in the US of treating children as adults. The strategy is not working and will continue to exacerbate the problems of juvenile crimes as well as adult sociopaths.
Burning witches at the stake did not work and neither will Prop. 21!
Lloracra@aol.com
