But as activist-turned-elected-official Tami Sawyer prepared to address reporters, a man waved a Confederate flag behind her. Pacing back and forth, he called the Memphis city council member a “communist.” Then he started singing “Dixie,” the anthem of the Old South.
Read the rest of the story at https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/06/02/memphis-exhumes-confederate-remains/
The author of the original tweet (of a thread) that appears in a featured Washington Post article by former South Florida reporter Brittany Shammas -Miami New Times and South Florida Sun-Sentinel- that was posted last night at 9:39 p.m. is a Memphis TV reporter named Chris Luther.
As of 4:00 pm today, two days later, despite those corrections having been known for more than 24 hours BEFORE the WaPo story ever got posted publicly, Shammas and The Post posted something that they knew or should have known was factually incorrect, and yet they have still NOT made any mention of those corrections.
Corrections which completely change the dynamic of that Luther's tweet, which I think almost any objective person would conclude was included in the WaPo article by Shammas
expressly for the purpose of inflaming readers, not educating or informing them.
Which, to me, is not actually what journalism is supposed to do, as opposed to the purpose served in newspaper or magazine columns, or essays in The New Yorker.
That's a perfect example of why Americans increasingly not only dislike the media, but resent them or loathe them: An unwillingness to publicly admit when they're wrong or have misinformed the public, either intentionally or by accident, because acknowledging it would distract from the media's narrative.
This sort of unprofessional behavior is an epidemic among the South Florida news media, but that's a story for another day.
By the way, some of you newer readers of the blog may not know, despite some previous posts of mine, that I lived in Memphis during the mid-1960's as a young child, and it's where the youngest of my two younger sisters was born.
We were still living in Memphis in April of 1968 when Dr. Martin Luther King was shot, as I've also written about in some detail here previously, as well on Instagram three years ago.
We moved to Miami less than four months later.
1993 ELVIS PRESLEY STAMP -WATERCOLOR OF ELVIS BY MARK STUTZMAMN
It was in 1960's Memphis specifically, and the Mid-South in general, on my family's weekend (often-interminable) drives all around Tennessee, Arkansas and Mississippi, where I first developed my deep and enduring love and preference for many things: the Mississippi River; rhythm 'n' blues; Al Green; The Andy Griffith Show; Dusty Springfield; Petula Clark; St. Louis Cardinals baseball in the summertime, knowing that their catcher Tim McCarver and his family lived in my apt. complex during the off-season; smoky sweet Memphis-style barbecue ribs; cornbread, and, of course, The King - Elvis.
To a devout Elvis fan like me, who knows just about everything there is to know about him, the good and the bad, the best books ever written on Elvis -by far- are Peter Guralnick's masterful "Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley" and the follow-up, "Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley."
Each is written with honesty and empathy, free of the judgmental cant and analysis that doomed other books that purport to tell the tale.
It was also while living in The Mid-South, that I first became greatly interested in the American Civil War, following a summer day-trip to Shiloh, the site of the bloody April 1862 battle.
It was on that summer day trip when I was seven years old that I had a chance meeting with a VERY old man on the battlefield itself.
A man whose said own father had actually fought in the battle.
And lived to tell the tale!
Spending a day there is an awesome experience and really puts things into their proper perspective, just as my later trips to Gettysburg, Harper's Ferry, Winchester, Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania did as well.
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