Showing posts with label Civil War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Civil War. Show all posts

Thursday, June 3, 2021

Just another reason why Americans hate/loathe the U.S. news media of 2021... sheer laziness and an unwillingness to admit that facts that challenge media narrative will NOT be included. Asking hard questions about the mistakes unacknowledged in Washington Post story re Memphis moving remains of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, who led the early KKK


Just another reason why Americans hate/loathe the U.S. news media of 2021... sheer laziness and an unwillingness to admit that facts that challenge media narrative will NOT be included.

Asking hard questions about the mistakes unacknowledged in Washington Post story re Memphis moving remains of Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, who led the early KKK, and the remains of his his wife. 

Forrest being one of the streets here in Hollywood that were changed in 2017 by the Hollywood City Commission.

https://www.miaminewtimes.com/arts/controversial-forrest-street-in-hollywood-florida-to-be-changed-to-savannah-street-9449073

Here's the story as it exists this afternoon on the Washington Post homepage. My comments follow.


The Washington Post

Memphis is digging up the remains of a Confederate general who led the early KKK

June 2, 2021 at 9:26 p.m. EDT

The remains of early Ku Klux Klan leader and Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest were finally being exhumed from a Memphis park, and the Black woman who led a long battle for the change was there to mark the moment.

But as activist-turned-elected-official Tami Sawyer prepared to address reporters, a man waved a Confederate flag behind her. Pacing back and forth, he called the Memphis city council member a “communist.” Then he started singing “Dixie,” the anthem of the Old South.

Read the rest of the story at https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/06/02/memphis-exhumes-confederate-remains/

The author of the original tweet (of a thread) that appears in a featured Washington Post article by former South Florida reporter Brittany Shammas -Miami New Times and South Florida Sun-Sentinel- that was posted last night at 9:39 p.m. is a Memphis TV reporter named Chris Luther.

Luther added additional information in his tweet thread of Tuesday noting that there were several mistakes in what he'd originally tweeted, and he publicly noted what those corrections were on Tuesdayhttps://twitter.com/cluther_wmc5/status/1399858172244992004

As of 4:00 pm today, two days later, despite those corrections having been known for more than 24 hours BEFORE the WaPo story ever got posted publicly, Shammas and The Post posted something that they knew or should have known was factually incorrect, and yet they have still NOT made any mention of those corrections.

Corrections which completely change the dynamic of that Luther's tweet, which I think almost any objective person would conclude was included in the WaPo article by Shammas
expressly for the purpose of inflaming readers, not educating or informing them.

Which, to me, is not actually what journalism is supposed to do, as opposed to the purpose served in newspaper or magazine columns, or essays in The New Yorker.

That's a perfect example of why Americans increasingly not only dislike the media, but resent them or loathe them: An unwillingness to publicly admit when they're wrong or have misinformed the public, either intentionally or by accident, because acknowledging it would distract from the media's narrative.

This sort of unprofessional behavior is an epidemic among the South Florida news media, but that's a story for another day.

By the way, some of you newer readers of the blog may not know, despite some previous posts of mine, that I lived in Memphis during the mid-1960's as a young child, and it's where the youngest of my two younger sisters was born. 
We were still living in Memphis in April of 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King was shot, as I've also written about in some detail here previously, as well on Instagram three years ago.

We moved to Miami less than four months later.


1993 ELVIS PRESLEY STAMP -WATERCOLOR OF ELVIS BY MARK STUTZMAMN


It was in 1960's Memphis specifically, and the Mid-South in general, on my family's weekend (often-interminable) drives all around Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, where I first developed my deep and enduring love and preference for many things: the Mississippi River; rhythm 'n' blues; Al Green; The Andy Griffith Show; Dusty Springfield; Petula Clark; St. Louis Cardinals baseball in the summertime, knowing that their catcher Tim McCarver and his family lived in my apt. complex during the off-season; smoky sweet Memphis-style barbecue ribs; cornbread, and, of course, The King - Elvis

To a devout Elvis fan like me, who knows just about everything there is to know about him, the good and the bad, the best books ever written on Elvis -by far- are Peter Guralnick's masterful "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley" and the follow-up, "Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley." 
Each is written with honesty and empathy, free of the judgmental cant and analysis that doomed other books that purport to tell the tale.

It was also while living in The Mid-South, that I first became greatly interested in the American Civil War, following a summer day-trip to Shiloh, the site of the bloody April 1862 battle. 
It was on that summer day trip when I was seven years old that I had a chance meeting with a VERY old man on the battlefield itself. 
A man whose said own father had actually fought in the battle. 
And lived to tell the tale! 

