Death to the Southern Belle!

A movie channel last week ran an hour-long piece on the making of Gone with the Wind. The movie is not on my 50 favorites list. I’ve never been a fan of “Why Miss Scahlitt, whatevah do you mean?” accents, nor, especially, of the Lost Cause mentality – We would have won if only … The South lost because it was out-generaled and out-soldiered; in short, the Yankees fought better.

My wife and I both had ancestors in the fight. Her great-great-grandfather Martin Johnston was with the 5th Texas Infantry; my great-grandfather James Ward was with the 11th Texas Cavalry and then with Bourland’s Regiment on the Texas frontier.

Regardless of my opinion on the Southern Cause, I find ridiculous the idea of removing Southern images from American history. So, when an “educator” says we should “remove the Southern belle from her inglorious perch,” I know she intends to do harm to history.

The “educator” is Elizabeth Boyd, “a research associate in American Studies at University of Maryland.”

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/23916/

Link at www.maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com

Southern belles, Boyd says, “are surely racial symbols as much as any noose or flag.”

A woman in hoop skirt is as racist as a noose. Un-huh.

Well, as several of my aunts might say, “Bless her heart, she never was the sharpest knife in the drawer.”