This picture was taken in Portland, Maine.
I like the conclusion to the article accompanying the picture:
Jeremy Haskell was out walking his black Labrador retriever, Jeter, when he encountered the rally.
He said he is a lifelong Mainer and hunter but doesn’t have a need to flaunt a gun in public.
“I just don’t get it,” said Haskell.
It’s not about the right to bear arms, is it?
Update. Another article about this:
The flying of a large Confederate flag at a gun rights rally at Back Cove startled onlookers Sunday, even causing an African-American teenager to refuse to leave his vehicle out of fear, witnesses said.
Thank God we now live in a post-racial world.
r€nato
Obviously this man has an adequate penis.
r€nato
…who the fuck flies the Confederate flag in Maine?
Ohhhh. That explains it. Southern Maine. Fuck those Yankees in northern Maine! SECEDE!
jeff
OK. As a Southerner from a family of ancient pedigree–I’m stumped: What does the Confederate Battle Flag mean??? It must mean something. Any ideas? I am thinking that it’s not a gentle reminder of our fallen children from 1864. Cause that’s Maine, for one. And no decent Southerners use that stupid flag anyway.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Nope, it’s about intimidation. Or attempts at that.
Zam
In other news http://www.wisdems.org/release_details.asp?id=417
RJ
@r€nato:
You asked what I was dying to.
What a weird sight.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I was that age back in the 70s/80s when gun control was, IIRC, a much bigger issue than it is now, in a conservative area where hunting was much less prevalent than golf, and I never remember gun control being an issue in school. I can’t even remember an oral report.
El Cid
I can’t wait for the firearm rights rallies by the African Peoples Soshullist Party and the New Black Panthers and La Raza and the Brown Berets and so forth. And of course they should carry the Confederate flag in African liberation colors. They will be so supported by the 2nd amendment activists.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The only advocacy of gun control I’ve heard in the Obama years was from Michael Bloomberg, who said Obama should be doing more. That would be the same Michael Bloomberg who quit the Democratic Party when it was convenient, and endorsed GW Bush in ’04, doing his bit to get two ‘winger fascists on the USSC, and it’s only thanks to the remarkable good health of JP Stephens that it wasn’t three. So that’s Stretch Bloomberg’s contribution to gun control.
sfinny
Strangely there are many pockets in the northeast that show the confederate flag. I was surprised first on the Jersey Shore when I saw stores selling shirts, etc with both the confederate flag and the ‘don’t tread on me’ flag. Usually that was reserved for northern Massachusetts and above. But there seems to be a mixing of the groups, ideas, and aesthetics these days.
r€nato
@sfinny: so, then, it’s really shorthand for, ‘fuck the ni*CLANG*ers’, eh?
mclaren
Since the guy is wearing a short-sleeved shirt, this must be about the right to bare arms.
Bnut
You’ve obviously never been to the Gulf Coast on spring break…
Bnut
I wonder what ole’ Joshua Chamberlain would have to say about this.
Mike Kay
I didn’t get my public option (even though I didn’t know one existed in 2008) so I not voting, so people who wave the confederate flag can take the reigns of power.
ooops. call 9-1-1. In my spite, I seemed cut off my nose.
JGabriel
No, it’s about the right to shoot people who are smarter than you and beat you in arguments and elections.
.
r€nato
@Bnut: I actually know who he is.
Joshua Chamberlain may well have spared the Union Army from defeat at Gettysburg, which would have been catastrophic.
Ash Can
No, it’s not. Tiny Dick Syndrome is everywhere, and can strike when you least expect it.
sfinny
@r€nato: In some cases yes, but alot of people have bought into what TNC has appropriately described as the washing of the flag. They just choose the rationale of historical admiration for a section of the country. Call it racist and they will vehemently disagree. They think they truly are representing what the ‘founding fathers’ wanted. Regardless of actual history.
JK
Doug,
Thanks for giving Northeasterners something else to feel bummed out about.
Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black
http://cosmicnavellint.blogspot.com/2010/04/imagine-if-tea-party-was-black-tim-wise.html
Bnut
@r€nato:
He and rest of his Maine boys would wheel left and sweep these idiots off Little Round Top, I mean, America.
