The Media Research Center is a little conflicted about how to treat the Confederate flag now that it’s become an issue in the wake of the Charleston massacre.
In a June 21 Newsbusters post, Brad Wilmouth fretted that a CNN correspondent “highlighted an incendiary tweet from actor Charles Pierce comparing the Confederate flag to the flag of Nazi Germany.” Wilmouth didn’t explain why he feels that is an inappropriate comparison.
(Actually, the “incendiary tweet” in question is from actor Wendell Pierce; Wilmouth must be thinking of writer Charles Pierce, whom Wilmouth’s boss, Tim Graham, just can’t seem to stop selectively quoting.)
The next day, the MRC had finally figured that, yes, the Confederate flag is a bad thing to be associated with — and, accordingly, tried to hang it around the necks of Democrats. Curtis Houck complained that ABC News “spun the Confederate flag as a problem for the 2016 Republicans. No mention was made of Bill Clinton, the spouse of a 2016 Democratic candidate, and his past honoring of the Confederacy.” To back this up, Houck has to go back to a 1987 bill passed by the Arkansas legislature and signed by Clinton as Arkansas governor setting the design of the state flag — highlighted by the Daily Caller — in which it’s stated that “The blue star above the word ‘ARKANSAS’ is to commemorate the Confederate States of America.” Yep, signing a bill acknowledging the historical significance of a star on the Arkansas state flag equals Clinton “honoring” the Confederacy as far as Houck is concerned, even though the flag itself does not otherwise emulate the Confederate flag.
Houck engaged in even more desperate spinning of “calls by South Carolina officials to remove the Confederate flag from the State Capitol’s grounds,” huffing that “the major broadcast networks failed to note the full context of the flag’s history in the Palmetto State and how it was a Democratic Governor who first hoisted it above the Capitol dome in 1962.” Houck proudly pointed out how Fox News advances the conservatives’ agenda of deflection on the issue, touting how Fox anchor bret Baier “felt it was pertinent to provide viewers with some ‘important historical context’ in that ‘the flag was raised over the state capitol by Democrat Fritz Hollings – then Governor’ in 1962 before being ‘taken off the state capitol by Republican David Beasley after pressure in 1998 and put on the State grounds.'”
Needless to say, Houck doesn’t note that Baier’s “important historical context” is itself lacking historical context. There’s no evidence Hollings himself personally “raised” the flag in 1962. According to Daniel Hollis, a former University of South Carolina history professor who served on a 1961 state commission to plan the state’s observance of the 100th anniversary of the Civil War, the flag was installed atop the state capitol not by order of Hollings but, rather, by a state representative, John May. The flag was only intended to stay atop the capitol for a year, but the resolution authorizing it did not include a removal date, and it stayed there until 1988.
Far from being an uncompromising segregationist, Hollings as governor actually urged his state to accept integration peacefully, which it did: South Carolina lacked much of the overt resistance to integration found in other Southern states.
Aside from the misleading and incomplete history, Houck’s attempt to blame Hollings for the Confederate flag — and, by association, all Democrats today — dishonestly ignores the recent history of the Democratic Party. As we detailed the last time the MRC feigned ignorance of Southern political history, Southerners started abandoning the Republican Party in the 1960s after it supported integration and other equal-rights laws. The South has always been conservative; the Civil Rights Acts of the era caused those conservatives to shift their allegiance over a generation from Democrats to Republicans.
If the MRC can’t even do the basic research needed to keep itself from looking like an idiot on such issues of simple history, why trust any of its other “media research”? (Hint: You can’t.)
(Image: Reuters/PBS)