Amazon and Apple App Store Eliminate Historical Games Bearing Confederate Flag

This is so fucked up. I was hoping this was an Onion article.

It's one thing to have a Confed flag on your F-150, spouting racist epithets while bumping to Toby Keith (or David Allen Coe), it's another to yank Battle Cry, which is LEGITIMATELY about history.

Fuck America.

I'm not an American so this doesn't really concern me, but this is just plain dumb and the type of knee-jerk PC reaction that is becoming more and more commonplace these days. You won't even be able buy an accurate replica of the General Lee from The Dukes of Hazzard soon. You'll have to settle for a half-assed version without the Stars and Bars.

"We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions." - Ronald Reagan

Battle Cry is back on Amazon.

Death and Taxis wrote: "We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions." - Ronald Reagan

aaaahahahahah

I don't fly the confederate flag often, but when I do it's on fire and shortly pissed on after.

oh man, what an overreaction. This is like when movies were edited post-9/11 to remove the Towers from the NYC skyline.

That's just nuts. Civil war games are a fun way to actually learn about the Civil war.

You can still buy "The South Will Rise Agin" shirts and belt buckles on Amazon.

worse than that, you can still buy Munchkin

The government should FORCE Amazon and eBay to sell Confederate flag stuff! That will teach them a valuable lesson about liberty and freedom!

I see TV Land has now pulled Dukes of Hazzard Reruns due to this Confederate Flag flap!
Let's stop selling confederate flag but Nazi merchandise still available? INSANITY!

I hope you will join me in having them pull reruns off "Maude" of the air!
This show is ANTI-MALE and it deeply offends me! NO MORE "MAUDE" dragging men thru the dirt!

That's ridiculous.

I say this as someone who's ancestors fought for the North, but _loves_ the South. I think it was a mistake for the US Govt to ever let the flag of a failed insurrection to fly on a state capitol. Bring those down for sure, but going scorched earth like this is nuts.

The takeaway from all of this is that this prompted Steve to reference MAUDE.

MAUDE.

What's next, She's the Sheriff?

This just in- GF9 announces upcoming MAUDE: THE BOARD GAME.

One day I was sitting in the back of a bus, a public transit bus, and I was playing my Nintendo DS (gives you a rough idea of the time period). Suddenly I hear someone scream out loud: "What's with all these goddamn foreigners!!" I look up from my game... the bus is full of Chinese and Indian people (common in Vancouver) and when I say Indian... I mean Indian, not Native... in other words.. a 'foreigner' (like me) - not a single white person on the bus ... So I desperately look back down at my game... 'ignore it, ignore it, ignore it' is the mantra chiming off in my head. It feels like the whole bus is staring at me and I can feel that a huge ass kicking is about to happen. A few minutes later I hear another scream: "At least learn the goddamn language!!" I look up again... several roughly brownish faces staring at me... MY GOD! Please don't let them blame me, I'm just playing some goddamn Astro Boy (the Treasure game which was fantastic by the way)... please leave me alone.

Stares, lots of stares. I feel awkward, vulnerable, desperate. What do I do?

Finally my stop comes, I get up and start walking off the bus. In front of me is the one other white person from the bus ride. He was sitting in the same row as me on the other side so I couldn't actually see him until just now. I look closely, a giant Swastika adorns the back of his jacket... hmmmm, I may have found our culprit.

As I get off I see him getting into a fight with two Indian dudes who I'm sure were just about to kick his ass. Thing is... this guy was not a threat to anyone, he was a crazy person and clearly no one thought of him as anything other than that. Now he was about to get the ass whooping that maybe he deserved... maybe not. I don't know how bad it was. But the Swastika should have been the tip off that this guys was bonkers...

That's roughly why I think the Confederate flag should stay legal. I like the idea that it's easy to spot these people. If we create a world where bigotry or racism is straight up illegal... people will just get better at hiding it. PC language gives a road map to bigots so that they can spout their nonsense and appear as if they are normal people. Honest language and honest attire makes it a level playing field. It allows everyone to be themselves and I find the world much easier to deal with if everyone is more honest about who they are. It's also easier to solve social problems because we are more aware of them.

As for historical games... it'll pass. Germany is still dealing with that crap when it comes to Swastika's... America may take some time to get over this. It is worth noting though that the 'confederate' flag wasn't used that often by the south anyway. There are plenty of other less popular flags that were used and those games could use some historical accuracy anyway. So switch it to one of the many others for now and don't worry about it.

JonJacob wrote: It is worth noting though that the 'confederate' flag wasn't used that often by the south anyway.

Here's an interesting short history on the (non) usage of the flag:

I agree with Jacob that the flag should stay legal, but not on any government building that's for sure.