Davis X. Machina
What the world calls “Maine” is restricted to the part of Maine south of Bangor and west of the Turnpike. But north and east of the Pike, it’s Appalachia. Luckily enough people live in “Maine” to swing elections in a mildly progressive direction — unless they involve civil rights for gays.
And I say that as someone who teaches and lives there. l’ve had my kids effectively Jew-baited off their school bus. I’ve had a rock the size of a cantaloupe put through the back window of my minivan (Kerry & anti-war stickers). I’ve had a student suicide probably caused by at least gay-baiting, if not outing.
The myth that rural New England is full of flinty libertarian types who don’t care what you do, so long as you don’t do it in public and scare the horses is just that — a myth.
Unless it involves guns. Our state constitution stipulates that the people’s right to keep and bear arms shall never be questioned. Theoretically, running a pro-gun-control affirmative in a high school debate tournament is a violation of state law.
slag
It never is.
Warren Terra
His black labrador retriever, you say? No wonder he’s holding a grudge against this fine upstanding Confederate-American, who just wants to honor a proud tradition of racist ignorance.
Cronin
As someone born and raised in Portland, this makes me astoundingly sad.
At the same time, I’d bet anyone five hundred dollars that for everyone one of THOSE guys in Portland there’re twenty who think he’s batshit crazy.
The Dangerman
@Ash Can:
Like cold swimming pools…
/George Costanza
General Sherman
It constantly baffles me how natives of states that fought to preserve the Union can fly the emblem of an enemy that attacked it and killed their ancestors. Do they wish the South won? Do they really think that would have been a good thing? Do they hate their state and wish they were in Dixie? Can we at least have some honesty about what the Confederate Battle Flag meant to Union troops and what it continues to mean to the UNITED States of America?
Cliff
So is that guy planning on losing his pot belly before or after the Second War of Northern (or whatever) Aggression?
Mark S.
Glad we cleared that up.
r€nato
@sfinny: I did a little quick reading on the topic of secession in the United States.
The Confederacy revanchists seem to believe that the southern states had the right to secede, but that right was crushed through the blunt use of force by Northerners in “The War of Northern Aggression”. (which in and of itself is a bullshit bit of Dixie propaganda and disinformation, seeing as it was South Carolinians who fired the first shots.) In other words, might made right and the only reason the South is still part of the Union is due to armed Yankee aggression; theirs was and still is a noble (but lost) cause.
But really, if you look back at discussions of secession – particularly secession vs. revolution – from the adoption of the Constitution onward, it’s clear:
1) the adoption of a Constitution and abandonment of the Articles of Confederation, meant that the United States were indeed intended as a permanent union of states, which did not allow for unilateral secession.
2) Founding Fathers and presidents right up to good ol’ James Buchanan did not believe there was any right to secession:
…and, you know, just to annoy the strict constructionists in that crowd, I don’t see anything in the Constitution that says any state has the right to unilaterally secede.
Warren Terra
@ Mark S
He tools up to mow the lawn? I mean, I’d heard from John Cole that dandelions were a menace, but I had NO IDEA.
Alex
What I wouldn’t give for five minutes in a room with whoever put up that sign, or any of the similar signs around the country, and scream “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?! HOW CAN YOU BE SO STUPID?!” at the top of my lungs. It would accomplish nothing except cathartic relief, but if these wingers fuck up the country anymore, that might eclipse all other considerations.
Andy
The whole “voter enthusiasm” thing is pretty easy to figure out. “Voter Enthusiasm” is directly proportional to “Pissed Off About Negro President.” I don’t know why Chris Matthews and the rest of the Village (Tom Friedman et al) are so intent on making it some complex formula.
All of these assholes are freaking out because they’re thinking, “If a black man can be president, then what am I?”
And they also know the answer: You’re the same ignorant piece of shit you always were. Except now federal agents are going to round you up and put you in a re-education camp until you accept your federally mandated health-care and pull the Wall Street dick out of your ass.
Who can blame them? Wouldn’t you object to some black man advancing your interests in the face of huge corporations who don’t care what color you are as long as you bend over?
