Here is a little driving exercise for you while driving around the Erie region: Keep an eye out and count how many Confederate flag images you see in rear truck windshields. While you’re at it, count the Confederate Stars and Bars images on car bumper stickers. Now ask yourself some questions:

Did you ever wonder what the drivers in these Stars and Bars toting-vehicles are trying to say with these provocative Confederate images?

Are they saying, for instance, life would be so much better if the slave-holding South had actually won the Civil War?

Or, are they saying the United States would be a better place in the Confederate States of America shared a border with Mexico.

Or, are they saying something about race? And you know what that means?

Or, did you ever wonder what black citizens think when they see white citizens driving around with Confederate images on their vehicles or wearing them on tee-shirts?

Please think about that one.

These questions are suddenly relevant again after the Confederacy has yet again bounced back into the news thanks to Virginia’s newly clueless Republican Gov. Robert F. McDonnell. McDonnell, who managed to fool Virginia voters into believing his previously stated, right-wing obsessions were safely closeted by his new moderate Republican persona, suddenly declared April to be Confederate History Month in Virginia.

As the Washington Post reported, McDonnell stirred this volatile racial pot even though “the two previous Democratic governors had refused to issue the mostly symbolic proclamation honoring the soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War. McDonnell (R) revived a practice started by Republican governor George Allen in 1997. McDonnell left out anti-slavery language that Allen’s successor, James S. Gilmore III (R), had included in his proclamation.”

And somehow, Virginia managed to thrive without its Rebel-cause.

Here is the original proclamation issued by McDonnell:

WHEREAS, April is the month in which the people of Virginia joined the Confederate States of America in a four year war between the states for independence that concluded at Appomattox Courthouse; and

WHEREAS, Virginia has long recognized her Confederate history, the numerous civil war battlefields that mark every region of the state, the leaders and individuals in the Army, Navy and at home who fought for their homes and communities and Commonwealth in a time very different than ours today; and

WHEREAS, it is important for all Virginians to reflect upon our Commonwealth’s shared history, to understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War, and to recognize how our history has led to our present; and

WHEREAS, Confederate historical sites such as the White House of the Confederacy are open for people to visit in Richmond today; and

WHEREAS, all Virginians can appreciate the fact that when ultimately overwhelmed by the insurmountable numbers and resources of the Union Army, the surviving, imprisoned and injured Confederate soldiers gave their word and allegiance to the United States of America, and returned to their homes and families to rebuild their communities in peace, following the instruction of General Robert E. Lee of Virginia, who wrote that, “…all should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war and to restore the blessings of peace.”; and

WHEREAS, this defining chapter in Virginia’s history should not be forgotten, but instead should be studied, understood and remembered by all Virginians, both in the context of the time in which it took place, but also in the context of the time in which we live, and this study and remembrance takes on particular importance as the Commonwealth prepares to welcome the nation and the world to visit Virginia for the Sesquicentennial Anniversary of the Civil War, a four-year period in which the exploration of our history can benefit all;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Robert McDonnell, do hereby recognize April 2010 as CONFEDERATE HISTORY MONTH in our COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA, and I call this observance to the attention of all our citizens.

Yippee! Hear the rebel yells?

McDonnell, whose fake GOP moderate creditability is rapidly becoming undone for all Virginia to see, unconvincingly insists he reversed state precedent here simply to boost Virginia’s tourism efforts.

Maybe the governor’s wife and kids are buying that one, but what McDonnell is doing with this pandering nonsense represents nothing more than throwing a bone to his conservative base, who already loves him. Compound this foolishness is McDonnell’s inexplicable decision not to mention Virginia’s ugly slavery history in his obnoxiously pandering proclamation. McDonnell incredibly said he omitted any mention of the direct cause and the reason the Civil War was fought because “there were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.”

