And I thought his comments regarding de Blasio were repugnant

[novapsyche]

What art says about the past

I sometimes think I have spent years unlearning what I learned earlier in my life. For instance, it was not George A. Custer who was attacked at the Little Bighorn. It was Custer--in a bad career move--who attacked the Indians. Much more important, slavery was not a benign institution in which mostly benevolent whites owned innocent and grateful blacks. Slavery was a lifetime's condemnation to an often violent hell in which people were deprived of life, liberty and, too often, their own children. Happiness could not be pursued after that.

Steve McQueen's stunning movie "12 Years a Slave" is one of those unlearning experiences. I had to wonder why I could not recall another time when I was so shockingly confronted by the sheer barbarity of American slavery. Instead, beginning with school, I got a gauzy version. I learned that slavery was wrong, yes, that it was evil, no doubt, but really, that many blacks were sort of content. Slave owners were mostly nice people--fellow Americans, after all--and the sadistic Simon Legree was the concoction of that demented propagandist, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a lie and she never--and this I remember clearly being told--had ventured south to see slavery for herself. I felt some relief at that because it meant that Tom had not been flogged to death.

Apparently he made these comments just a week ago, then went on to write those horribly convoluted sentences about how interracial marriage is perceived.

Mother Jones, in response to those latter comments, counts down Cohen's ten worst moments.