As the South Carolina legislature debates the future of the Confederate battle flag, a friend has reminded us cats about a similar dust-up in the US Senate that happened back in 1993.
That was when the execrable (and, happily for us, now very dead) Jesse Helms of North Carolina tried to win approval for a design patent renewal for the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The organization's logo featured the national flag that the slave states had adopted after secession.
But the bill, which probably would have sailed through under different circumstances, died a quick 75-25 death. It was thanks to then-Senator Carol Moseley Braun from Illinois, who, outraged, stood up to say this: "It is absolutely unacceptable to me and to millions of Americans, black or white, that we would put the imprimatur of the United States Senate" on an icon of slavery.
Pretty cool, yes? We cats think so. And we're wondering why the cable news talking heads haven't dialed up former Senator Moseley Braun for comment on today's flag kerfuffles in South Carolina. It seems to us she'd have something eloquent to say about it all.
Meanwhile, though, we can all amuse ourselves with how Jesse Helms was beaten into submission 22 years ago this month. And how Mitch McConnell whined that the logo patent should be approved, because, he claimed, "The Civil War is history."
Hm. McConnell clearly didn't know his Faulkner. And two decades later, it's still true — much to this country's detriment — that the past isn't dead, and isn't even past. We cats HISS.
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