Jackson Jambalaya

What's this about? I thought it was another fraternity whose pledges were involved in this incident.

The frat has a right to disassociate themselves from the boys. The university has a right to be upset about the negative attention. Students have a right to form opinions. And blog and news readers have a right to off the wall conclusions about Confederate symbols, university image and bad behavior.

However, where's the crime? Nothing was stolen. Nothing was defaced. Nothing was vandalized. Nothing was desecrated. Nobody suffered harm. Nobody was threatened with bodily harm. No law was broken. No crime was committed.

An attempt at federal prosecution will be a piss in a strong wind.

It will need a LOT of work to make it the best it can be.

So, if I am understanding this correctly, three boys from Georgia hang a noose on a statue and the University, all the white fraternities, and every white Mississippian has to bear the burden and tell everyone (yet again) that we're not racist.

8:44 - kinda like some black dude commits a crime and black folks who had nothing to do with it have to deal with the unfair generalizations. Welcome to the real world where people get blamed for being in a group.

8:44 p.m., no, 3 Ole Miss students and members of the fraternity that issued the press release desecrated the Meredith statue and yelled racial epithets while they did it. The same kind of Ole Miss students who took to the Grove to yell the N word and other such epithets when the President was re-elected in 2012.

It is obviously the right thing to do for the non-racist students at Ole Miss to declare that this racist behavior, criminal or not, is to be condemned.

"Condemned". BFD.

A letter appeared in The Daily Mississippian signed by every fraternity on campus denouncing the incident save for Phi Tau. No one contacted them to sign, and of course everyone on campus was left thinking they had refused to sign. I personally wish they had explained a little better in their press release exactly why they were issuing it.

No, it was Sig Ep pledges that did it. Why is Phi Tau issuing a statement?

This whole thing got blown way out of proportion. Whatever happened to the first amendment? Or are we going to let things get so bad we have to resort to the second?

Desecrate - To take away the sacredness of. Treat as not sacred.

O.K.

One can desecrate a cemetery or a place of worship or religious symbols. But, not unless he damages something, defaces property or alters it somehow.

So, if I go onto the grounds of a cemetery and drape a black curtain over a tombstone and shout something vile, I'm guilty of a crime? And that crime would be..........what?

Seems the right move now for the University and the ever-so-righteous Chancellor Doctor Jones might be to require immediate integration of all the historically black fraternities and sororities on campus and come up with a suitable reparations strategy.

Get rid of Confederate names and statues, banish the name Ole Miss and immediately change the names of sporting teams from Rebels to something more palatable. Another student body election might be in order.

As an Ole Miss alum, I have to say that the black eye these sorts of incidents create for the university is hard to dispute, whether you think it is deserved or not. And the arguing that follows is a distraction the university does not need. I have been critical in the past of Khayat and Jones for responding to these types of events with feel good committees and PC gestures that do very little to actually decrease the likelihood of these sorts of things happening on campus. And these sort of mealy mouth gestures just create more arguments.

So, I think the time has come to take the bold step of saying the university will no longer allow sororities and fraternities on campus unless they are racially integrated. It is hard for me to imagine that a fraternity pledge would do this sort of thing if he actually had interaction with members of another race as his fraternity brothers, and it would certainly ramp up the peer pressure not be be involved in this kind of stupid stuff. If some students don't like being in a fraternity or sorority that is racially integrated, then they can attend another school. That would weed out 99% of the idiots who pull these kinds of pranks and make them some other school's problem.

And for precedent, you can look at what President Bonner has done recently at the University of Alabama. She has taken no prisoners, addressed this issue head on, and moved on to other matters that should be the focus of a university.

So, let's just do it and move on to better things for our school.

No crime was committed.~

In George Orwell's world of 1984, this act was a "thought crime," punishable by a visit to Room 101. Or in Frank's case, therapy sessions by the in-house tag team "cadre" at NMCommentor.

Frank, do you love Big Brother?

11:42; how does bussing fit into your solution?

Assuming some of the members of some of these segregated Greek-Groups live off campus in areas demographically identified by race, perhaps in trailer parks or areas of town or the county that tend to reflect racial strata (by choice), should the university bus these students to frat/sorority houses and activities that tend to be further from their domicile than the frat/sorority they chose of their own volition?

I'm certain (based on Jones' earlier actions) that the Chancellor is prepared to order a fleet of buses to ensure complete integration.

