of
unjust
disregard?
This would not be an option that I would overexploit. For I bear no ancient grudges. The truth is, I think it was right sweet of the nation not to let my ancestors go. If the North had seceded, my ancestors might have said, “Fine. Get on out of here, then. See if we care. We've got our own fish to fry, which y'all don't even know how to do right.” And today the Atlanta airport would be even more of an ordeal, with all those passengers originating outside the Confederacy having to go through customs and who knows what extra layers of security.
But I would like to bear a
contemporary
grudge. Who wouldn't? I'm human, I sometimes feel disadvantaged, and mine is the added disadvantage of knowing it isn't so. Frequently insulted by otherwise multi-culturally scrupulous people, yes. But oppressed? No.
And now …You know Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, a.k.a. the thinking person's Satan? I mean the Tom DeLay whose explanation of the Columbine High School shootings was as follows: “Our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud.” That Tom DeLay. The medieval one. Well, his right-hand man in the Congress now is named Roy Blunt. My name, phonetically. I have been coming out for integration since 1961. And now, shades of
Mandingo,
people probably think I'm the majority whip. *
I met Roy Blunt once. Nice fellow. The fact that I think he will burn in hell for—Let me, in all fairness, rephrase that. The fact that I think
I
would burn in hell if
I
ever served, for one moment, as the sidekick of someone who blames teenage mass murder on Darwin, for God's sake, is of scant consequence. I hitched myself to the wrong wagon forty years ago.
I blame the liberal media. And literature. Do you suppose Tom DeLay has ever read any literature? If I'd majored in something besides Enlish, and had my finger on the pulse of the future, I would have skimmed some libidinous foam off the sixties and then devoted myself hand over fist to premodernism. It would have been more fun, rhetorically, and far more lucrative, than typing my fingers to the bone trying to achieve a fusion of—oh, never mind.
It is not a good movie,
Raintree County.
First of all, why would anybody ever want to marry Montgomery Clift? Or even—this may surprise Hollywood—Elizabeth Taylor. Very beautiful, sure, but the average person looks at Elizabeth Taylor and thinks: too much trouble. “Way too much. So, of course, she has to represent the South.
We don't believe for a moment, if we have any sense at all, that if by some chance any given character played by Elizabeth Taylor and any given character played by Montgomery Clift were to become a couple, the latter would be the strong one. And yet because Clift is the Hoosier and Taylor the Louisianan (her name is Susanna), she is crazy and he is the high-minded rock whom she seduces and tricks into marriage. So they move to Indiana and the Civil “War is about to start, and she wants to retain the retainers she has brought up from Louisiana, and he tells her, “You can't have slaves up here.”
And her response is, “Why do you keep picking on me?”
She runs away from him, taking the slaves with her. He joins the Union army so he can get down South to find her. He does find her, in a way substandard insane asylum. She is still attended there, though the war has ended, by her slaves. (The male one, Old George, is played by Bill “Walker, who between 1917 and 1978, according to the Internet Movie Database, played ninety-four movie and TV characters, only three of whom had more than a first name.)
Here's why Susanna is crazy: because, as her slave Soona (or maybe Parthenia) explains, “Long as I've knowed her there's been a war going on inside her.” “We've been led to believe, in fact, that Susanna's mother was black, but the case turns out to be more psychological. “When Susanna was a girl,
unjust
disregard?
This would not be an option that I would overexploit. For I bear no ancient grudges. The truth is, I think it was right sweet of the nation not to let my ancestors go. If the North had seceded, my ancestors might have said, “Fine. Get on out of here, then. See if we care. We've got our own fish to fry, which y'all don't even know how to do right.” And today the Atlanta airport would be even more of an ordeal, with all those passengers originating outside the Confederacy having to go through customs and who knows what extra layers of security.
But I would like to bear a
contemporary
grudge. Who wouldn't? I'm human, I sometimes feel disadvantaged, and mine is the added disadvantage of knowing it isn't so. Frequently insulted by otherwise multi-culturally scrupulous people, yes. But oppressed? No.
And now …You know Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, a.k.a. the thinking person's Satan? I mean the Tom DeLay whose explanation of the Columbine High School shootings was as follows: “Our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud.” That Tom DeLay. The medieval one. Well, his right-hand man in the Congress now is named Roy Blunt. My name, phonetically. I have been coming out for integration since 1961. And now, shades of
Mandingo,
people probably think I'm the majority whip. *
I met Roy Blunt once. Nice fellow. The fact that I think he will burn in hell for—Let me, in all fairness, rephrase that. The fact that I think
I
would burn in hell if
I
ever served, for one moment, as the sidekick of someone who blames teenage mass murder on Darwin, for God's sake, is of scant consequence. I hitched myself to the wrong wagon forty years ago.
I blame the liberal media. And literature. Do you suppose Tom DeLay has ever read any literature? If I'd majored in something besides Enlish, and had my finger on the pulse of the future, I would have skimmed some libidinous foam off the sixties and then devoted myself hand over fist to premodernism. It would have been more fun, rhetorically, and far more lucrative, than typing my fingers to the bone trying to achieve a fusion of—oh, never mind.
It is not a good movie,
Raintree County.
First of all, why would anybody ever want to marry Montgomery Clift? Or even—this may surprise Hollywood—Elizabeth Taylor. Very beautiful, sure, but the average person looks at Elizabeth Taylor and thinks: too much trouble. “Way too much. So, of course, she has to represent the South.
We don't believe for a moment, if we have any sense at all, that if by some chance any given character played by Elizabeth Taylor and any given character played by Montgomery Clift were to become a couple, the latter would be the strong one. And yet because Clift is the Hoosier and Taylor the Louisianan (her name is Susanna), she is crazy and he is the high-minded rock whom she seduces and tricks into marriage. So they move to Indiana and the Civil “War is about to start, and she wants to retain the retainers she has brought up from Louisiana, and he tells her, “You can't have slaves up here.”
And her response is, “Why do you keep picking on me?”
She runs away from him, taking the slaves with her. He joins the Union army so he can get down South to find her. He does find her, in a way substandard insane asylum. She is still attended there, though the war has ended, by her slaves. (The male one, Old George, is played by Bill “Walker, who between 1917 and 1978, according to the Internet Movie Database, played ninety-four movie and TV characters, only three of whom had more than a first name.)
Here's why Susanna is crazy: because, as her slave Soona (or maybe Parthenia) explains, “Long as I've knowed her there's been a war going on inside her.” “We've been led to believe, in fact, that Susanna's mother was black, but the case turns out to be more psychological. “When Susanna was a girl,
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