The Aftermath (These Days Later)

#epichatred | #WhatTheyVotedFor

The Baltimore Sun reports:

A year and a half after a city panel recommended that four Confederate-linked monuments be removed or altered, Mayor Catherine Pugh decided Tuesday to take them all down — and then watched as crews worked into early Wednesday to tear them from their pedestals.

“We moved quickly and quietly,” Pugh said. “There was enough grandstanding, enough speeches being made. Get it done.”

Pugh said crews removed the monuments unannounced and under cover of darkness between 11:30 p.m. Tuesday and 5:30 a.m. Wednesday in the hope of avoiding the potential for a violent conflict similar to the one Saturday in Charlottesville, Va.

It seems to be going around. On Sunday, Vox spread the word:

White nationalists descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, on Friday and Saturday to protest the city’s decision to take down Confederate monuments. But not only have the protests done nothing to change Charlottesville’s mind on this issue, it’s apparently prompted at least one other city to speed up action to remove its Confederate statues as well.

Mayor Jim Gray of Lexington, Kentucky, made the announcement on Twitter on Saturday ....

Meanwhile, the mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, is seeing fit to challenge his state’s law to protect Confederate monuments. Furthermore, an abysmal white supremacist website that last year named suspected Jews and urged people to “take action” has fled to hidden quarters of the web after major hosting services rejected them, and the notorious neo-Nazi celebrity whose Nazi salutes and praise for Hitler raised controversy that led the newspaper to so openly target Jews is among many alt-right heroes cut off by PayPal after their problematic relationship with the company’s Acceptable Use Policy became unavoidably apparent. And just to make the point, a lede tells us, “At least four people have lost their jobs and several more are under scrutiny following the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville”.

Required Reading (Slouching Luxury)

The headline for Jemar Tisby, at the Washington Post, is pretty straightforward: “Why a racially insensitive photo of Southern Baptist seminary professors matters”.

Officials from the seminary requested that the post be removed, and David Allen, one of the men in the picture and dean of SWBTS’s School of Preaching, tweeted an apology: “I apologize for a recent image I posted which was offensive. Context is immaterial. @swbts stance on race is clear as is mine.”

It’s odd for a preaching professor to suggest “context is immaterial,” because seminary professors usually teach their students that context is everything. The SWBTS “Mission, Vision, & Values” page states that their global “strategy includes the training of persons from every national, ethnic and cultural background for a variety of ministries.” But when it comes to understanding this particular photo, understanding a larger Southern Baptist and evangelical context is key.

What They Voted For: #WhitePower

#WhitePower | #WhatTheyVotedFor

Via Huffington Post, Nina Golgowski attempts to explain the what seems to be the latest fashionable trend among president-elect Trump’s voters:

A Chicago shopper was filmed having a meltdown inside of a Michaels craft store, during which she accused the staff of discriminating against her for being white and for voting for Donald Trump.

“And I voted for Trump, so there. You want to kick me out because of that? And look who won,” the unidentified woman is heard yelling at employees.

According to the 10-minute video uploaded to YouTube, the woman believed that a black employee had tried to “force” her to purchase a $1 reusable bag. Employees can be heard telling her that they offered her the bag because they were out of disposable ones that met the size of her larger items.

‡

It didn’t take long before the shopper spotted Grady’s camera and turned on her. Among other things, the woman accused Grady’s toddler of shoplifting.

“I was just discriminated against by two black women and you being a white woman and you literally thinking that’s OK,” the angry woman tells her. “Why don’t you go home to your husband who’s cheating on you.”

Your Quote of the Day (Bigot Bawling Breakdown Edition)

“Essentially they want to recapture an America that no longer exists, one that has white people at the center of the culture, on top of the world, secure in their place as the highest caste. That’s what they hear when he says he will ‘Make America Great Again.’ And that’s just not something that anyone deliver for them, not even Donald Trump.”

―Heather Digby Parton

There is always a reason.

To wit, there is a reason why reading through Digby’s latest analysis of the Trump phenomenon should inspire recollection of Mr. Fish’s inquiry eighteen months ago.

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Image note: Detail of cartoon by Mr. Fish, via Clowncrack, 30 November 2014.

Digby Parton, Heather. “Birtherism and bigotry: These are the vile impulses driving voters to Trump — stop thinking it’s anything else”. Salon. 3 June 2016.

The Conservative Christian Conscience

With all due apologies to Mr. Fish. Via Clowncrack, 11 May 2016 .

Important Clickbait (NextGen Mixhate)

And then there are the obvious questions.

(Detail of cartoon by Mr. Fish, 30 November 2014, via Clowncrack.)

Futility as a Moral of the Story, or, Something, Something Burt Ward

Offered without comment, as it is just one of those things, Mr. Fish on … er … ah … right. Something.

A Cute and Cuddly Bunny

Sometimes it just isn’t a mystery. To wit, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who says his opposition to marriage equality is not homophobia, but, rather, a matter of being on the right side of the Bible, which is in turn a wholly arbitrary standard. True, it does say, somewhere in there, that God really doesn’t like buggery and such, but it also says other things, like—

Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

(Luke 16.18, RSV)

—and—

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.

(1 Corinthians 6.9-10, RSV)

—and we might want to note, just for the sake of formality, that Huckabee, who feels confident enough in his biblical outlook regarding sinful lifestyles that he would question President Obama’s faith over marriage equality endorsed an adulterer named John McCain in the 2008 election, and carries on a creepy love affair with the ghost of an adulterer named Ronald Reagan. Which, in the end, is nothing particularly unusual, which in turn makes an excellent example of why there is no mystery about Mr. Fish’s latest cartoon.

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Fish, Mr. “Hare Care”. Clowncrack. April 11, 2014.

CNN Political Unit. “Mike Huckabee: Not ‘homophobic’ but on the ‘right side of the Bible'”. Political Ticker. April 8, 2014.

Allen, Mike. “Huckabee called homosexuality ‘sinful'”. Politico. December 8, 2007.

Gentilviso, Chris. “Mike Huckabee Calls Out Obama’s ‘Christian Convictions’ On Gay Marriage”. The Huffington Post. April 12, 2014.

Maloy, Simon. “Huckabee’s Reagan Cartoon: Disco Muggers And American Exceptionalism”. Media Matters for America. August 11, 2011.

Novak, Robert. “McCain, Huckabee and the Evangelicals”. Townhall. May 12, 2008.

Image credit: Detail of image by Mr. Fish.