I've also noticed, on Highway 12, coming into town, right near the smoking BBQ grills on the right, there's a drop-in hand-wash car-wash that seems to cater to old vehicles with expensive rims, many of the cars having odd paint jobs and jack-up lift-kits. And all of the employees appear to be of one race. Should the Chancellor reach out to the community to require that this business at least serve a segment of the caucasian population?

well Skippy...maybe the South will rise again, the carpetbaggers will leave and we will live happily ever after. Least wise we won't have to break out into a "I am not a racist tap dance" every time a black walks by.

Pug, another good example of "thought policing" is in Vonnegut's short story, "Harrison Bergeron," in which devices are implanted in citizens' brains to make loud clangy internal noises, should anyone dare to think a thought not allowed by the government. The object, of course, is to make certain that everyone thinks and behaves in identical ways. The fictional year is 2081, but methinks this dystopian day may come sooner...

Just expel the three losers and let all acists know this is what happens when you subject the university to national embarrassment. Future losers will then go elsewhere. Right now they think Ole Miss will accept this behavior - time to show them it won't.

I am so sick of some folks expecting collective guilt to be shouldered by all whites.
When a white person steals, rapes and murders someone I don't feel the least bit of guilt.
What I do feel is anger that the act was committed at all no matter the skin color.
Are other races expected to have collective guilt?

Let's do a little side-step game of substitution with 8:24's post, shall we?

"Just expel the new group at city hall and let all racists know this is what happens when you subject a city and state to national embarrassment. Future would-be politicians with similar racist views will then run for office elsewhere. Right now, the rest of the nation thinks Mississippi accepts, courts and bows to this racist crap - time to show them we don't."

I like that game of substitution. The sky is the limit where this could go........

9:21, I'd vote for you in a heartbeat! Spot-on, sir (or madam).

You liberals have to understand that a state supported college campus is not the Marine Corps and it's not a membership club and it's not a place of employment (for students). People (even young ones) in this country still have constitutionally protected freedom of speech.

You can whine in your crumpets all day long about embarrassment, kids who weren't raised right (according to you), unacceptable thoughts and unfortunate (according to you) speech, which this was.

At the end of the day, that's all it was, regardless of motive, intent or degree of compulsion. And at the end of the day it was no more hateful than you will hear at some city council meetings, Hinds County Supervisors meetings, NAACP meetings, Urban League gatherings or at The National Conference of Black Mayors.

Now, get back to your collective guilt affliction and bury yourself in a Hemmingway novel.

Change the stupid flag.

"bury yourself in a Hemmingway novel"

When it's Ole Miss and its fraternities inspiring my reading I gravitate more toward A Confederacy of Dunces or The Beautiful and Damned.

Those kids that did that are total morons. Meredith has spoken-out for decades now against things such as welfare, the great society programs of the 1960's, etc. He is a life long Republican, very conservative, and a true Christian conservative. He would be about the last black man in Mississippi and the USA to deserve racist hate from anyone white.


Helms Hires 1960's Civil Rights Figure as Adviser
AP
Published: September 27, 1989

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Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who has often criticized the civil rights movement, has hired James H. Meredith, who was the first black to enroll at the University of Mississippi, as a domestic policy adviser.

Mr. Meredith, whose enrollment at Ole Miss in 1962 touched off riots that left two people dead and hundreds injured and who was wounded in a civil rights march in Mississippi in 1966, called his new job ''the most significant development in my long campaign to make the black race full first-class citizens.''

Mr. Meredith, 58, changed his views after helping to end desegregation, once calling integration the ''biggest con job ever pulled on anybody.'' A Harmony of Thinking

He did not immediately return telephone calls. But The Greensboro (N.C.) News and Record reported that in a letter to acquaintances, Mr. Meredith wrote that the Senator ''wants to provide the best possible representation to them as well as the entire black population.''

When I was in college, we got drunk and pissed on that stupid statue on almost a weekly basis.

Very impressive legacy 1:59. Save this and reread it in 20 years, when you have a little maturity under your belt.

1:59 Why?

Just do it. In 20 years, you will understand. Your very question makes my point. Thank you.

Meredith spoke at some sort of convention in Natchez over the weekend and his comment, aired on local television, was that 'this country is about to see race riots'. Does this sound like a man still stirring shit? Does to me. Did he call for the black community to calm down their errant yoots who are killing each other, stop having illegitimate babies and appreciate a work ethic? If he did it didn't make the report or the papers.

