Flying the Confederate battle flag — the symbol of the deadliest war in our country’s history — over a state capitol dome is like flying the Nazi flag over a synagogue. It symbolizes everything that the institution is not. As Americans, we’re better than that. Really.
The Confederacy was about breaking apart the union, not its unification. That’s why we’re called the United States, not the Divided States of America.
That’s the obvious — and the easy — part of the argument.
Flying that flag on the South Carolina state grounds in front of the Confederate monument dedicated to the Confederate dead? That’s the not-so-easy part of the argument.
Would we remove crosses over Catholic cemeteries and monuments or the Stars of David over Jewish ones? No, because we’re better than that. Religious cemeteries and monuments are on private property assuring that the government will never have a say in the matter.
Now comes the ridiculous part of the Confederate flag controversy: “The Dukes of Hazzard” being pulled off TV Land because the Confederate flag is painted atop the Duke boys’ 1969 Dodge Charger, General Lee, and most recently Masters golf tournament winner Bubba Watson, owner of that iconic car, declaring he will replace that painting with the American flag.
Destroy the art and destroy the problem. Really? We don’t destroy and ban art in this country because we don’t approve of it — whether that “art” is on cars, on screens or in museums.
We’re better than that.
Those ideas are bad — “Gone with The Wind” bad, and retire-the- “Death of Klinghoffer”-opera-wrong. They’re ban-the-books-awful. We’re so much better than that.
Once that flag painting atop that TV car is gone, it becomes yet another antique destroyed by PC thinking. Painting over one of the most iconic cars in TV history won’t make racism go away. And pulling the show off the air? All that has done is — ironically enough — to increase “Dukes” DVD sales. It’s like Prohibition complete with moonshine.
Bubba Watson and TV Land aren’t better for destroying and banning pieces of pop art. They’re worse, and we’re better than that.
You might argue that custom paint jobs on cars isn’t even art, but I beg to differ. We’re such a new country with such new art, that pop art is arguably our most American art form. Hell, Andy Warhol’s “Campbell’s Soup Cans,” once derided, is now so revered only a Bubba Watson can afford it.
Our art is so new that we give preservation rights to neon signs. Take the Silvercup Bakery and the Pepsi-Cola sign in Long Island City. Are they art? History decided like history usually does, that yes, they are art.
Too bad history won’t have a chance with the General Lee since it’s being painted over.
Stop! Aren’t we better than that?
IT PAYS TO BE A BIG SHOT
Truth: Celebrities are more equal than the rest of us when it comes to crime — or at least punishment. Diddy isn’t being charged with anything after allegedly attacking his son’s UCLA coach with a kettlebell.
And vile fraudster Real Cro Magnon of New Jersey Teresa Giudice ,who just released bits of her jail memoir (which will be published in book form), to Us Weekly has a semi-private cell, works out three times a day, plays videos and eats in the cafeteria at the federal lockup in Danbury, Conn.
Anti-nuke nun Sister Megan Rice, 85, after serving decades in Africa, did hard time at the federal lockup in Brooklyn for illegally entering a nearly unguarded nuke facility. Sister shared a cell with 111 (yes) other women in which they slept, ate, showered and defecated. No gym, no outdoor space, no natural light. Visitors were forbidden to bring in so much as a tissue. Moral? There is none.
COMIC’S BRAIN FREEZE
Jim Carrey’s newest flop: Dumb and Dumbest. The fading star has lashed out at California governor Jerry Brown for signing into law a bill that makes it mandatory for kids attending schools to be vaccinated. Worse, Carrey exploited a photo of an autistic child having a meltdown. Why? To prove his point?
Jim and his Playboy Playmate/self-declared autism expert ex-girlfriend Jenny McCarthy, (who blames her child’s autism on vaccines) need to shut up.
Parents don’t rely on the word of a Playmate whose “theories” are based on the half-ass research of a doctor whose license was revoked, nor that of her ex, a comic who has made huge scratch on movies about mentally challenged people. Worse, Carrey never got permission to use the photo. “I’m very disgusted and sickened,” the child’s aunt wrote. “Alex had these conditions before he was ever vaccinated.” The moral? There are none in Hollywood.
PLAYING THE TRUMP CARD
He’s fired. Not.
No, Macy’s didn’t fire The Donald.
He fired them.
NBC and Univision also didn’t fire Trump. They “abandoned 51 wonderful, young women . . . [pursuing] their dream of being crowned Miss USA.”
A normal person with normal hair would have apologized for the disgusting anti-Mexican remarks he made at his bizarre presidential campaign kickoff about Mexican immigrants being rapists and drug dealers. The Donald then filed lawsuits instead of apologies.
He even told the Golf Channel that he employs “countless” numbers of Mexicans and “they love me, and I love them.”
Ask Eva Longoria how much Mexicans love him.
Meanwhile, it’s Trump, not the Mexicans he employs, who’s involved in a civil racketeering lawsuit.
ANDY KEPT OUT OF THE LOOP
Despite all the Preet Bharara press, Gov. Cuomo hasn’t even been asked to speak with the U.S. Attorney about the investigation into the gov’s anti-corruption Moreland Commission. And rightly so. The Moreland Commission was enacted to give a governor the right “to examine and investigate the management and affairs of any department, board, bureau or commission of the state.” Remember it’s a temporary commission, not a permanent department, to investigate every elected official infinitely. That would be called despotism, not democracy.
TALK AIN’T CHEAP
Who wouldn’t want to pay a daughter with a limited résumé, including a basically no-show TV job, $65,000 to show up and talk? If you guessed a mob-controlled union, you’d be wrong, and if you guessed the University of Missouri at Kansas City, you would be right.
Since women-centric presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was too expensive at $275,000 per speech, the university hired Chelsea Clinton at $65,000 to speak for 10 minutes, take questions for 20 more and pose for pictures at the opening of its women’s hall of fame. Meanwhile, the event only raised $38,000. A no-win — except for Clinton.
