Evil Firefly Haters

POSTED BY: Succatash
UPDATED: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 07:06
VIEWED: 55301
PAGE 13 of 20

Hey, LordJ,

Sure, your points are taken. I just noticed that at the top of the thread there was much tension and hysteria. The idea that Firefly is bad because Joss chose not to address slavery (or the historical lack of women's rights, or bias against Catholicism, or the fact that poor white folk not owning land were treated, sure, WAY better than non-whites, but not exactly as well as the landed gentry) is ludicrous.

When you say, "Wouldn't it've been nice if Joss, or someone, were to address these things," I say, hell yeah. Could make a good story. Just not the one Joss is telling. This far down this ten-mile thread, I see that everyone's very civil, more relaxed, often erudite as the devil addressing Congress, and even funny (do I not see the demonized Willie himself saying Jewel looks cute in bloomers? Go, WZ!), so I applaud the continuation of this thread, and the efforts of its participants.

I'm just glad that we can say, "Hey, Firefly raises this issue in my mind," and have a conversation, rather than dictate what constraints to put on Joss and other creators when they look for inspirations for their fictions.

Happy new year.






"Bang."

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Aaarghyle--
There really IS more than one way to skin a gorram cat! I really liked your analysis, it makes a lot of sense.

Spike--props.

NicolaClarke--this thread is so long already, what the heck...
Willie recommended Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution which is weighty (600p!) but fun to read, recent and comprehensive.
Also: Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsals for Reconstruction, focuses on Federal policy in the Sea Islands of GA during the CW, as a test case for some of the solutions proposed later.
Gerald Jaynes, Branches Without Roots, is an economic history of Rec. that is interesting but I found it difficult to get through.
Albion Tourgee, A Fool's Errand, is a great fictional account by a white Ohioan and CW vet who moved to North Carolina after the war and became politically active.
I also think that this Monday 1/5 or next Monday 1/12 PBS is showing the beginning of a two-part documentary about Reconstruction.

Willie--you've clearly got marketable writing skills! And send me an email at cfjsc2@eiu.edu so I can give you unsolicited advice about grad school.

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LordJ wrote:

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I think you are conflating two separate issues. If you look at a)the debates in Southern state legislatures after the initial wave of secessions in 1861, or b)pronouncements of the political leaders of the Confederacy during the war, you will find that, for those folks the war was precisely about the freedom to continue enslaving African-Americans. That is to say, the political class of the Confederacy was not just proslavery but believed slavery to be the one and only reason for secession.

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I have to respectfully disagree with you LordJ. Though no one can deny that slavery was an issue, I do not think it the "only reason for secession". There are other matters, listed by the states that left the union in their declarations of secession, not the least of which is the matter of state's rights to self government. The Constitution specifies that any powers not given to the central government are reserved for the states themselves. Many Southern states were afraid that Lincoln and his Federal gov't would incroach on those rights. Many of the Founding Fathers were from Virginia and other Southern States and they were strongly anti-Federalist, not wanting any central government to hold unlimited power over them for fear of a return to the type of system they suffered under English rule.

Granted, slavery and its abolishment were a concern, especially amongst rich land owners and politicians. No doubt many of these influential people put their own spin on things in order to maintain their powerbases, but could not the same be said of the North?

Lincoln is quoted in many debates and in personal writings as not truly caring if African Americans were ever freed, so long as the Union was preserved. In a 1858 debate, Lincoln said he felt the whites should always maintain a dominate role to the black man, and that he did not abdicate their voting or holding any office.

Many Northern generals held slaves, and did so until the ratification of the 13th amendment, in December of 1865, eight months after the war, that most of those men gave up their slaves. Some held on to their slaves until as late as 1868 or 1869. Grant himself kept slaves until 1868 being quoted as saying that "good help was so difficult to find" and he was loathe to see them go.

Apparently politics and men in power on both sides played the "slavery" card to their own advantage.

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The question of why white southerners (something on the order of 2/3 of the white male population between the ages of 20 and 45 or something) fought in the war is of course a very different one. Not doubt many joined for the reasons you claim your ancestors did, browncoat, because they believed their country was being invaded by an essentially foreign army.

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I agree with you totally on that point. You might also add that many went off in search of glory and some grand adventure. Looking through old letters and the personal journey of one of my ancestors has yielded a feeling from some that the war would be short and that it was some great adventure and a chance to heap honor and glory on themselves and their family name.

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I also think it is likely that many heads of households who didn't own slaves had a reasonable aspiration of slave ownership, and that owning slaves and farming commercial products like tobacco, rice, and cotton represented what little upward mobility existed in the antebellum south, esp. in the context of the 1850s cotton boom. James Oakes notes, for example, that while the majority of slaves lived and died on large plantations, the majority of slaveholders owned one or two slaves.

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I don't agree with your belief that "many" heads of households aspired to slave ownership. From records and receipts on display in the Museum of the Confederacy here in Richmond, VA, slaves sold at public auction for far more than any household could hope to amass in several years. I have personally seen receipts showing a total for one slave from $2500.00 to $4000.00. I am not sure what tha

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well...i'm certainly confused all of this.
the show was canceled after airing 11 shows.
what was there to hate so much?
issues that the show didn't run long enough to address?
sheesh...
ya can't make everyone happy. especially in 11 episodes.

"Take me, sir. Take me hard."

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Quote:

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browncoat posted:
Lincoln is quoted in many debates and in personal writings as not truly caring if African Americans were ever freed, so long as the Union was preserved. In a 1858 debate, Lincoln said he felt the whites should always maintain a dominate role to the black man, and that he did not abdicate their voting or holding any office.

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I think you mean "advocate."

