It was a Yankee day because Vicksburg fell on July 4th.

The only thing that is more divisive than limbaugh and palin is the mindless focus on all things republican and the free pass given to obama/rahm.

We are largely seeing bush's third term and a president that has backtracked on virtually all of the promises he made on the campaign.

And now they are stealthly going after social security - the mindless obama supporters (like this site) were all over bush when he talked about these issues.

obama took it one step farther, setting up a commission (that congress refused to set up) and stacking it with political hacks that have worked to undermine social security for many many years.

And not a word about this is said at washmonthly - you blog has sunk to the level of ThinkProgress with is all distractions and mindless catering 24/7 about the most inane and obscure repugs.

Mister Limbaugh's ignorance is feigned, not real. However, he's made a career out of exploiting the ignorance of others.

jan,
You must not come here too often.
Steve B. has been very critical of the President, the Democrats in Congress, and the Catfood Commission, when needed.

BTW good job on the SPAM-trapping. My original comment referenced a medication popular amongst men, starts with a "v," in regard to Rush, and got moderated out.

It doesn't need to make sense or be grounded in any kind of truth. Its just blatant, naked racism. That's all its meant to be, nothing more.

Remind me, why was Don Imus run out of town? His remark was just boorish, but Limbaugh has transitioned in to a full on racial assault. Is he going to change his intro music from The Pretenders to Tomorrow Belongs to Me from Cabaret?

I think the worst part about all of this is that there has been no blow back for him. Its creating an atmosphere where racism seems legitimate.

When I was growing up in Texas, Memorial Day wasn't a school holiday because (as my Yankee parents told me) Texan's didn't see any need to memorialize Union Army dead.
We did get San Jacinto day off (commemorating a critical battle in Texas' war of independence (from Mexico)

I can only assume that he's thinking ... to use the term loosely ... of Frederick Douglass "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927.html

Historian beat me to it.

Of course, we know Rush's grasp of history is weak, so he may not be familiar with this speech.

Historian -- did Frederic Douglass really say "yo?" That's freakin' awesome!

Frederick Douglass said "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?" But Limbaugh probably wasn't referring to that, because Douglass actually tended to avoid minstrel-show fauxbonics.

The fomenting of racism and the specious granting of 'momentum' to vicious Republicans / tea partiers is a mental illness that these commentators, from Limbaugh to Beck, seem to be sharing: as if the United States had been driven completely insane by the election of a black president -- and by god, they'll make us PAY for hurting their white little egos.

But all of the press including the blogs have given them so much prominence that they are gaining momentum. Free publicity.

Here's my theory. At some point a staffer or intern mentioned Frederick Douglass's brilliant "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July". That germ of an idea bounced around the dark recesses of his brain, where it marinated in racial resentment and fear of losing out to Glen Beck. And it somehow came out as this.

It's beyond ironic that a coalition, mainly composed as southern conservatives who's ancestors traitously rebelled from a democratic nation to perserve slavery have basically hijacked American patriotism.

South Carolina state employees, at least until 1990, were given holidays on Confederate Memorial Day and Jefferson Davis's Birthday. But I never heard of anybody in South Carolina not observing July 4 as a holiday - but where I live is not as conservative/confederate as many areas in the state (John Spratt, D is our congressman).

Look at you JAN: spreading Jane Hamsher's paranoia and hatred of all things Obama. What a good little Hambot you are. I have to ask why you would team up with a person who thinks grover norquist is a friend to your cause? why don't you go over to fox nation, I'm sure they will agree with you that Obama is more dangerous than the right wing empire that's been working to fuck you over 24/7.

I have heard plenty of black people express such sentiments. And why not, given the centuries black people spent as slaves and second class citizens in Free America? I don't think this has anything to do with patriotism. After all, black folks fight in America's wars, and pay taxes, participate in the electoral process & yes, BBQ on the 4th, just like every body else.

I don't see what the fact that some black people are unwilling to ignore the bitter of irony "Independence Day" says anything about the Pres. supposed arrogance. But then, I don't really speak racial paranoia.

Also - I've haven't heard a black person drop a "yo" since about 1992. Sigh. Rush Limbaugh performs his nameless negro impression. In public. No one cares. Just another racist moment on the public's airwaves.

The Frederick Douglass quote that commenter Historian linked to is short enough and important enough to post in full here:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

"Mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy" is a pretty perfect description of what Rush Limbaugh spews at his Ditto-Head mental slaves every day.