I’m not an O-Bot like John, but if this is fascism, please put on some Barry White and hand me some lube.
r€nato
I don’t begrudge anyone their right to bear arms (though I strongly question whether the 2nd Amendment says what most think it says). I understand that some people like to go out and hunt or plink beer cans. I understand why a woman might want to carry a small firearm in her purse. I understand some neighborhoods are rough and you can’t count on the cops for protection or to respond in a timely manner.
But, seriously… most people who feel the need to visibly pack heat wherever they go, have got serious issues. It’s a form of bullying others and overcompensating for shortcomings in the big head or the little head or both.
Comrade Kevin
I’ve seen shits like whoever put up that display in the Bay Area. They’re everywhere.
Yutsano
@Comrade Kevin: The flag is put up to provoke a reaction and to justify their views when the reaction turns negative. Nothing more nothing less.
slag
@Warren Terra: It’s not just the dandelions. How do you think Cole finally ended up getting those birds to eat out of his feeder?
The language of firearms is universal.
Uloborus
Compensation for a sense of inadequacy might be involved, but I think the guns in this case are just intimidation. I’m not sure why, maybe because their bedrock moral code is ‘we’re right and you’re wrong’, but there’s a gigantic streak of bully mentality in the current conservative movement. It was obvious enough with the neocons and their armchair commando squad. Negotiation was silly when you could force someone to do what you wanted, right? It’s on proud display in the teabaggers. They seem to understand no other system. Forget the ‘don’t tread on me’ signs, it’s the way they describe Palin that drives it home to me. They simply can’t grasp any other dynamic than whether or not we’re scared of her. If she’s a good leader, the opposition fears her. If the opposition fears her, she’s a good leader. They seem unable to think in any way other than as bullies.
themann1086
Seeing the TIDOS flag up here in the North pisses me off. It’s bad enough that it’s ubiquitous in the South, but at least they have the flimsy “heritage” excuse. What the hell kind of excuse do people from non-Confederate states have?
None. They’re just racist fuckwits.
slag
Also:
Phew! That was close one. Institutional Left – 1, Big Douchebaggery – 0.
fourlegsgood
Good god. Will the fuckwittery never stop?
Walker
I am a Southerner from a 200+ year old NC family. And I have seen more racism in upstate NY than I saw growing up in the ‘baccer fields of NC.
Rosali
@Zam:
That was a good link that should be shared:
MADISON — In a short-lived press release that the Republican Party of Wisconsin doesn’t want you to see, outgoing Wisconsin College Republicans Chair Lora Rae Anderson blasted the state party for racial intolerance, calling it too “extreme” and saying that it is “alienating a younger, more progressive generation.”
“I’m glad to see the College Republicans Chair admit what a lot of us already know, that the Republican Party today is busy catering to its Tea Party masters, offering more and more extreme slogans, but no real solutions for working families in Wisconsin,” said Mike Tate, Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
TuiMel
When I was growing up in Maine, I knew people who saw the Confederate flag as as symbol of rebellion rather than racial intimidation. Where / when I was growing up, there were not many (read: almost no) non-white people around. More recently, there has been an influx of Africans (Somalis) into certain communities there. It has been a difficult “adjustment.” When I go home to visit, I am sometimes troubled by the bigoted points of view I encounter (sometimes within my own family). Mainers have suffered from / enjoyed some cultural isolation. As a result, suspicion of the “other” can sometimes be ugly.
As I read about the open-carry rally, I kept wondering if I were going to suddenly see my brother quoted…
Sly
Hannibal Hamlin and Harriet Beecher Stowe are rolling in the graves. As are the tens of thousands of men who served in Maine’s volunteer regiments during the war. The 20th in particular.
Fucking turncoats.
Uloborus
@Walker:
Actually, yeah. I guess one reason I lean away from ‘racism’ as the big motivation for the teabaggers is that I grew up in the South, and I didn’t see a lot of it. What I saw was that they hated absolutely everything different, no matter what it was. If you dressed differently or talked differently or were from a different social class, they hated you. If you were gay or smarter or dumber or if they took you for anything but ‘just like them’, they hated you. And I mean hate. Being black could get you tarred with that brush, but I only heard ‘nigger’ used once in well over two decades in the South. I saw less stereotypical racism, but it was being poor from a bad neighborhood they complained about. If you were white in that neighborhood, they looked down on you, too. Being a different race was probably the least important way you could be different.