Really? Don’t you wish McDonnell had bothered to ask just a few of Virginia’s black citizens what that slavery omission says to them? Virginia’s former Democratic governor. and the state’s first black chief executive Douglas Wilder, whose grandparents were slaves, and who for some reason actually supported McDonnell in the 2009 election, did just that.

“Confederate history is full of many things that unfortunately are not put forth in a proclamation of this kind nor are they things that anyone wants to celebrate. It’s one thing to sound a cause of rallying a base. But it’s quite another to distort history.”

Considering all the history in play here, these are relatively tame words from Wilder, who must be kicking himself for supporting a bonehead like McDonnell. After two days of nearly universal outrage and less tame language by critics inside and outside of Virginia, McDonnell buckled like a rookie quarterback and decided to include something about Virginia’s brutal and extensive slavery history in his pro-Confederate proclamation message. Here is the new language:

“The proclamation issued by this Office designating April as Confederate History Month contained a major omission. The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed. The abomination of slavery divided our nation, deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights, and led to the Civil War. Slavery was an evil, vicious and inhumane practice which degraded human beings to property, and it has left a stain on the soul of this state and nation. In 2007, the Virginia General Assembly approved a formal statement of “profound regret” for the Commonwealth’s history of slavery, which was the right thing to do.

Talk about your dollar short.

When dealing with the Confederacy’s violent history, there is nothing wrong with admiring the bravery and skill Confederate soldiers displayed in numerous battles in Virginia and throughout the South.

I have over 100 books on the Civil War lining walled bookshelves in our house. Lots of them focus on Confederate generals, Confederate battlefield victories and the often heroic Confederate soldiers who fought so bravely for an abhorrent cause.

From my own experiences, I’ve enjoyed reading and studying how legendary Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee conducted his battles and led his Army of Northern Virginia to stunning victories before Grant and Union might defeated him.

You can, as I do, admire Lee for his impressive tactic skills, renowned personal battlefield leadership and keen killer instinct while hating the ugly cause Lee fought so valiantly for in the Civil War. I can’t read a word about Lee or any Southern general or soldier without remembering these men were fighting and dying to keep black men and women in human bondage. And while I read glowing accounts of Lee’s successes and victories, never for a second do I forget his wife’s family remained one of the great slave-owning families in the South.  Heroic that is not.

So when McDonnell tried unconvincingly to suggest that slavery was merely only one of the issues pushing the North and South to arms  in the Civil War, the governor indulged in the times-tried tactic of Confederate sympathizers.

I remember grade school textbooks in Missouri saying that crucial economic issues, and not slavery, primarily drove the North and South to war. That ignorant revisionism doesn’t work any longer. Never forget that slavery – that is inexpensive human labor forced through slavery – was the foundation of the Southern and Confederate economy. Understand Southern states left the Union only after the anti-slave Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election.

So what McDonnell and his ilk are selling by defending and celebrating the great Southern Lost Cause is nothing less than naked appeals to white power supporters and white supremists. And what those dreadful appeals are saying is what Lee and the Confederacy fought for remains somehow worth honoring.

What McDonnell wants honored is the Confederacy existed and fought to preserve slavery. That is a historic fact no matter how inconvenient for McDonnell and his supporters’ appalling  political motives.

The Confederate Stars and Bars carried by those men in gray, who died in Virginia, throughout the South and at Gettysburg were fighting to keep black men and women in chains. McDonnell knows that all too well.

My question is do the individuals who place the Confederate Stars and Bars on their windshields and drive around the Erie region realize that? What are they actually saying through those Confederate images?

I think we know the sad answer.

Holy Maverick! What Happened To John McCain?

New Year’s Eve 2007: Over cocktails, the conversation with my father-in-law and two brother-in laws – good Republicans all – remains strong in my memory. They wondered what GOP presidential candidate the guy who tends to vote for Democrats was most comfortable with heading into the 2008 presidential election.

Easy, I told them. John McCain.

