The American Spectator

I’ve been quoted as a very naughty jingoistic boy by Stan Cox over at Alternet for my review of CSA a couple weeks back. Here’s the bit:

Despite, or maybe because of, the film’s unpalatable message, reviews of “CSA” have been overwhelmingly positive. One harshly critical exception appeared last month, predictably, on the website of the hard-right American Spectator. Shawn Macomber expressed shock that any director would, as Willmott has done, portray an America that oversees an empire of “puppet democracies,” launches an unprovoked, preemptive attack on another nation (Japan, in the film), tolerates Hitler’s racial theories and outlaws all non-Christian religions. Macomber seems to regard such policies as inconceivable in the good old USA.

I would have preferred Cox to include a link so the piece could be read in its full context, but, then again, perhaps that would have defeated the purpose. Specifically, my position was/is that to deny any progress has been made on issues of race and to conflate modern America with the life under the Confederacy is to dishonor those who suffered real persecution merely to feed an ongoing hero complex that regards any admission of progress as anti-intellectualism. I would imagine looking at the history of the Civil War and the terrible struggle to obtain equal rights in the decades after we should all, as I write in the piece, breathe “a great sigh of relief at the good fortune we all have to live in a country where the Lost Cause was indeed lost.” To accuse me of jingoism for suggesting so says more about their agenda than mine.