Bree Newsome, the woman who climbed a flagpole and removed a Confederate flag from the South Carolina Capitol, said she wanted to help America reconcile with its racist past.
Newsome, 30, was arrested Saturday after using a harness to climb up the Columbia grounds 30-foot flagpole as officers yelled for her to come down. She was handcuffed alongside James Tyson, a 30-year-old activist who held the pole to make sure she did not fall.
Although two black workers were forced to re-fly the flag less than an hour later, Newsome said she accomplished her goal.
(New York Daily News, July 2, 2015)
Mind you, she did this:
After Blacks and Whites joined hands at public rallies in South Carolina and demanded the removal of this flag.- After South Carolina’s Republican governor, Nikki Haley, showed real profile in courage by calling on state legislators to enact legislation before the end of this session to do so, warning that, if they failed, she would use the extraordinary power vested in her to recall and hold them for a special session until they do.
- After everyone from the head of Walmart to the head of NASCAR joined the cause to throw the Confederate flag into the dustbin of history.
Never mind that, if Newsome had one intelligent and/or honest bone in her body, she would have acted long before that idiot White kid killed nine Black people in Charleston’s AME church on June 17. That tragedy compelled the nationwide soul searching she’s now trying to lead.
The point is that everything she claims motivated her on Saturday could (or should) have motivated her on any day of her life before then.
Anyone who knows anything about U.S. history knows that the Confederate flag has always represented the misguided and racist intent of those who wanted to form their own confederacy, primarily to preserve their slave-holding way of life.
This is why flying the Confederate flag in any public place in America should be every bit as anathema and anachronistic as flying the Nazi swastika in any public place in Germany.
(“Rallying Cry to Remove the Confederate flag,” The iPINIONS Journal, June 24, 2015)
Meanwhile, the only thing this grandstanding, self-promoting “filmmaker” accomplished was to force workers at the state Capitol to hoist the flag right back up less than an hour after she took it down. Not to mention the ironic symbolism in the fact that those state workers just happened to be Black; except that she’s probably too self-obsessed to appreciate or care.
Frankly, Newsome climbing the flagpole and removing the Confederate flag is about as praiseworthy as Rosie Ruiz joining the 1980 Boston Marathon at mile 26, ahead of everyone else, and running the last 200 yards to victory.
Clearly such antics do not take an ounce of heroics. Therefore, instead of hailing Newsome for her heroism and allowing her to revel in her 15 minutes of fame, the media should be denouncing her for her narcissism and consigning her to eternal infamy … along with the likes of Ruiz.
Alas, our culture is such these days that narcissists know all too well that they will get all the attention they covet for doing utterly meaningless things like posting photoshopped selfies and staging contrived stunts. So stay tuned for the Selma-like production, South Carolina: Taking Down the Confederate Flag, featuring Newsome herself as the MLK-like character….
Related commentaries:
Rallying cry against Confederate flag…