Cute caption :)

Pity there's no emojis to use on your threads Dan. I'd be putting up a crying one.

Gay sex?

Funny as hell. Laughing with tears running down my face, but I can't tell if it's from laughing so hard or from this nightmare we seem to be in and can't get out of. After Dark? Ahhhhhhhh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.........

I guess left-wing people can make very stupid remarks, but with right-wingnuts, it's a daily habit. Does, like, gunpowder cause brain damage?

This is the best thing you've written in years. Bravo.

cute, you have one them lozenges there, Mr. Savage? Seriously, it's all attack attack attack for these alt right bastards,,,,the one given though, is the great unwashed masses that make up most us shlubs, will tax our short attention spans and rise to,,,,change the channel?

These colors don’t run. They sashay gurl!

Four Bloody Marys....

Thank you ! I needed this after unintentionally seeing Tweety going back and saying “Yeah the alt-left are terrible people!” Violent alt-left. (There’s an alt-left? One’s brain has to be seriously fried to say that.)

Jesus Tapdancing Christ, what a stupid woman. Good piece, Dan.

What Dan and they said!

Omg lol

Why don't they teach any of this in school?

My god Dan!!! How did you not fit a Stonewall Jackson reference in there?!?!

I can't wait for the movie when Jack of Will and Grace walks out on Ellen DeGeneres saying "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn".

@2
😢😭
On SLOG, it's BYOE.

Funny stuff Dan.😆 Good job.🖒

So that's why there are statues of John Waters on courthouse lawns and public parks all around the mid-Atlantic.

@4 I have really considered that many right wingers have a very possible lead poisoning from regular target practice at ranges, even outdoor ones. The bullets themselves are not too bad, but the lead compound in the primers is incredibly toxic, especially when inhaled. When you shoot, you usually get a cloud of powder smoke/crap in your face after every shot. I have personally seen many friends and acquaintances go from right of center to wacko-batshit after they decided to target shoot 2 plus times a week.

@11:

I presume it's because the Gay Teachers Mafia that controls what gets published in the nation's school history textbooks has been engaging in a long, hard, turgid war to keep the TRUTH from the masses. You know, like they do with the secret to making a fabulous coq a vin, and how to fold fitted sheets.

@15 - That's a really interesting theory

So Dan omitted the brief final quote of hers that provided any sort of convoluted context for what it is she might be referring to their having in common or "representing." Don't know if anyone was actually able to discern or infer that context without clicking through to the linked article, but man, I really tried and couldn't even harbor a freaking guess (that they're both representations of some sort of exclusion, if anyone who doesn't know cares.) What a fucking idiotic shithead. Great & funny addendum from Dan though.

@19 "So Dan omitted the brief final quote of hers that provided any sort of convoluted context"

The most important of her rant is this sentence..

“These two flags represent the exact same thing."

There is nothing convoluted or parsing of her quote. This sentence is straight to the core of her thoughts.

“These two flags represent the exact same thing."

She stated it is ironic. (it was not ironic) What she stated was absurd. Gays are still discriminated against. Star Parker is obviously homophobic, and she was used by Fox News to placate their audience, that See! an African American Woman is okay with having Confederate War Heroes statues still standing.. (Fox and Friends did this before a couple months ago, with Condoleeza Rice on the program, defending Confederate Memorials.

There has a been a great whitewashing of US Civil War by Southerners.. They tried to change history, by stating the War of Northern Aggression was about State Rights, or Northern Domination, but in reality, it was about maintaining slavery, which was too lucrative for the South to give up. Those statues of Robert E. Lee and other Confederate Military Leaders, are statues of traitors.. The Confederate Battle Flag is a racist symbol.

@22 First of all, "The Stars and Bars" does not refer to the confederate flag with the big giant St Andrews Cross. The first big hint is that there are no bars on that damn flag. The Stars and Bars refers to the first Southern Nation flag, a modification of the American flag with only 3 red and white stripes and a varying number of stars in the blue field.

The confederate flag as you know it, the one with the big X, was never a Southern national flag. It was a battle flag. Later national flags (in its brief time, the southern nation had three distinct flags) used the battle flag in the corner, but the navy jack was never an official one.