For more info on Shiloh, see https://www.nps.gov/shil/index.htm
Spending a day there is an awesome experience and really puts things into their proper perspective, just as my later trips to Gettysburg, Harper's Ferry, Winchester, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania did as well.


Sunday, June 30, 2013

Gettysburg, a place where you really feel the full weight of history all around you: the history we've experienced and the very different one we could've had instead; On the 150th anniversary of the battle, the continuing wonder that is MGM's Oscar-nominated 1955 documentary two-reel short, 'Battle of Gettysburg,' narrated by Leslie Nielsen; History Channel's 2011 documentary "Gettysburg" narrated by Sam Rockwell

If you've never been to Gettysburg yourself, much less, like me, visited after spending LOTS of time brushing-up on the various aspects of the 1863 three-day battle that you once knew pretty well, but which has since gotten a bit hazy, it's hard to fully comprehend what took place there. 
Even more so then when as a kid without much knowledge or context, I visited Shiloh around 1967, and actually met someone whose grandfather had fought there.

How so many different aspects of our everyday life -as Americans- we now take for granted that could've been completely different if this battle had turned out differently.

In some ways, the more you actually know in detail about what happened there before visiting, the even harder it is to imagine, since when you are walking around there on a very warm day, all the details just seem like... well, an unbearable weight.

Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg by tour guide Gary Kross

Little Round Top at Gettysburg by tour guide Gary Kross

Five minutes from disaster!

As far as I'm concerned, nobody should ever contemplate running for president of this country who hasn't spent some quality time there absorbing the atmosphere and the might-have-beens.
And talking about it publicly.

It's a genuine eye-opener in ways that you can't really imagine until you actually see it yourself, away from the tours, standing in the middle of an immense field.

The other thing that immediately is noticed by many first-time visitors are the large number of foreign visitors you meet there at the battleground, reminding you all over again -as if you needed reminding- that many other people far from this small Pennsylvania town realize its monumental importance, too.


Gettysburg - Pickett's Charge: The Plan

Video History Today video: Picketts Charge, Gettysburg, PA
-Gives present-day orientation of what took place and how it looks now.

Civil War historian Edwin Bearss - Receding Tide (National Geographic)


Gettysburg National Military Park homepage

See other present day video of Gettysburg and other historical events at

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Repeal1913 YouTube Channel video - MGM's 1955 documentary short: 'Battle of Gettysburg,' narrated by Leslie Nielsen. Filmed entirely on location at Gettysburg National Military Park, Pennsylvania. 
Director: Herman Hoffman, Producer/Screenwriter: Dore Schary, with Music Adapted and Conducted by Adolph Deutsch, Orchestrated by Alexander Courage.
1 of 3. Uploaded August 16, 2008. http://youtu.be/byG8wb1Pwzo



AcmeFilmCorporation YouTube Channel video: Gettysburg (2011).
History Channel Civil War documentary depicts the battle thru the eyes of eight men. Uploaded March 20, 2013. Director: Adrian Moat, Narrated by Sam Rockwell.
http://youtu.be/WEZrAmFSCEA

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Alonso Duralde at TheWrap: 'Lincoln' is Steven "Spielberg’s finest work in decades"; Daniel Day-Lewis radiates integrity; Opens nationwide in U.S. on November 16th, opens in U.K. in January



LincolnMovie video: Lincoln Trailer. Uploaded September 13, 2012. http://youtu.be/qiSAbAuLhqs

TheWrap
'Lincoln' Review: Riveting Tale Separates the Man from the Monument
By Alonso Duralde
November 7, 2012
There are few dramaturgical tasks as difficult or as thankless as telling the life story of a Great Man (or Woman), particularly when that historical figure has become the sort of legendary icon featured in national monuments and on currency.
Reads the rest of the review at:

International trailer

Reminder: Film is 150 minutes long, so don't drink a lot before or at the theater.

Trivia: Both of Abraham Lincoln's parents, Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, had
a father named Abraham!
Hmm-m...

The Daily Mail
Still a silver fox: Daniel Day-Lewis keeps his Lincoln look post-filming... as he shows off his grey hair on lunch date
By Kimberly Dadds
PUBLISHED: 05:43 EST, 7 November 2012 
UPDATED: 06:52 EST, 7 November 2012

And for you regular readers of the blog, what have I had written at the top of this blog since Day One?
"Trust me when I tell you, this part of Florida is NOT the Land of Lincoln."

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