Cronin
Since my earlier comment’s still in moderation…
As someone born and raised in Portland, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that for every one of these guys driving in to “the big city” from the back woods, there are twenty people who actually live in Portland who wouldn’t mind him falling off the pier.
That said, it still makes me cringe, even halfway across the country.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Some days it seems a little Post-Apocalyptic
Frank
Oh good grief.
It’s about the Darkies.
With those folks, it’s always about the Darkies.
Cronin
*sigh*
Two comments, both in moderation and relatively mild. Can’t for the life of my figure out what got them sent into moderation purgatory.
burnspbesq
@Ash Can:
That’s not it. I have a tiny dick and feel no need to compensate by carrying a gun.
MattR
@burnspbesq: TDS is a state of mind and not related to actual size.
And since the open thread seems abandoned, I would like to say that I paid someone yesterday to come in and give my apartment a thorough cleaning prior to putting it on the market and now I ama fraid to use my bathroom and feel like I should be going outside with my dog.
Batocchio
I saw a fair amount of racism up in Maine and the rest of New England when I lived and worked up there. (Black players in the high school state basketball tournaments brought out some ugliness.) I suppose it’s not quite as lily-white now. I saw some ugliness when I lived in the South, too – and I’m in Los Angeles now, where the cops have gotten better, but their conduct on May Day 2007 was deplorable. Bigotry sure ain’t just a regional thing.
And yeah, I thought of Joshua Chamberlain too, seeing that photo.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
@Uloborus:
The teabagger mentality in a nutshell. They hate eastern, elite, educated, foreign, arugula-eating types and can only understand that hate–so they think the eastern types must hate them too. They can’t conceive of someone NOT hating another who is different. They project the hate they have for Obama on him, and see him as a snobbish, arrogant prick. So they think it’s either us or them, and they refuse to lose.
Wile E. Quixote
@Mark S.:
He probably has a holdout piece hidden in a ZipLoc baggie behind the waterproof laminated picture of Charlton Heston from Ben Hur that he has in his shower.
Uriel
You know what? I take it all back- the one thing that this country really, really needs more than anything is for foaming at the lips assholes like this to get in power, filled up as they are with the fire of indignation over losing
a single electionthier country and the fear of a blackplanetpresident.‘Cause that will definitely give that good ole Overton window a much needed shove to the left, and engender a new wave of stern and spineful democrats who will be able to apply a truly progressive take on the issues this county faces-
as it burns to the fucking ground.
sherifffruitfly
(shrug) It’s the kind of racism that white folks are mostly ok with.
Nothing new about that.
Allan
The ressentiment, it burns!
TenguPhule
I say arm the fucking bears already and turn em loose.
Nothing a Grizzly with a chaingun strapon can’t solve.
asiangrrlMN
@Uloborus: I think, though, with this idiots, there is an unhealthy victim syndrome going on as well. They view themselves as the victims of something or the other so they decide to get their digs in first (as only the entitled can do).
@Andy: Yes, this. “A black man is indisputably better than I am. What the fuck do I do with this info? Aaaaaah! Guns!!”
@Yutsano: Hi, hon. You still up? How you feel?
Mark S.
This made me f*ucking LOL.
This reminds me of a documentary I saw about the Stones. They sang “Satisfaction” on Ed Sullivan or some show like that and the censors blanked out “I’m trying to [bleep] some girl.” If you didn’t know the lyrics, you certainly wouldn’t think Mick was trying to “make” some girl.
asiangrrlMN
@Mark S.: That was f*cking hysterical. I am glad Olbermann didn’t edit it out. After what GS did to us, what’s a little swearing?
Xenos
@r€nato: Re: Joshua Chamberlain…
For the rednecks and petty authoritarians of New England, the use of the ‘rebel flag’ is very much a ‘fuck you’ directed to Joshua Chamberlain (college professor, reformist politician, Latin teacher) and the local elites and those upper middle class types from Massachusetts who clog up the state, make the cost of living increase, and only provide servile jobs beneath the dignity of real macho Mainers.