This is 1:59. I believe the 'why' question was directed at me. And the answer is because college kids do stupid things just for shits and giggles. And I'm racist.

3:20 you sound like you still are in college. You need to read 3:00 as well. There is nothing to say back to me or anyone that will shake the childishness from you.

Its not childish. I'm simply aware of my surroundings and don't buy into this liberal government education bullshit that's been shoved down our throats. Maybe some of you simply need to pull your head out of your ass and have a look around yourself.

Ahh to be a teenager again!

Is it intended that the Meredith statue be the Kennedy Eternal Flame of Mississippi? What the hell for?

What has the guy done with his education? He's grown into an old man who looks and acts like a subway dweller ~ Grady from the Red Fox Show. If he really wants a legacy, he will campaign against illegitimate birth, fatherless households, blacks killing blacks, carjackings, rat-a-tat gunfire at drive-through eateries, all night clubs that attract drunks/whores/shooters, lack of morals, sagging pants, sideways hats, piss poor attitudes and the never-ending entitlement and reparations attitude that hangs over his community like a heavy cloud of fog.

This is not a white-guilt responsibility. The responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of black leadership, and Merideth has a chance to be one, yet he is comfortable in his irrelevance.

But, oh, dear, 5:42! Did you not get the memo? It's enough just to have dark skin. One need do nothing else in life! Except, of course, engage in the regrettable activities you catalogued. They're all perfectly acceptable, and excusable, because after all, it's ALL WHITE PEOPLE'S FAULT.

Diana Moon @8:06

As you probably already known, Kurt Vonnegut was an American POW of the German army at Dresden when it was firebombed by the terror fliegers in 1944. He assisted in digging out the civilian dead from the rubble and feeding the corpses to the funeral pyres burning throughout the city. That experience brought about Slaughterhouse Five.

If you're interested in dystopian novels, you might find Anthony Burghess'(A Clockwork Orange)The Wanting Seed to your liking.

I found the book at the Salvation Army used book section. I have to admit that I like the themes of overpopulation and perpetual wars in the book, but I had to read the book with one hand on a Thesaurus. I put it down midway into the book because of the vocabulary and his "madeup words." Plans by Carlo Ponti to bring it to the silver screen never materialized. I cannot imagine what role he might have intended for Sopia Loren in the film.

Check out the reviews.

Anon @5:02

You left out one-trip-to-the bar pigging-out at all you can eat buffets... leaving plates full of untouched fish,oysters, chicken,steak and pork ribs to be thrown into the garbage.

Ain't no 5:02. Drink up

" thought police" ?
BS!
Vandalism is what it is.
Look up the definition those of you who imagine you have the freedom to deface public or private property.
It is also sick.
So if your idea of self-expression is hanging nooses and pissing on anything, there is something seriously wrong with you!
This isn't what these A -holes thought or said, it's what they did.

So, was the act of Governor William Winter--the current curator of the Mississippi Department of History and Archives---to remove the statue of Governor Theodore Bilbo from the Capitol Building rotunda, an act of vandalism? The iconic statue is presently hidden away in a cloak-room and being used as a coat-rack by members of the "black caucus." Is that an act of defacement of public property?

I have a problem with the "destruction" of historical monuments and archival materials that are a part of the good and the bad of the historical record. The "Allies" destroyed iconic monuments and archival materials--including removing the swastika and the chrysanthemum etched into war relics--in Germany and Japan following WWII. Now, reminiscent of the US-led mobs that pulled down Saddam Hussein's statue in Iraq 2003, mobs in Ukraine are destroying the Lenin monument. Everyone needs a reminder of the crimes of the Bolsheviks.

Who is Theodore Bilbo, you ask?


“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past. ~1984, George Orwell

"As a fifth-generation Mississippian whose grandfather rode with Nathan Bedford Forrest, I was born a segregationist and raised a segregationist. I have always defended this position. I defend it now."

William Winter, 1967

Pugnacious, your words are some of the only ones I read in this "darkling plain" of a site, where the "ignorant armies" are clashin' like gangbusters night AND day. And thanks for the book rec; I have not read that one. Have you read *Sirens of Titan* (another Vonnegut, with similar theme, but with lots of space travel)?