One of those national flags placed the battle flag in a field of whiteness to emphasize the racial superiority of white people. A third flag, The Blood Stained Banner, mimicked the second flag, except it had a red stripe on the side that also made reference to France. Despite there being three separate flags, the battle flag is the one that has persisted in representing Southern culture.

So, no. Hanging the battle flag of the confederacy is not the same as Mexican-Americans hanging the flag of Mexico as a sign of heritage nor is it the same as the lgbtq people hanging the rainbow flag as a source of pride. Neither of those flags were used in an act of war after seceding from America. And neither of those flags were ever used to symbolize racial superiority. And neither of those flags were used to symbolize the war to keep slaves.

There are many many other parts of southern culture that are far more respectable. But, you can't hide the fact that the battle flag of the confederacy is also a symbol that represents racist oppression.

@22 They lost the fucking war. The war they started to maintain chattel slavery. So yeah, I don't think they get to use the "Southern Pride" argument, because that's just more dog whistle racism and it's time to stop letting them get away with it. Suck it up, you lost, move on and better yourselves.

@22 - I can't figure out which banned reactionary troll you're a reincarnation of (is that you, Seattleblues?), and maybe it doesn't matter. I can assure you, though, that your brand of rhetorical chicanery is depressingly familiar.

Sure, the Civil War was about Slavery! and Treason! and blah! blah! blah!
But it may shock you to learn that there is more to southern culture than the Civil War.

Indeed! So why should honoring Southern culture require the brandishing or protection of the Confederate battle flag, a symbol without relevance outside of the Civil War?

You probably do not condemn everyone who wears green shamrocks because Irish terrorists murdered hundreds of innocent people, or condemn someone displaying Mexican heritage because of the antics of that dictator tyrant Santa Anna, or condemn someone displaying Italian heritage symbols because Italy was allied with THE NAZIS OMG!!

The nation-states in question did not exist as reactionary embodiments of the crimes of the crimes of their worst members. The Confederacy, on the other hand, held enslavement of Africans as a paramount value. Surely even you could see the difference, if you weren't deliberately resisting honest reflection.

Now you probably see the Rainbow Flag as a symbol of courage and tolerance and love and warm puppies but there are some people in America who see it as a symbol of religious intolerance, persecution and oppression; who see it as a symbol of a culture and government that is forcing humanist religious values on the entire population and oppressing religious values that were the backbone of American (and Western) moral values for centuries.

What actions are being demanded, what rights lost, as a result of gay rights? What religious practices are now proscribed for, or irreligious practices now demanded of, religious Americans? Please be specific.

For many Americans the Rainbow Flag stirs similar feelings to what an Irish Catholic might have experienced seeing symbols of English Protestantism imposed on their country for centuries.

That would only be a valid comparison if American Christians were forced to worship according to the tenets of a single religious (or irreligious) organization. But the rainbow flag does have one thing in common with symbols of English Protestantism: neither are symbols of a short-lived rogue state founded on the preservation of involuntary human servitude.

@22 - I tuned out as soon as you called that whacko a 'nice lady'.

@22: No one can ever rationally equate the rainbow flag with the Confederate flag. Never, never, never. One is the exact opposite of the other. Gay people have never wanted to oppress anyone. The majority of antebellum Southerners were all about, "Stay out of our business while we "manage" our darkie labor force." To even compare what the two flags represent is buffoonery.

Give it a rest, 29.

Baahahahaha! I was not expecting that at all! Nice one!

both flags make for ugly summer-wear

Any arguments one can make for banning confederate flags and symbols can apply equally to the United States Flag.
The Revolutionary War was fought by slave holding colonies lead by slave holders to maintain a system that included slavery.

But it wasn't fought against a non-slaveholding entity with maintenance of slavery as a primary purpose. Preservation of involuntary human servitude and white supremacy as a cultural imperative were not paramount virtues being defended.

Of course, in time the slaves would be freed, and the flag would represent many other things than a war to keep slavery ...

More rhetorical chicanery. The American Revolution was fought by slave owners, but it was also fought against slaveowners: Great Britain didn't abolish slavery until 1833. So in no way was the Revolution a campaign specifically and explicitly for the preservation of that institution. The Civil War was.
sent those things in the beginning and one seething with righteous indignation might assert that nothing that came after could erase the stain of the flag's original association with slavery.