The racial hostility expressed by the use of the flag is real, but it is part of a general panic that they have lost their homeland to outsiders. Growing up in suburban Connecticut in the 70s I saw the local kids from rural, working class families really attracted to the ‘rebel’ aesthetic of southern rock, and the whole ‘Disco Sucks!’ reaction. Resenting the few black kids bussed in from Hartford was not the main issue… the main point was to rebel, to épater la bourgeoisie.
stuckinred
Here’s a shot of an APC in the Nam with the flag, you really think this bullshit is new huh?
Randy P
@Warren Terra: A .22 is OK if you’re just doing a quick lawn cleanup, but you need a .45 if you really want to get the roots.
asiangrrlMN
@stuckinred: It may not be new, but it’s depressing as hell, anyway.
Davis X. Machina
My take: casting around for a pre-existing, culturally-normed, brand-named way to be angry and powerless, driven from pillar to post by changes they can’t stop and can’t understand, the people of Maine-west-of-the-pike have mostly adopted the Lost Cause precisely because it’s pre-existing, culturally normed, and brand-named.
If our national history were different, they’d be dressing up like Sacco and Vanzetti in Saco and Veazie, but it isn’t, so they aren’t.
Now I’m off to teach their children….
aimai
I saw a sign here at the *&^% Cambridge/Belmont border “Hooray! Arizona!” which I presume to be an affirmation that someone in the house that posted it wants us to have similarly draconian laws. Xenophobia, anxiety, rage, fear, tribalism, and spite are alive and well everywhere in this country.
But on the plus side if the economy turns around most of these people will peacefully go back to work and stop having the equivalent of the hysterical staggers in public.
aimai
aimai
But don’t forget to click the link in the original article and read all the comments. Its like Balloon Juice moved to Maine. The right wing is getting hammered by gun toting Obama voters and sensible people.
aimai
Jason
@Warren Terra: He doesn’t need to “tool up”…he is 100% pure tool.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Yeah, I’ve seen the Confidiot flag on display in England. From what friends say it means the same thing over there that it does here: The person displaying it is a bigoted asshole.
Clearly this young man is a racist!
colleeniem
@Davis X. Machina: Well, you can add one more liberal to come swell the ranks in Portland. I’ll be moving there in July. No kids to bring though.
Honus
@Cronin: readingthe comments to that article, I’d say you’re right:
http://www.kjonline.com/news/gun-enthusiasts-display-weapons-at-rally_2010-04-25.html?comments=y
stuckinred
@asiangrrlMN: I’m down.
Davis X. Machina
@colleeniem: Portland is the northernmost town on Boston’s North Shore. You’ll love it.
Nick
In MAINE?!?!?! They flew a confederate flag in MAINE!?!?!
I reguarly vacation in Maine, their vitrol for the South knows no bounds…and they all have guns!
EarBucket
Dana Carvey and Stephen Colbert: Skinheads From Maine.
russell
I find this totally believable.
On the other hand, my old man was a Southerner from a 200+ year SC/GA family, and a near ancestor on that side of my family kept a black man’s knuckles in his desk drawer as a trophy.
There are ignorant haters everywhere. Doesn’t mean the south didn’t have its share, and more.
And folks living in Maine who want to fly the CSA battle flag and open carry a .45 in public for no reason other than to show off are dicks.
My two cents.
flukebucket
@Uloborus:
What part of the South did you grow up in? Here in the mountains of North Georgia ni**er rolls off of the tongue like water off of a duck’s back.
That is why all I see in the Tea Party is racism. And that is why that as soon as there is a white male Republican President in the White House this bullshit will disappear as quickly as it appeared.
uila
They’ve buried the lede on this one. Rednecks are old news. The real story here is, what self-respecting “lifelong” New Englander has a dog named “Jeter”??
Very fishy!