All this kerfuffle about a COLLEGE PRANK (and yes, at the end of the day, that's what it was, albeit one in poor taste) reminds me of the day, a couple of years ago, when I strolled into Lemuria to buy a new copy of *Mein Kampf* (a joke! a joke!)and observed some queitly giggling high-school students posing for photos with the bust of Eudora Welty. They were placing a party hat on her head, and holding an empty Early Times bottle up to her bronze lips. One lad even had his pic taken while giving her a big smooch. They were not disruptive, elicited nothing but a few strange looks, didn't disturb John's business, and went on their merry way, leaving the party hat (but taking the bottle).

Sooooo...was this "vandalism," or just messin' around a bit with a Sacred Cow? Or, nothing more than a violation of the open container law?

Guess it depends on who you ask. This bit of waggery never made the news, for excellent reason: it ISN'T news. *yawn*

Anon @ 6:58, perhaps it is you who should look up a few definitions. What was defaced? How was it defaced? Is there evidence of defacing or is it imaginary. And if there is no evidence of defacing or vandalism, how do you intend to proceed in court, or will you just wing it, sorta like you did here?

Some of you posters, as well as several genuises who were quoted in today's CL, seem to have an ability to look into the hearts and minds of men and extract their prior thoughts and intent, therefore their guilt.

Matt Steffey, local law 'professor', aside from badly needing a shower and hair wash, seems to think he knows what was in the minds of these boys and he has the ability to peg their intent, therefore their collective guilt. He seems unable to separate speculation from fact and opinion from evidence. He better stay in the classroom and out of the courtroom.

On second thought, if I were the parent of one of these boys, I'd hope Steffey WOULD prosecute the case, with that level of bullshit as a prosecution template.

Hear, hear, 9:46! Short of Rustoleum spray-paint or hydrofluoric acid, it's really hard to deface a bronze (or cast iron, or whatever it is) statue. Urinating on it and festooning it with a bit of rope and a flag may not be what well-brought-up lads would do, but the next rain will wash off the former, and a huffing, embarrassed University employee can debarrass it of the latter.

Oh, let me dream: what if the Ole Miss PR toe-the-PC-liners would issue a statement along the lines of:

"The University of Mississippi is, yet again, rolling its collective eyes at the irrepressible japery that young men are bound and determined to get up to, as foolish youths have been wont to do since first these institutions existed. Do we approve of this, or encourage it? Well, of course not, you nincompoops. But as with the antics of a naughty child, we feel that the less attention paid to the little buggers, the quicker they'll quit trying to get a rise out of us. Nobody died, no property was permanently ruined, so we plan no action whatsoever. No further statements will be issued."

Below is a real conversation overheard in 2007. I was sitting in the Goodyear waiting room while my tires were being rotated. The blaring TV set, provided for clients' "entertainment," was tuned to some news channel that was going on and on and ON about the 50th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine desegregation drama. I was minding my own business, ignoring the TV and reading a gossip magazine, but you bet my ears perked up when I heard the elderly husband and wife next to me mutter:

She: I wish you'd look at that. Hmph, hmph. I sure wish they'd quit dwellin' on all that mess.

He: Well, we stuck with it. But don't you know them people in Little Rock wish there was JUST nine of 'em at that school these days?

Anne~

Kerfuffle? I had to go to the Urban Dictonary on that one. I thought it may have been one of Burghess' "made up" words.

Sometime back in 1968- 1971, I was walking to class across the drill field at MSU during the Army ROTC parade drills there that are conducted on Tuesday afternoons, and saw the local "CR agitator" huddled around the monument to Stephen D. Lee--a bronze bust atop the truncated marble obelisk-- with his droogs. Sitting atop the bust of Lee was a female droog with her legs spread around his neck and across his chest and her hands cupped over his face. A disgusting scene and I thought it an act of provocation, but the Army cadets just marched on by with no "eyes right" command.

I think Kerfuffle definition # 2 fits the "suggestive signage"
display at the Meredith statue.

kerfuffle~

A minor disturbance or disagreement. Smaller than a contretemps, larger than a snag, involving more people or things than a SNAFU or a stink.

Lawton couldn't understand all of the kerfuffle over the suggestive signage at Herbert's Sherbert.

Change the stupid, racist flag.

10:39

Which flag are you speaking of? I assume you're speaking of the preferred flag of the Ku Klux Klan, the flag that oppressed black people into slavery, and the flag that flew on the ships that brought your ancestors over. I see your point. However, I just don't see there being enough support in America to change the American flag.

And get over the slavery bullshit. Safe to say that YOU are a lot better off than your cousins that were left behind, and WE had nothing to do with any of it.