"Is it true what they say about Dixie?"

Sunday, cigarette #3
The Branford courtyard swing, 5:15pm

Like Camille Paglia, I spend half of my time earning credibility with the Left and the other half spending it. (This review in one sentence: "If I praise your list of euphemisms for male ejaculate as 'mesmerizing vernacular poetry,' then I can get away with calling gender studies a closed circle of groupthink and cant!") This is why I wish I could get upset about stories like this one. I wish I could say, "As a white Southerner, I don't think the black population should read racism into my flying the Confederate flag at an athletic event or outside my dorm room window, but it's clear to me that you do, and if the small act of my eliminating this symbol from my otherwise intact cultural identity spares you what seems to be non-negligible psychological offense, then I will, because I don't want to be stubborn about it. After all, a true Southerner is nothing if not polite."

But there's a difference between objecting to the Confederate flag because "that flag means racism" and objecting to it because "that flag means the South and the South means racism." The first leaves room for a legitimate Southern identity purged of that particular stain; the second implies that all of those things which differentiate the South from other regions of the US trace their lineage back not only to the time of slavery, but to slavery itself, and should therefore make way for the inexorable march (progress!) of Yankee culture. Accomodating the first is being tolerant of error in order to avoid a larger pain. Accommodating to the second crosses the line from courtesy to surrender and self-abnegation.

So there goes an opportunity for me to earn lefty street cred. Maybe I should spend the next cigarette drafting a gushing review of the new PJ Harvey album or something.