Now recall that McCain, the original Republican presidential frontrunner, wasn’t in a strong position at that point heading toward the Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primary. A disastrous summer led most pundits and political types to rule out McCain’s chances for the nomination. By any definition, the McCain campaign was floundering and all but dead.

Rudy Giuliani was leading in most GOP polls. How scary is that?

The usual suspects – Mitt Romney, Mike Hucklebee, Fred Thompson – were languishing in what seemed a lousy political season for all Republican candidates.

McCain still towered above them all on a purely status level even as his campaign seemed dead and it became obvious the Arizona senator didn’t know, or particularly care, how the economy actually worked.

McCain still struck me as the lone the grownup in the room for the Republican presidential field.

Wow was I wrong on so many different levels. So what happened to the guy who lost to ultimately lost the presidency to Barack Obama? The New Yorker’s Hendrick Hertzberg goes looking:

The moral decline of John McCain continues to be a lamentable spectacle. Having repudiated his best decisions—decisions like opposing torture and supporting immigration reform—he has now dramatized his degradation by doubling down on his worst choice ever.

It is overwhelmingly McCain’s doing that Sarah Palin is a figure of national and international consequence, even if some credit must go to Bill Kristol and his shipmates. And a bit to Palin herself, too, of course—not every unsuccessful vice presidential nominee manages to go global. As Tina Brown notes in a Daily Beast commentary, the winsome ex-governor “used the celebrity he bestowed on her to become the La Pasionaria of the No Spin Zone crowd.”

“By using Palin to pander to the Tea Party,” Brown of The Beast writes,

McCain showed his willingness to repudiate everything that made him special, just so he can hold on to a Senate seat. It’s like the Hanoi Hilton in reverse: He held out under physical torture, but under political torture it seems he’ll say and do just about anything.

Sad but true.

McCain’s choice of a running mate was awful, but other Presidential nominees have blown it as badly or worse over the years. In 1864 President Lincoln screwed up royally by dropping Hannibal Hamlin (no Pericles himself) from the ticket and substituting Andrew Johnson. Lincoln did this for eminently Broderish reasons of “bipartisanship” and “balance”—Johnson was a border-state Democrat. Unfortunately, he was also a drunk, a bully, and a virulent racist. Lincoln’s mistake was later compounded by the Senate, which failed to convict President Johnson and remove him from office after the House had, quite rightly, impeached him.

Then there’s the sainted Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom historians have never really held to account for his choice of Richard Nixon in 1952. The young (if not youthful) Senator Nixon had earned notoriety via the Hiss case, but it’s unlikely he would ever have become a serious threat to the nation and the world without the General’s assistance. Eisenhower gets a free pass for several reasons, including his obvious lack of enthusiasm for Nixon in 1960, his later quiet regrets, the fact that we all like Ike, and the now widespread view of Nixon’s presidency as a wash, with the goes-to-China gambit and a set of relatively liberal domestic policies (relative to those of later Republicans) seen as offsetting Watergate and mass murder in Indochina.

I’m not even considering the running-mate choices of Presidential nominees who didn’t get elected (the John Brickers, the Bill Millers) or those of Presidents who got elected but left office alive: Elbridge Gerry, Schuyler Colfax, Spiro Agnew, and Dan Quayle—to say nothing of Dick Cheney, who, in addition to being the worst Vice-President ever, was also the worst de facto President.

One prefers not to think about what the state of the nation would be right now had McCain had been elected and then hit by a Secret Service SUV with a sticky accelerator. Even with Fox News and not the Oval Office the current workplace of the Alaska Athena, Brown is putting it mildly when she writes of McCain, “It’s not impossible that Palin will turn out to be his most enduring legacy.”

Postscript:  Holy Maverick Part II! McCain The Maverick Denier

John McCain isn’t really a maverick. Never was one, really. Who said? John McCain told Newsweek:  “I never considered myself a maverick. I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.”

This is sad, so sad. Talking Point Memo provides the video to prove otherwise. Take a look: McCain Declares Himself The ‘Original Maverick’ In 2008.