I disagree with many that it 'represents' southern pride as like Disgustipator's video demonstrated it's a battle flag for an army not a flag representing a region. I'm all for pride in where you're from. Wave your Tennesse flag. Wave your Alabama flag. Wave your Texas flag. Etc. This flag however represents an armed force battling for a very specific idea from a specific time. I don't think it represents southern pride and those that say so are just using that as a cover. For example, I can list many great people from Alabama that this battle flag doesn't represent (Harper Lee, Rosa Parks, Truman Capote, Dale Watson, Hank Aaron, WC Handy, etc). The Alabama state flag will do just fine.

BUT...removing the Dukes of Hazard because the flag is on the car is tossing the baby out with the bathwater. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but I don't recall it being racist in the least. In fact, the white cops are idiots and many with confederate names ("JD" Hogg, for 'Jefferson Davis' Hogg) and the Duke boys were, well, rebelling against them. Again, it's been awhile, but I don't recall any racism in the show...but I'm sure there was an episode 'about' racism given the era it was filmed. So, if the flag were used as a prop to represent racism, sure, but I don't recall that's what the General Lee was used for at all. The show was just a comedy about southern whites that wasn't offensive in any way (that I recall...please let me know if I'm wrong).

I think tossing out media just because it contains something is a bad road to travel. Shall we ban Samford and Son? That show contained comedy that ran down Asians and Puerto Ricans frequently. It's content was far worse than anything in the Dukes of Hazard. How about Married with Children and all it's blatant sexism? It'd be silly to ban these shows.

On the flip side, I wonder if overreactions like this are going to cause sales of confederate battle flags to go _up_. Moderates who fear a heavy handed govt may start reaching for this flag after debacles like this. This is dumb.

(Damn...the General Lee has to be one of the most iconic cars in media too. Where would it rate? After KITT, but before the Back to the Future Delorean?)

The thing with the General Lee is that its like a themed race car. He was on the Confederate side in the war so its only natural the car would have a Confederate flag on it somewhere. In other words, they didn't make a Confederate flag themed car and the only thing the flag on that car stands for is General Lee. The flag represents other things to people elsewhere, but here I think its just the Confederate battle flag since the car is named after a Confederate General. I think its used appropriately as the flag of a respected former enemy just like on the war memorials.
When people fly the flag for reasons other than historical reference is when its inappropriate. So if someone puts a Confederate flag in front of their house in remembrance of their grandfather who died in the war its okay. When someone puts a Confederate flag on their truck because they're either racist jerks or want to rise again as an enemy of the U.S. its not okay, imo.

We sort of choose what to be offended by and quite often when several interpretations are available we default to the worst one.

So if I wear a backwards Swastika then nobody thinks to themselves that this is the original meaning, the Buddhist symbol... they default to Nazi's and if I wear the confederate flag which to me means almost nothing (growing up in northern Canada it's only real connotations were Iron Maiden and Dukes of Hazard - some vaguely rebellious symbol) we default to the worst possible interpretation again. The original meaning be damned, in cases where the original is the most offensive (like the confederate flag) we choose that and where the original isn't offensive (swastika) we find something offensive and choose that.

My second child is due in September for example... at first the due date was Sep 10 .. ok fine. I'm excited about it. Then the due date changed to Sep 12th.. what! Are you just afraid to say Sep 11? It's odd how we default to the worst possible thing, this is the birth of my second child... I'm not worried about the day right now. There was a joke I heard from Jim Hamilton that illustrated how we think about this shit.. in a way. "Did you know that Kraft Food Products refuses to put the due date of Sep 11 on their food products for fear of people having negative associations with their food? What kind of world do we live in where I can just make that up?" - see, we look at it so negatively that it's instantly believable. Besides the obvious misdirection at play that is a big part of the joke.

I did find it really odd that some States in the south still flew that flag on their government buildings. I couldn't figure out how this was ok... not just from a race angel either but just from a 'this side lost' angel... isn't the first thing the victors do is remove the old flag and put up their own? How many generations since that damned war and people are still gripping about it? You lost, get rid of the damned flag.

Amazon is still ok with treating their employees like shit, every other week some article comes out about how shitty they are to work for... but look! They're awesome human beings and won't sell this flag anymore. Yippeeee! I hate when corporations like this pretend to be moralistic.

JonJacob wrote: I did find it really odd that some States in the south still flew that flag on their government buildings. I couldn't figure out how this was ok... not just from a race angel either but just from a 'this side lost' angel... isn't the first thing the victors do is remove the old flag and put up their own? How many generations since that damned war and people are still gripping about it? You lost, get rid of the damned flag.

I'm under the impression it wasn't on a government building, but was on a memorial next to the building. The war was brother against brother. People on the winning side lost family who fought for the losing side and vice versa. Its always been a complicated, personal, and American issue since the civil war.