In the same debate he also said that slavery was a moral wrong which should be abolished. It should also be noted that his views about the equality of black and white people evolved considerably during the war.

His position of placing the Union above the abolition of slavery (abolition being something he always advocated) had more to do with what he thought were his moral and legal responsibilities as president, as well as what the constitution would allow him to do, than it did with his personal convictions. As president he had to preserve the Union (or so he felt), however as president he was also protector of the constitution, which itself protected slavery. The fact that he worked very hard to find ways to end slavery despite it's being protected (and despite the majority in the North who either opposed this or didn't care) shows what his true feelings were.

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I don't agree with your belief that "many" heads of households aspired to slave ownership. From records and receipts on display in the Museum of the Confederacy here in Richmond, VA, slaves sold at public auction for far more than any household could hope to amass in several years. I have personally seen receipts showing a total for one slave from $2500.00 to $4000.00. I am not sure what that would equate to in today's economy, but I know it was a great deal of money in the 1860's and far more than I daresay that 90% of the Southern population could spare for labor.

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From the American Heritage Dictionary:
Aspire - To have great ambition, desire.

Your argument that southern heads of households did not aspire to own slaves because they couldn't afford it is ridiculous. What else do people aspire to than things that are presently out of their reach? If you have something, or can get it easily, there is no need to aspire to it. In any society the poorer elements will aspire to have what the rich have, whether it means cars, big TV's, or slaves. It would contrary to human nature if some non-slaveholding whites in the antebellum south did not aspire to own slaves.

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Again I have to disagree with you. I respect your opinion, and understand where you are coming from, but I think it is a matter of perception and your interpretation of history.

Louis Farrakhan himself said it best when he said that African Americans spent more years in chains beneath the flag of the United States than they ever did under the Confederate flag. The only difference is that the Union used slavery as their rallying point, and freed the slaves. How different would it have been if the Confederacy won, and freed the slaves, seeing it as an immoral institution that could no longer exist? Would they then revere the stars and bars and damn the flag of the U.S.? Food for thought, no?

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Why would the Confederacy free the slaves if they won the war? The only time the Confederacy considered doing so was as a desperate, last-ditch war measure when they were running out of troops - and then they only considered freeing slaves that fought for the Confederacy. They never put this idea into practice, and the General who first suggested it, Patrick Cleburne, was admonished and kept from advancement while his idea was suppressed.

"The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong".
-Robert Toombs

In other words, if slaves make good soldiers then they would make good citizens and must be equal to whites. If this fact means the end of the revolution, then the revolution is about slavery, and more importantly, whether black and white people are tru

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"...it is pretty obnoxious to keep coming back and talking about how much I hated your show..."

No shite, Sherlock.
Jeez! I'm sure glad I have more things to do in life than post on the fanboards of shows I hate.
And there are quite a few seeing that the state of broadcast TV is quite dodgy at best.





Take me, sir. Take me hard."

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WZ wrote:

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I think you mean "advocate."

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Thanks so much for pointing that out. I know the difference & meant to type advocate. Not sure why it came out as abdicate.

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In the same debate he also said that slavery was a moral wrong which should be abolished. It should also be noted that his views about the equality of black and white people evolved considerably during the war.

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Are there sources to cite this change of views. Everything I have read shows he backed abolishing slavery, but he was perfectly content to leave all slaves in chains if it brought the South back into the Union, he said so several times, up to and during the War.

I see no evidence of his opinion changing to think of blacks as anything more than inferior to whites. I have even seen quotes where he proposed sending blacks back to Africa as a "colony" because they would be "more comfortable" in their "native land", never mind that slaves by that point had been born here and had never seen Africa.

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His position of placing the Union above the abolition of slavery (abolition being something he always advocated) had more to do with what he thought were his moral and legal responsibilities as president, as well as what the constitution would allow him to do, than it did with his personal convictions. As president he had to preserve the Union (or so he felt), however as president he was also protector of the constitution, which itself protected slavery. The fact that he worked very hard to find ways to end slavery despite it's being protected (and despite the majority in the North who either opposed this or didn't care) shows what his true feelings were.

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Odd that he could not free slaves still held in the North and in states & territories controlled by the Union. The Emancipation Proclomation did not free a single slave, save those in the Confederacy, which the Union did not control. It was nothing more than justification on paper, and specifically left in bondage slaves in border states and areas controlled by the Union. Why were they not freed if Lincoln's goal was abolishing slavery? He could have easily proposed a bill to abolish slavery in the Union. No doubt it would have carried.

Quote:

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From the American Heritage Dictionary:
Aspire - To have great ambition, desire.

Your argument that southern heads of households did not aspire to own slaves because they couldn't afford it is ridiculous. What else do people aspire to than things that are presently out of their reach? If you have something, or can get it easily, there is no need to aspire to it. In any society the poorer elements will aspire to have what the rich have, whether it means cars, big TV's, or slaves. It would contrary to human nature if some non-slaveholding whites in the antebellum south did not aspire to own slaves.

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My arguement is ridiculous? LOL! No more so than your assumption that every Southern head of household wanted slaves.

From Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Assumption: : an assuming that something is true b : a fact or statement (as a proposition, axiom, postulate, or notion) taken for granted

Assuming is exactly what you are doing when you assume that everyone in the South wanted slaves.

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Why would the Confederacy free the slaves if they won the war? The only time the Confederacy considered doing so was as a desperate, last-ditch war measure when they were running out of troops - and then they only considered freeing slaves that fought for the Confederacy. They never put this idea into practice, and the General who first suggested it, Patrick Cleburne, was admonished and kept from advancement while his idea was suppressed.

"The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong".
-Robert Toombs

In other words, if slaves make good soldiers then they would make good citizens and must be equal to whites. If this fact means the end of the

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