The Confederate flag was born in a struggle in which slavery played a prominent role. However in the century and a half that followed the flag came to symbolize many things and ideals not associated with the Civil War or slavery.

What it would remain, however, was a symbol of the Confederacy - a failed, rogue state that lasted barely four years, that existed largely, arguably primarily, for the sake of fighting the imminent abolition of slavery.

Here again the comparison to the American flag fails, as the U.S. won its own war for independence from an entity no more inclined toward abolition at the time than those rebelling.

... the flag represents many wholesome things to many people.

Any "wholesome" aspects of Southern culture can and should be celebrated separately from the region's brief, failed attempt to form a separate nation based on the states' perceived rights to allow human trafficking.

Let's demand that they take down the statues of Rip Taylor, Paul Lynde, and Charles Nelson Riley!

Britain was much more inclined toward abolition at the time than those rebelling, and going forward was a much greater force in the world for the abolition of slavery than was the United States.

And yet would not successfully abolish slavery for more than 50 years after the war in question.

The Constitution would enshrine slavery and the Founding Fathers' rhetorical homage to Freedom and Equality was a stark (and cruel) contrast to the reality of American society at large and their personal affairs.

The Constitution was compromised by its attempts to resolve the matter of slavery, but moral discomfort with the institution was built into it's nonetheless morally suspect language.

As for the contrast with the realities of society at large, that's still true, for different reasons. But not indicative of a state for whom racial superiority was an enumerated, paramount value (as it was for the Confederacy).

The Civil War was not initially waged by the North to end slavery ...

Never implied it was. We are, after all, talking about the symbols of the Confederacy. On that end, preservation of slavery was very much high on the agenda.

In its first century the American Flag presided over a great deal of suffering, violence, injustice, genocide, aggression and cruelty.

And in every century since. The human is a vile and self-interested ape. Failure to live up to ideals only means we have them, which is a good thing. What I question is what ideals we will enshrine publicly.

If one focuses only on the negative African Americans, Native Americans, Mexicans; all have just as strong a case to make for its abolition as The Left has for banning the Confederate flag.

If any of those groups supported symbols of racial superiority, separatism, and involuntary servitude being enshrined on public land, I would also oppose that.

You can fly whatever you like on your own property, or put it in your shirt or your car, and I can judge you accordingly.

might be better to refrain from the arrogance of dictating to other cultures what symbols they may and may not cherish...

Again: cherish what you see fit, on your own dime and in your own space. And accept the judgment of your peers.

The Democratic Party that oversaw Jim Crow, segregation, and the KKK hasn't been the one in power now since at least the days of Nixon's Southern Strategy, and probably before that.

But you know that. Smug duplicity is clearly your forte.

And the South that held slaves hasn't been around for over 150 years.

And neither has the South that used the Confederate Battle Flag and fought to preserve the institution far past its expiration date. Do you think that forgiveness might come more easily if the infraction weren't being memorialized? I do.

The Confederate constitution was essentially the US constitution ...

With the notable exception that the pro-slavery portion of the U.S. Constitution wasn't a direct rebuttal to or act of resistance against national trends against that institution.

The Confederate States of America was a slave holding nation for four years.
The United States of America was a slaveholding nation for ninety years.
Throw in the genocide of Native Americans,
and a war of territorial aggression against Mexico;
any criticism of the CSA and it's symbols would apply even more so to the early USA.

Indeed, the U.S. has much to atone for, especially since the institutions of slavery and white supremacy continue to plague us by way of the prison system, police brutality, economic apartheid, and institutional racism. But these remnants of slavery and supremacy are not the enumerated positions of the current U.S., which is not, in turn, a short-lived, failed rogue nation-state (current administration notwithstanding).

The Confederate flag was born in a struggle in which slavery played a prominent role. However in the century and a half that followed the flag came to symbolize many things and ideals not associated with the Civil War or slavery.

Yes, after having fallen into obscurity for the better part of a century, it came back into use as the symbol of anti-desegregationists.

So it went from being a symbol of "we are fighting a war so that we can continue to own blacks," to a symbol of "we want to keep those uppity blacks in their place."