.jpg)
Some kids have been talking about burning my house down. So says Robin Washington of the DNT. He got a call from someone in the know who said a lot of children on the school buses are angered by my snow sculpture. Unlike the Republican who jumped to the conclusion, quite rightly, that my pachyderm was meant to twit the right these kids see the old confederate flag and think I’m cheering on the Dixiecrats who still can’t get over the Civil War.
Robin and I had a long cordial talk. He thought that there were a lot of folks in Duluth who wouldn’t get my point, a point which he surmised right away. Well, I did make a snow sculpture four years ago of Obama’s campaign logo. I made a snow sculpture of Obama himself pondering a globe. I’ve spent six years writing spiteful posts about the Grand Old Party. Heck the year this blog started I made a snow sculpture of Old Abe as he sits under the shelter of the Lincoln Memorial.
Ah, but only folks who have paid attention to me like a tick they can’t pull off remember all of that stuff.
My Republican corespondent understands. He too is bitter about the actions of the GOP which have made them fair game for innuendo like mine. He’s no racist so he naturally resents the implication that his political party is full of racists. And yet, southern states proudly hoist the Stars and Bars over their Republican controlled state capitol buildings even now.
The kids aren’t wrong. They see the confederate flag as a raised middle finger, and who can blame them? As I’ve pointed out nearly half of Mississippi’s Republicans think interracial marriage should be illegal 50 years after the Loving Case gave the Supreme Court cause to rule all such anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. Just the other day the Trib published a story about how many white people refused to let black nurses and doctors treat them in hospitals.
Some Republicans love to point to Obama to say racism is of no consequence and yet our jails are filled with black men who can not vote and we’ve come off three decades of resentment over affirmative action laws. Today the Supreme Court was hearing Southern states petition to have the Federal Government stop monitoring their elections even as these same states joined by Republican states in the North are doing their best to put roadblocks in front of poor folks at election time. There was a reason Michelle Obama’s centenarian guest at the State of the Union speech had to stand in line 5 or 6 hours to vote last November.
Robin genuinely wanted me to put something on my blog spelling out that the sculpture is satire to protect myself from having a brick lofted through my window. I don’t normally do Ha Ha Ha’s after a joke. Perhaps I should have done so this time. If I was to do it again I’d put a snow billboard below that elephant. It would say “NEO DIXIECRAT.” There would still be plenty of folks who wouldn’t get it but it would force them to ponder the sculpture’s meaning.
I’m very proud of that sculpture. I sent a photo of it to my Uncle Frank in large part because he has razzed me about being a Republican ever since Ronald Reagan was President even during the six years of my cohabiting with Democrats here in Minnesota.
I have speculated that an attack on the sculpture could just as easily come from the left as the right. Most likely if it happened it would be the action of a kid. I can imagine some Republicans being cheered by that – a liberal being attacked by other liberals because they were too clueless to understand my sculpture’s intent.
I’m not too worried about that happening. The sun is within a few days of doing the work itself. Robin found my post with the photo of the sculpture and emailed it to the person who called him to express his anger and warning that children were thinking of taking retaliatory action. The complainer was relieved that I turned out not to be unreconstructed.
I’m not going to get a sign up in front of the sculpture and I’ve already explained this sculpture to my eight loyal readers. Actually over the course of a month Lincoln Democrat get’s better than a thousand visitors but for all I know they may be Russians. That’s not a very significant fraction of the 150,000 people in the area who could get the wrong impression. Even if the DNT explained what I meant its readership only reaches a third of the locals. That leaves nearly a hundred thousand people not having my sculpture explained to them. I just have to hope that thirty years worth of snow sculptures has bought me enough good will for this teapot tempest to pass.