I demand countertops!
thalarctos
@aimai (#68): c’mon, let’s face it–Belmont (home of Mitt Romney and birthplace of the John Birch Society) would make itself a gated community given half a chance.
numbskull
Never understood the “Southern Heritage” thing. After living in the deep South for a couple of decades, as near as I could tell, all “Heritage” meant waspicking a fight you shouldn’t have started, then getting your ass kicked, and then whining about it for the next 150 years. Oh yeah, and hating. Everyone.
colleeniem
@Davis X. Machina: Heee. Of that I am aware. I’m siked.
New Yorker
Maine, huh? If only Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was alive to ram a bayonet through this guy. There’s something particularly nauseating about people who wave the flag of treason in states that stayed loyal, and the 20th Maine’s heroic defense of Little Round Top on day 2 of Gettysburg makes it even more so.
edit: I see other people have mentioned Colonel Chamberlain already.
FearItself
I’m pretty sure that teenager is going to turn out to have been “the real racist,” just like John Lewis.
Colin Laney
Twice I’ve seen the confederate flag in foreign countries — once in Red Square on the back of a denim jacket worn by someone who otherwise seemed to be punk. The other time was in apartheid-era South Africa when a Pretoria convenience store was using old-fashioned brown paper grocery bags decorated with the stars and bars.
The South African bag I understand. The Russian punker is a complete mystery to me.
Xenos
@uila:
This is the slippery slope of sedition. First comes the political heterodoxy, then comes the disgusting perversions in their personal lives.
Evinfuilt
Isn’t it pretty obvious, Republicans keep saying that as an excuse to be racists; “We can’t be racists for calling him a *******, we’re in a post racial society”.
Jay C
Despite the doofus with the Confederate flag (in Maine) being the focus of our attention (and righteous scorn) – I took a look at the big stenciled sign behind Johnny Reb, and was immediately struck by its astonishing banality and irrelevance.
Other than maybe “lost jobs” , this stock litany of complaints – personalized, of course as “Obama’s change” – is either flatly incorrect (“welfare”, “taxes”), vague (“deceit”, “corruption”) or just mindless buzzwords (“socialism”, “communism”, “lost freedom”) .
Not to mention “gun rights” – the principal non-issue in politics today?
One really has to wonder what this assclown does for a living (assuming he even has a job, which may be the issue right there) that any policy enacted (or even proposed) by the Obama Administration has, or even might, affect him so severely as to elicit this kind of violent reaction?
ADD: OK, assuming facts not in evidence: the exact relationship between Sunglasses Dude and the sign is unclear: I don’t think it’s much of a leap, though to figure that he’d be in agreement with most of it!
LD50
Maine lost a LOT of soldiers in the Civil War. I can’t IMAGINE what they’d think of some subliterate douchebags there flying the Confederate flag 150 years later.
Kilkee
I was there, and the picture doesn’t fully describe it. Just to add to the offense, on the other side of the Confederate flag was a U.S. Marine Corp flag. The truck also had a couple of smaller, limp, worn out American flags, but the message was clear that the Reb was front & center. I mingled with both crowds. I’m guessing that very few of the gunners were actually from Portland. As others have pointed out, once you get outside the grandly named Greater Portland area you are in danger of turning down a dirt road and directly into Alabama. All you have to do to experience this is to study the ‘reader comments’ on the Portland Press Herald site each day, when yahoos from East Baldwin weigh in on the Soshulist Marxist Kenyan threat, just before waddling out to the mailbox to extract their SSDI check.
Tenzil Kem
I am reminded of the Dana Carvey sketch about Maine skinheads.
Kilkee
Oh yes, Colleeniem: you are right to be psyched. Portland is indeed The Way Life Should Be.
Unless you like your winters, well, warm.
Comrade Dread
@r€nato:
Stupid redneck douchebags.
Yeah, you have a dozen or so massacres, and many more shootings at parties and school events, and people start to overreact and not think about all of the positive things about having armed teenagers patrolling the halls.
Uloborus
@flukebucket:
South Carolina and Kentucky, various parts of both. Mostly the cities – such as they are. Do you think that made a difference?
