Irresponsible local television news reporting

[Reese K Rickards]

I am astonished by the lack of in-depth television news reporting on the highly offensive and controversial civil war statues in Allendale’s Veterans Garden of Honor. WOOD TV, WZZM TV, and WXMI TV News have all reported on the effort to remove the statues of a Confederate soldier and a slave child. But none of television reporters (and their superiors) have ever mentioned “The Lost Cause” or Civil War revisionist history that led to these statues being considered appropriate and erected in the first place. It should be explained to viewers.

All three TV stations have reported the statues supporters insist they represent southern tradition and history. Supporters might just as well insist the statues represent “The Man on the Moon.” Each representation would be equally incorrect.
In truth, at the turn of the last century, nostalgic groups, in particular The Daughters of the Confederacy and The Sons of Confederate Veterans reinvented the cause of the civil war. The Lost Cause states the war was a glorious, yet hopeless fight, the result of a futile struggle to save a gauzy antebellum, to defend state’s rights, and that the war was imposed on the peaceful south by cruel northern aggressors. In truth the south started the war only to preserve slavery, to gain political control over the future of slavery and to protect slave driven profits of southern plantations.

It may well be genuine ignorance in Allendale Township, Ottawa County, and the three newsrooms. Several years ago, when I was news director at WOOD Radio, my phones blew up one day when one of my reporters during a newscast, referred to the location Generals Grant and Lee signed the war’s surrender documents. The reporter, a GVSU graduate, called the location “A-Pum-a-Tox Courthouse. That reporter is now out of the business.

IMHO the local TV stations need to do a better job telling the entire accurate and fair story. That begins with presenting a point of view that a Garden of Honor may not be the appropriate place for a traitorous Confederate Soldier with a slave child on the ground at his feet.

The TV reporters say Local government in Allendale has said the statues will be kept. The reporters logical next question to Allendale Supervisor Adam Elenbaas, should be where Swastika Memorials would be appropriate, where a tribute to the Viet Cong's Tet Offensive, and where a sympathetic historical narrative of the Terrorists who took down the Twin Towers will be placed.

I fear the local television reporters would be no more informed on those three enemy groups than they are on the evil racist Confederate South.

[A1B1C1D1]

While I would not defend past slavery, I would remind you at the present many of us wear clothing and are using electronic devices made by non-white people who don't earn anywhere near a livable wage. Where is the outrage on modern slaves who supply the West with our often unnessasary goodies? Let's keep convincing ourselves that the Chinese people are not coerced by their government to relocate to company towns for virtually no disposable income, and are granted a once a year return home often on trains.

Furthermore, the Union was more than willing to trade with the Caribbean for coffee, cotton, sugar, rum and other rations for the army that were slave labor produced. The outrage seldom leaves our shores. Once in awhile a case like South Africa arises, but more often than not we live in our own illusion.

In my lifetime thousands of North Koreans starved to death after the fall of the USSR, but neither Bush Sr nor Clinton face outrage about that today.

Locally Fr Marquette has so far avoided a lot of scrutiny that St Serra hasn't in California. Neither one owned slaves and both believed they could get non-white people into heaven.

Basically no one deserves a statue based on the standards of today. Does Lewis Cass or Stephen Mason deserve to have a statue at the capital?

[Reese K Rickards]

To be sure many people who are not worthy of recognition have been, Several miles from my home in Florida a state park is named for a member of Jefferson Davis' Cabinet. His only tie to my town is that he hid here for 3 days while fleeing Federal troops at the end of the Civil War. and ultimately escaping to England. His role in history was rewritten by believers of The Lost Cause.,

I know a little about Cass. In the Jackson Administration he was cruel to first nation peoples. I know that he was a supporter of the doctrine of popular sovereignty, which held that the American citizens who lived in a territory should decide whether to permit slavery there.

He resigned (from the Buchanan Administration) on December 14, 1860, because of what he considered Buchanan's failure to protect federal interests in the South and failure to mobilize the federal military, actions that might have averted the threatened secession of Southern states. His likeness does stand in the Capitals Statuary Hall. He died in 1966, and has no record of service in he civil war.

I don't know which Stephen Mason you refer to.

In any case, and with respect your posting has little to do with the issue at hand, the glorification of Confederates in Allendale, and the fact local television news operations have not questioned people and elected officials who blindly accept the flawed "Lost Cause" .

[Big-D]

The reporters logical next question to Allendale Supervisor Adam Elenbaas, should be where Swastika Memorials would be appropriate, where a tribute to the Viet Cong's Tet Offensive, and where a sympathetic historical narrative of the Terrorists who took down the Twin Towers will be placed.

My co-host and I just touched on this topic today. Maybe Allendale will place statues of Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito in the garden so those losers can be "honored."