Largely overlooked in the recent fracas concerning the Charlottesville City Council’s decision to cease celebrating Lee-Jackson Day as a city holiday was a squabble about the birthplaces and backgrounds of members of the city council. Some people expressed outrage that several council members were not true southerners. The loudest cries came from Pensacola.
Oh, my, that’s serious. Especially from a transplanted Floridian, now a resident of a state which some people see as nothing more than where many northerners go to live (ask fans of the Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning). Note that the writer says that New York is “UP NORTH on the flippin’ map.”
But that’s not all …
Is that clear now?
Well, apparently not. After all, Virginia Flagger favorite Karen Cooper also hails from — gasp! — NEW YORK! That’s right … “UP NORTH on the flippin’ map.”
Oh, Cooper may live in Virginia and she may walk around with a Confederate battle flag, but she’s a pretender, not a contender. She’s not a real Virginian … that is, if the city council members are not real Virginians (and thus not real southerners), neither is she. Why? Because Connie Chastain says so. Cooper doesn’t have “a deep, generational connection to the state, its heritage, history, and people.” She’s a recent arrival, a carpetbagger, just hoping to fit in.
We expect the usual cries of anguish and anger from the usual sources. But one can’t claim that Karen Cooper is a southerner without admitting that by the same reasoning the members of the Charlottesville City Council are also southerners, including the one from Glen Cove, New York, which is out on Long Island …
… not all that far from where Confederate heritage favorite Valerie Protopapas lives, in Huntington Station (which is not all that far away from where I grew up in the 1970s). I note that I made my way to Virginia before certain other people did. 🙂
So, if Karen Cooper isn’t a southerner (because Connie Chastain says that such people are neither real Virginians nor real southerners), neither is good old Lady Val.
Otherwise, our friend from Pensacola would have to admit she’s a hypocrite.
This has been quite a week for our friend from Pensacola. She’s admitted the centrality of slavery to the Confederacy and offered an argument about what constitutes a real southerner that excludes two favorites of the heritage movement.
There’s always hope for growth and change.
Crossroads 
Hope? No, not really.
Well, we can expect a few more posts at Backsass. Can’t wait to see the Houdini of Heritage wriggle out of this one.
So the bottom line is, Cooper and Protopapas are copperheads, and the members of the Charlottesville City Council along with the mayor are carpetbaggers…. My Oh My… Why bless her little ol’ heart, no wonder Ms. Chastain’s is in such turmoil and anguish…. #getareallifeConnie
Can I be the scalawag?
Absolutely not. That title is mine :p
Get in line, friend.
What we are going to get from Connie is that being southern is really a state of mind and that since Karen buys into the “Confederateness” of things she gets a pass while the C-ville city council goes against that “Confederateness” and does not get a pass. Therefore, the integrity of “Confederateness” will remain unblemished and preserved.
I am native Virginian (with 12 Confederate ancestors) but Connie doesn’t want to hear what I have to say. It’s like she only cares about the opinion of people she agrees with.
Really?
“New York … UP NORTH on the flippin’ map”
“TRANSPLANTS, as in NOT SOUTHERNERS”
Councilor Szakos is from Mississippi. That’s no secret. She mentioned that again in the Lee-Jackson Day hearing, specifically addressing the point to the rebel flaggers and the folks writing to call her a Yankee outsider. Connie’s presentation obscures that. I wonder why. Or did she not look into the councilors’ backgrounds?
You mean Virginia allows folk born elsewhere to vote? How un-American is that? It also appears Florida allows non-Floridians to vote. Really — look what happened when the Confederates lost. Next you will tell me they even allow African-Americans to vote…..
I remember that bizarre exchange. Ms Chastain had made blindingly racist statements about the Pakistani place of birth of the Mayor and when I called her on it she tried to hide behind the notion that no one, of any race, could authentically represent any place unless they were born there and could trace roots back generations. Of course in so doing she marginalized herself and several of her peripatetic allies.
One wonders whether she ever thinks before she types or speaks. However, I enjoy how she projects her own lust for denigration (apparently the only lust in her life) upon others. The same’s true of her little temper tantrums. I find her most amusing, and a symbol of the feeble intellect in Confederate heritage circles. Can’t wait to watch her explode in another demonstration of her hypocrisy. Pass the popcorn.
And then, when the Alabama Flagger radio show called the Mayor a “raghead,” she responded with a video accusing North Carolina high schools of radical Islamic recruitment. “That video… contains information people who love this country need to know,” she said.
Of course, she later tried to confuse things by denying the video said what it said, while also claiming she hadn’t watched it.
Yet, she continued to accuse the school system of “an attempt to cleanse and sanitize the prophet, and to separate him from the barbaric and savage brutality practiced by his followers.”
Thus speaks Connie Chastain on Charlottesville City Council. No wonder Susan Hathaway employs her.
Here’s that video of Connie’s sister — I wonder where she’s from? 🙂
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/school-brainwashing-kids-into-islam-with-vocabulary-exercises-angry-florida-woman-says-in-viral-video/
“[A]sk fans of the Florida Panthers” – you mean both of them? Actually, I’ve doubled the number – one of them apparently owns a Bruins/Red Wings/Leafs jersey. 🙂
Well, I am sure glad we had True Native Virginians like Winfield Scott & George Thomas in our history.
I got it now. The Confederacy lost because Jeff Davis was born in Kentucky, and therefore wasn’t a true confederate.