Skynyrd

[Jim Westrich]

Nearly all Skynyrd T-shirts (including the current one for their 
enlightened 1999 tour with those sensitive men of ZZ Top) include a 
Confederate Flag.  How does one misinterpret this bit of racist 
commodification?  (It's ok to like all kinds of art but deluding oneself 
about the most of obvious of themes inherent in the "packaging" is surely 
not healthy).

Peace,

Jim

At 10:50 PM 11/18/99 , you wrote:
>At 08:14 PM 11/17/99 -0800, Jeffery St Clair wrote:
>
> >In this case, the misinterpretors were a bunch of well-educated, reactionary
> >liberals who got off on hearing themselves denounce a band they knew nothing
> >about. Hell, all they had to do was listen to Skynyrd's The Ballad of Curtis
> >Loew to tell where they were coming from--if they really wanted to know,
>which,
> >of course, they didn't.
>
>Also, the song does not represent anything all that distinctive about
>Skynyrd but rather a recurring theme in the mythology of country music. Tom
>T. Hall has a similar song called Coot Marseilles Blues. The Curtis Loew
>theme also appears plain as day in the personal legends of Hank Williams
>and Bill Monroe.

The white man controls cable and wireless,
Connections by ships with force and duress:
He keeps black races of the world apart,
So to his schemes they may not be smart:
"There shall be no Black Star Line Ships," he says,
"For that will interfere with our crooked ways:
"I'll disrupt their business and all their plans,
"So they might not connect with foreign lands."

	--Marcus Garvey, "The Tragedy of White Injustice"