By Moristotle
Who do you know who has given a keynote address at a barbecue camp?
Right, you don’t know anyone who has done that.
But I do, and I’m proud to introduce him to you. John Shelton Reed has written a dozen books, innumerable articles, and a country song about the South. His writing has been described by The Washington Post as “provocative, instructive, and amusing,” and by The San Francisco Review as “funny and erudite and annoying.” In the year 2000 he retired from teaching sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where he helped found UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South and the quarterly Southern Cultures.
John shares my birthday, but he checked in one year earlier than I did (I guess I share his birthday), so I’m his junior literally as well as in all the more important ways my so-called accomplishments in life are junior to his bona fide ones.
I invite you – no, I urge you – to visit John’s website, where you’ll find his bio, a list of his books, his press kit, and more (his lectures & addresses, including the aforementioned barbecue keynote address; his articles, essays, & reviews; his professional activities; and his videos & music – John has pretty much done it all).
| Copyright © 2018 by Moristotle |
Well, I found your friend very interesting until I came to the part where he is a lieutenant colonel in the Unorganized Militia of South Carolina. My roots go as deep into the soil of the south as you can go and it has always amazed me how no matter the education level it seems like white southerners can not help but step over the line. I have written before but I will restate why the idea of a southern militia is so wrong. The second amendment came about due to the south's refusal to sign the Constitution without guarantees that they could keep their militias. At that time the only active militia was in the southern states and was used to put down slave uprising and after the war it was the blueprint and justification for the KKK. With Mr. Reed's background in history of the south he had to know that. It is not unlike our new senator from Mississippi saying, "I'd be on the front row of a public hanging if he invited me."
ReplyDeleteEd, I'd somehow missed the reference to the Unorganized Militia of South Carolina in my own perusal of John's bio. Apparently that "unorganization" is serious, and not a joke. I've alerted John to your comment (and our mutual concern about his past affiliation with a Southern militia).
DeleteFrom John, by way of email:
ReplyDeleteChill. I taught at The Citadel for a semester and Citadel faculty who don't hold an actual US armed forces commission are commissioned in the Unorganized Militia of South Caroline (formerly the South Carolina Unorganized Militia, until someone noticed the acronym).
The unorganized militia has never been mobilized, as far as I know, but it could be. Here's the relevant passage from the South Carolina Code of Laws:
In the event of or imminent danger of war, insurrection, rebellion, invasion, tumult, riot, resistance to law or process or breach of the peace, if the Governor shall have ordered into active service all of the available forces of the National Guard of South Carolina and shall consider them insufficient in numbers to properly accomplish the purpose, he may then in addition order out the unorganized militia or such portion thereof as he may deem necessary and cause them to perform such military duty as the circumstances may require.
In other words, if you see the Citadel faculty under arms, you know you're in deep shit.
For some reason we think that people hear things the way WE perceive them, but that is never the case. Stick to your personal commitments, John. Bravo.
ReplyDelete