Like I said, it’s not like I didn’t see a lot of hate. The inhabitants are seething with it, looking for any excuse. Race would do, but they had so many options for why they’d scream insults at you out of the windows of their cars as they drove past. Race wasn’t even close to their favorite way of marking you as ‘different’.
b-psycho
@El Cid: I so want to see that. Seriously. I’m not kidding.
jake the snake
@BNUT
He said decent Southerners, not Ole Miss fratboys.
flukebucket
@Uloborus:
I think so. It must be a city thing. Having never lived closer than 50 miles to a decent sized city I don’t know the situations there. I sincerely hope that the South is rising above that type of petty bullshit but when you see it happening in Maine you do start to realize that it is not only in the South.
Frustrating.
colleeniem
@Kilkee: Yes, there is that, but I’m from the Rochester, NY area originally. Snow don’t scare me none.
aimai
@thalarctos:
thalarctos,
I wondered if anyone would throw the Belmont Club in my face! Absolutely. But, since you know the region, this sign was in front of a double decker on Concord Avenue, right at the border between Cambridge and Belmont, not on Belmont Hill (where, in any event, they have their gardeners put the signs out, and only at appropriate moments.) Plus, it was hand lettered on an old piece of plywood. It was so amazingly low rent I nearly crashed the car.
aimai
Redshirt
Lots of Mainers here!
I’m a Mainer, born and bred, though stuck in Boston now.
Most people have got it right:
1. Portland ME: Awesome city. Though it’s really just a big town, but the biggest in Maine, thus a city. So many awesome places to eat. I spend all kinds of time in Portland and love it.
2. Maine is incredibly split: From the Southern tip to about Brunswick ME, is roughly “Mass North”, as the folks in Northern Maine call it. Northern/Western Maine IS very, very rural.
3. I remember seeing Rebel Flags in Maine in the 80’s, so it’s not necessarily new. As mentioned above, it’s more of a redneck rebellion thing than any overt racial statement – because, frankly, most Mainers have probably never met a black person, or a mexican, or a jew. Or if they have, it’s not very familiar. That is slowly changing, but it has to be considered – people are generally afraid of what they don’t know.
4. Finally, I know lots of rednecks in Maine who voted for Obama – I registered some to vote! They share many beliefs with other rednecks around America, yet they have not yet been swayed over to the Rush Limbaugh party, and instead believe in Unions and education and fairness, etc. I love these people and they are the majority of Mainers.
Zak44
“It’s not about the right to bear arms, is it?”
Reminded me of this joke:
A guy goes hunting and sees a huge bear. He takes aim and squeezes the trigger, but misses. The bear approaches the hunter, grabs him and fucks him before letting him go. But the hunter vows revenge. He goes out to the same spot the next day, sees the same bear, takes aim and fires. Again, he misses and again, the bear grabs him and fucks him. The hunter borrows a friend’s rifle the next day. He heads out to his favorite spot and sees the bear again. He gets the bear in his sights, shoots and misses. This time the bear says, “You don’t come out here to hunt, do you?”
Bill Murray
@uila: He got the dog right after his first date, and that was the first question he was asked after the date — jeter
TuiMel
@EarBucket:
Pretty funny.
But, I do recall a sad incident where such Down East good ol’ boys beat and threw off an overpass a person whom they thought to be gay.
Redshirt
There’s drunken asses everywhere – the only question is: Do they have the support of the mainstream? In Maine, no.
DPirate
OMG the children are frightened!
Citizen Alan
@jake the snake:
Now that’s not fair! The reputation for Greek societies at Ole Miss for entrenched bigotry is vastly overrated. Indeed, I’ve known many fraternity members here who have impressed me with their tolerance and respect for members of other races, ethnicities and sexual orienta-BWAHAHAHAHAHA-COUGH-SPUTTER-(catches breath)-Whew!
Sorry, couldn’t keep a straight face through that. Yeah, the Delta Psis and I’ve known a few Sigma Chis who were quite decent after they finally came out of the closet. The rest are pretty much grown in vats from cultures made out of the mutated DNA of Robert E. Lee’s decaying corpse. When I was an undergrad, the SAE’s were openly referred to as “the rape frat,” and the marching band was finally moved out of the student section after the KA’s started a brawl with them because a drunk fratboy wanted to take somebody’s $3000 saxophone home as a souvenir.
General Sherman
Lee was gay.