Lacy (winner, Most Affectionate)
@ Dupont Circle
Q:If your dog was a celebrity, who would it be?
A:"Charlize Theron. She's glamorous."
Q&A: Humorist and Author Roy Blount Jr.
Map It:
Smithsonian
WHEN THE GANGSTERS of the Berkshires roll up to the Mom 'n' Pop in their Saabs, they yell, "Yo, throw me one-a them Blounts." And the proprietor says, "Roy's new collection doesn't drop till May one. But his 'Robert E. Lee' is out in paper." On Thursday, a Smithsonian Associates audience will hear tales of the rebel idol, of whom the displaced Southern humorist and cultural commentator writes, "As a father Lee was fond but fretful, as a husband devoted but distant, as a slave master unvicious but feckless. As an attacking general he was inspiring but not necessarily cogent."
» EXPRESS: How did you come to write about Robert E. Lee for Penguin Lives?
» BLOUNT: They wanted me to write about Mark Twain, but I had just written several things about Mark Twain ... and I didn’t think I had anything more to say about Mark Twain at the moment.
» EXPRESS: Were you well versed in Lee lore?
» BLOUNT: When I was a little kid, I used to play Confederate soldier, but after that I got kinda tired of hearing about the Civil War. ... But I always felt I ought to know more about it.
» EXPRESS: It must’ve taken a lot of research.
» BLOUNT: It actually took me longer than the war to read all the stuff I had to read to write about Robert E. Lee. ... I didn’t even try to catch up with the war south of Virginia.
» EXPRESS: What do you make of Lee’s decision to back the Confederacy?
» BLOUNT: Tip O’Neill said, "All politics are local." [Lee] went with his people. He thought of Virginia as his country more than he thought of the United States as his country. It was not a good career move. Also, his wife would never have forgiven him if he hadn’t gone with the South.
» EXPRESS: If he were alive today, would Lee drive an F-150 with a Stars 'n Bars bumper sticker reading, "Pride Not Prejudice"?
» BLOUNT: No, I don’t think he would at all. I think he’d be embarrassed by a lot of people who do.
» EXPRESS: Your new book, "Long Time Leaving: Dispatches From Up South," contains a few afterthoughts and anecdotes related to Lee.
» BLOUNT: When I was going around promotin’ that Robert E. Lee book, somebody in — where was it? Louisville, I think — came up to me after I did a little reading and said, ”Now, you know, my ancestors were Confederate generals, and the Confederacy was not fighting for slavery.„
And I said, "Well, what were they fighting for then?" And she said, "They were fighting for freedom!" And I said, "The freedom to do what?" And she said, "Freedom to decide whether to have slavery or not."
» S. Dillon Ripley Center, 1100 Jefferson Drive SW; Thu., 6:30 p.m., $13-$25; 202-252-0012. (Smithsonian)
Photo courtesy Random House
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Addison Road
Sadly, Mr. Blount falls into the predictable retinue of liberal, white Southerner who can't get past his Southern roots. Opinions about Lee notwithstanding, the ancedote Mr. Blount attributes to a stop in Louisville perpetuates a modern, revisionist history myth about the Confederacy: that the War was about slavery, and nothing more or nothing less. While there is indeed no War without slavery, the sin that infected all the United States at the time of independence, and for abolitionists who championed the War it was to end slavery, few fought the War to end or perpetuate the peculiar institution. The comment about "my ancestors were Confederate generals," whether true or not, is nauseating. Since most of those in uniform are not generals, let alone officers, this is hardly representative of most Americans that have ancestors that fought in the War for either the blue or the grey. And, in the saddest display of an educated person promoting revisionism, by sharing this supposed ancedote, Mr. Blount by implication perpetuates a myth that white Southerners were all slave owners and that is why they fought. Nothing could be further from the truth. The evils of slavery were promulgated by a ruling elite that was able to use slave labor to institutionalize its hegemony, and artificially maintain class and economic barriers even within the free, white population. So, the very individuals doing most of the fighting, and dying, for the South, not only did not own slaves, but had a theoretical economic stake in its abolishment. So, other reasons must be looked to for one to find out why they fought. I just hope Mr. Blount does not so easily fall into this easy historical way out in his discussion or his book, but is able to confront the real issues.
By anonymous in Arlington , Posted May 2, 2007 3:36 PM