Slipknot / Stone Sour Frontman Corey Taylor Weighs in on Confederate Flag Debate

[struggle4progress]

By Anya Zadrozny July 14, 2015 11:44 AM

... During his chat with Opie Radio, Taylor commented on whether Confederate flags should be flown above government buildings. In short, this singer says they should not be and shouldn’t have been there in the first place. “Everybody has the right to free speech,” he stated. “But when you’re flying that outside of a government building, it’s not right.” Listen to the interview above.

The singer went on to address the fact that reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard TV show have been pulled from air because of the confederate flag posted on the roof of ‘General Lee,’ the ’69 Dodge Charger that was used in in the show. “It’s interesting, because everybody talks about heritage versus hate and everything,” Taylor said. “History kind of teaches us it is about hate. I mean, you can talk about ‘General Lee’ all you want, yeah it was a great show when I was a kid, but it still stands for the fact that you were trying to keep the right to own people.”

He went on, “I don’t get it. It’s 2015. It’s not like it’s f–king 1901. If you can’t figure out why it’s wrong to put a Confederate flag in front of a place where you’re supposed to have f–king equal justice, then you need to go back to f–king sleep, man, because you’re never gonna figure it out” ...

http://loudwire.com/slipknot-stone-sour-corey-taylor-confederate-flag-debate/

[cemaphonic]

1. Patterson Hood (Drive-By Truckers) wrote a great essay for the NYTimes magazine.

Both the camps here that are a little too quick to jump on the entire South for its ills, and the ones that are a little too blind to the degree to which problems like racism and fundamentalist religion are more entrenched in the South could learn a thing or two here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/magazine/the-souths-heritage-is-so-much-more-than-a-flag.html

Such is the storytelling that pervades the Southern character. The South loves myths and legends, and while they may have roots in the truth, they often overlook certain complexities. We raise our children steeped in “Gone With the Wind” folklore and pretend that all the things we saw in “12 Years a Slave” didn’t happen.