What MuddyLee said. I grew up in SC in the 1950s, and the Fourth was very much celebrated--BBQ, fireworks, the whole nine yards. What South-bashers like Schaller don't understand is that even Confederates regarded the Declaration of Independence as a sacred document; in fact, believe it or not, they quoted it in justification of secession. It is true, however, that [Union] Memorial Day was ignored when I was growing up; my home town put up American flags on UMD and Confederate MD on alternate years.

I'd say Limbaugh was thinking of Flavor-Flav, but I just don't think he was thinking.

South Carolina state employees, at least until 1990, were given holidays on Confederate Memorial Day and Jefferson Davis's Birthday.

I grew up in SC and both my parents are state employees and they never got Confederate Memorial Day off.

I remember plenty of 4th of July celebrations.

If memory serves, General Pendelton (who surrendered Vicksburg to Grant on July 4th) was a West Pointer from Pennsylvania. For some strange reason, he was under the impression he would receive more lenient terms if he surrendered on that day. After initially demanding an unconditional surrender, Grant ultimately did agree (for pragmatic reasons of his own) to very liberal surrender terms, paroling the garrison rather than shipping it north to POW camps. In conjunction with Lee's repulse at Gettysburg, it marked that 4th as the most auspicious in the nation' history.

Of course, southern sore losers didn't see it that way-- especially in Mississippi. It wasn't until the civil war generation began dyeing off that the 4th began to regain its luster below the Mason Dixon line.

That some people even today nurse a perverted grudge that slavery was upended by force of arms is pathetic. That their collective and twisted ignorance has helped make a multi-millionaire out of a gutless, professional blowhard is almost comical, in a Face In The Crowd sort of way.

Is this a great country, or what?

@SaintZak -

Remind me, why was Don Imus run out of town?

Because Don Imus had listeners who were appalled at his casual boorish racism. He was on stations that knew there would be blowback if they didn't respond. And he had advertisers who also knew there would be blowback if they didn't respond. This is pretty much what happened to Dr. Laura as well.

None of these things apply to Limbaugh. The stations that carry him know what they're carrying. The advertisers that sponsor him apparently know what they're sponsoring. And the folks who still listen to him know what he is. He's sufficiently insulated that he could go on a full-on Dr. Laura-style rant and he wouldn't even have to apologize.

Get Limbaugh out of his insulated radio show, though, and it changes. His casual racism got him kicked off of the sports gig he had because the audience didn't want it, the sponsors didn't want it, and the network certainly didn't want it.

Read Frederick Douglas's "What to the slave is 4th of July?" I suppose this magnificent and unanswerable eloquence must be what Rush had in mind
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=162

matt w, I was thinking of Flava Flav, too. Inspired by Douglass?

According to Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, after Vicksburg surrendered on the 4th, they didn't celebrate Independence Day again until 1944.

I can only assume this is Limbaugh's way of saying African Americans aren't as patriotic as other Americans

Its just another of his race-baiting, supposed throw-away line to keep the anger going.

the man is a prick and doesn't deserve another post pointing out his disgusting rhetoric

When I grew up in Virginia, "Presidents' Day" was a national holiday and we got it off from school. But it was called "Lee-Jackson Day," after the two confederate generals. Why? Well, even though one of the presidents (Washington) was a Virginian, the other was Lincoln-- and white Virginians didn't celebrate his birth, that was for sure.

Rush, of course, wants to pretend that it's African-Americans who seceded in 1861, committing treason and getting away with it.

Grumpy, I'd bet Flavor-Flav is more likely to know the Douglass speech than Rush is. (And Chuck D is way more likely.)

Confederate Memorial Day only began to decline in the 1950s as the last confederate veterans died off, confederate "war heroes" who were trotted out (or wheeled out) every May 10th, as a symbol of the "south shall rise again."

Around the time of the decline of Confederate Memorial Day, some conservative Republicans and conservative Dixiecrats hit upon their southern state strategy, in essence to continue the Civil War in another way, to promote divisiveness instead of a United States of America, practicing further hatred and class warfare in our democracy. Today's Republican Party continues this agenda, fueling Republican's hatred of anything liberal in our liberal democracy, a secessionist Civil War mentality that has morphed into the Republican's Culture War, just as dangerous to our democracy, just as deadly to the lives of patriotic American citizens and their families.

You hate to have to say this, but why should black people celebrate the fourth? The British Empire banned slavery in 1833. If we had lost the revolution, black people would have been freed sooner. I think that most informed black people are aware of this.

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