Augusta National Rips Woods A New One

There are going to be some among us who won’t ever look at Tiger Woods without thinking about all those women. Understandable.

Many women will always have trouble looking at Woods without shaking their heads about all those women. Perfectly understandable.

My own view is Woods apologized, and apologized again, and accepted responsibility for his reckless behavior. And now after his 40-minute press conference at Augusta National on Monday, isn’t it time to say enough and let Elin Woods deal with her husband?

That view is clearly not shared by Billy Payne, the chairman of Augusta National Golf Club who used his annual Masters address to sanctimoniously tear into Woods the day before he teed off in the Masters’ first round. One must assume he speaks for Augusta National’s  elite membership.

In a prepared statement, Payne said among other things, Woods had:

“Disappointed all of us, and more importantly, our kids and our grandkids. Our hero did not live up to the expectations of the role model we saw for our children. His future will never again be measured only by his performance against par, but measured by the sincerity of his effort to change. I hope he now realizes that every kid he passes on the course wants his swing, but would settle for his smile.”

This coming from a man who represents a club that still refuses to allow and accept female members. A club that until 1975, declined to allow black PGA players play in the Masters. In the spirit of don’t stop attacking when you got a man down, many golf writers and commentators said they liked and agreed with what Payne said about Woods.

But the great New York Times columnist George Vescey spoke for many who believe Tigers Woods has suffered and apologized enough (Thanks for the Tasteless Sermon)

Here is a taste from Vescey:

Just asking, but would Payne have been so quick to deliver his little sermon to a white golfer who was caught straying? My guess is that some kind of double standard whacked Tiger Woods on the backswing. How dare he stray after all they’ve done for him?

This golf tournament, in the person of its top official, has delivered a needless moral rebuke to a man who has opened his veins in public twice in recent weeks, admitting he had broken his marriage vows, admitting he was taking treatment for an addiction.

That was not enough, apparently. Here we all were in the last few weeks, sucking our thumbs over whether the gallery would be polite to a man trying to play golf and save his marriage at the same time. But the problem was not the fans, nor was it the credentialed golf media, always so respectful. Even most bloggers out in blog-land understood this is a complicated and personal issue.

I’ve never met George Vescey, but I worked with his son in the Peoria Journal Star sports department. I know and like his daughter, who does important legal work for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association.

Their father never wrote a more honorable column than this one.

Postscript: In his first tournament in five months, Tiger Woods shot his lowest Masters first-round score in his career Thursday, dazzling Augusta National galleries and an ESPN television audience with an impressive 4-under-par 68.  Woods missed short birdie putts at 2, 11, 16 and 18 that could have easily turned this round into a 64. The best golf columnist in the business, the Washington Post’s Tom Boswell, provides his take Day of thanks. Here is a taste:

On the first hole, when introduced, Woods was met with enthusiasm: cheers and calls of “Go, Tiger” and “Come on, Tiger.” And, throughout the early holes of his round, he was greeted warmly, but not quite fanatically, not with the thunderous roars that, even on Thursday, have marked the first rounds of anyone named Arnie, Jack or Tiger. After one fan on the second hole yelled, “Give ‘em hell, Tiger,” a man nearby said to the woman next to him, “It takes all kinds. ‘Give ‘em hell?’ Come on.” Yet that’s exactly what Woods gave ‘em. On an afternoon with light rain and a treacherous swirling wind in the pines, Woods reminded the world outside of golf why the arc of his life — its triumphs and, now, its miseries and mortifications — matter to so many. No one inside golf ever forgot. If he hadn’t missed three putts of five feet or less on the back nine, and lipped out a nine-foot eagle putt at the 13th hole, too, he might conceivably have shot a 33-32 — 65. “The tees were up. You could be pretty aggressive. Guys were just tearing this place apart,” said Woods. “I hit the ball well all day. If I could have putted well, it could have been a really special round.” As if it wasn’t unique enough.

Still betting against him.