I do not advocate the removal of grave markers. It matters not when they were installed. The marker named those interred. It was a historical marker to those who died in a POW camp.
A different take on this story:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/robert-lee-outrage/537672/?utm_source=atlfb
"Instead, Lee would be sent to Pittsburgh. "
"It’s also true that no one wanted Robert Lee not to call the Virginia game. Late Tuesday night, the journalist Yashar Ali shared a clarifying email from an unnamed ESPN executive that pushed back against this narrative, “This wasn’t about offending anyone. It was about the reasonable possibility that his name would be subjected to memes and jokes and who knows what else … No politically correct efforts. No race issues. Just trying to be supportive of a young guy who felt it best to avoid the potential zoo.”
So it’s not another example of PC culture run amok. It’s an example of people who want to see PC culture run amok."
"…purposely obscure the moral argument over where to put Confederate monuments by painting everyone who wants them moved as hysterical—outraged and offended by everything, sheltered and fragile, and given to erase history.
The ESPN story was such ideal fuel for this fire that commentators leaped straight past gathering facts to sharing preordained conclusions. The nuance got lost—that the network, by its account, was acting to protect a young employee from the toxic excesses of digital culture. (That the move backfired, only serving to produce precisely the backlash against the network and the broadcaster it had sought to avoid.)"
This discussion reminds me of a reaction I had when I visited a large Louisiana plantation some thirty years ago. The tour guide brought us through the impressive mansion and everything was geared to the Gone WithThe Wind glory of southern plantation life. Very little was mentioned about the slaves.
It struck me as exceedingly odd. For me the real story was out in the cotton fields and the slave quarters where unbelievable horrors were carried out. I could not have cared less about the furniture and silverware in the big house. At the end of the tour when I asked about this I was told “slave quarters don’t exist anymore”.
We remember what we choose to remember.
Now the historic plantation tours do also focus on the lives of the slaves. Monticello, Montpelier, Middleton in South Carolina and I’m sure there are others.
^^ Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. - Chinua Achebe
The Whitney in LA specifically focuses on slavery.
https://www.ncdcr.gov/emancipation-juneteenth-celebration-historic-stagville-june-17
Stagville was a huge plantation. Interpretation of these sites has really changed since my childhood.
https://futureafampast.si.edu/participants/dorothy-spruill-redford
At the risk of invoking Godwin’Law: how many public statues can you find in Berlin celebrating the prominent figures of German political and military life from the 1930’s? And it is never said that modern Germany is trying to whitewash history. Erecting public monuments to historical figures is celebrating the causes for which they stood.
Seems to me this is mistaking action for progress. If you could snap your fingers today and every confederate statue/monument/ect. in the country would immediately disappear, I think number of people who would change their behaviors which are problematic would be incredibly small (approaching zero).
Solutions to current problems with racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination are complex. Silver bullets don’t exist. Progress will be slow (we are talking about centuries of history to reverse/change – and its not like the US invented any of these issues so they have been ongoing for much longer). In a world where everything is expected to be instant and many people look to limit communications to 140 characters, that reality can be frustrating and only make solutions more challenging.
Though we have made a lot of progress (despite what a 24/7 global news cycle may make it appear), there is still work to be done and progress to be made. Despite what the lofty marketing statement in the Declaration of Independence says, the US was founded on discrimination; we have been fighting it ever since.
And in terms of the statues, I don’t have a problem with removing any/all of them (not just limited to the confederacy). Vanity and arrogance reflected in them I think is uniquely human (that many project that same vanity and arrogance on various given deities is another issue but for different reasons) and not really productive. But I really think we too often mistake action for progress and pat ourselves on the back for it.
Removing or adding clarifying signage to the statues may not be progress, but would remove an impediment to progress. What message does it tell people when the government honors the cause of the Confederate States (which was mostly the preservation of slavery, according to what those states declared back then) by glorifying it in public statues and monuments where they are to be honored, rather than critically studied?
A good article by a former tour leader at a plantation. https://www.vox.com/2015/6/29/8847385/what-i-learned-from-leading-tours-about-slavery-at-a-plantation
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Please keep this thread on track - it is about the ESPN commentator, not a rehashing of the other thread.
Is that a surprise these days when every news organization races to get the story out first, and filling in any incomplete information with partisan assumptions or speculation is typical?
@ucbalumnus For the record, I didn’t write it. I just quoted it from the article I linked to. 
But no, it’s not a surprise.
^i quoted ESPN’s response on the second page of this thread but people ignore that which would go against their already formed opinion. There will be many who will go on believing ESPN pulled Lee from the broadcast despite being shown otherwise.
Here it is again for those missed it the first time:
“According to an ESPN executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, ESPN asked Lee if he would be more comfortable calling another game but gave him the option to stay. Lee chose to switch assignments, and ESPN accommodated him.”
I wonder if Lee would have thought of that on his own, though? If my employer suggested something like that, I would assume they expected me to accept the offer. If it had been worded, “Lee asked if he could switch assignments, and ESPN accommodated him,” that would be different.
The statement from ESPN was so silly as to be insulting. A prime example of virtue signaling. Nobody would have been bothered by the name of a college football announcer because they are not part of the actual action, and no one cares who the announcers are anyway. ESPN executives have a whole history of doing and saying things to inject themselves into national issues for the purpose of showing the people who matter to them that they are with the correct program.
Really? I could very easily envision tweets and memes from it.
Really. Watching a game, the commentators who aren’t already famous are pretty much invisible, and their names aren’t repeated constantly like important players are.
If there’s anything I’ve learned the past few years, don’t underestimate the internet and its meme creators and tweeters.