It seems that our friends over in Georgia are embroiled in a nasty little flag fight.
Sonny Perdue, after riding a tide of anger over the 2001 flag change straight into the governor’s office, finds himself with a political “tiger by the tail.”
The latest deal works like this: Georgia immediately gets a new flag to replace the Denny’s placemat they have now. The “new” new flag is pretty much a carbon-copy of the first national flag of the Confederacy, with a few minor additions.
Pending legislative and the governor’s approval, the flag goes up immediately. But wait-there’s more!
In November of this year, Georgians will go o the polls to say whether or not they like the “new” new flag. If they don’t, yet another election will be held in March of 2004 that will pit the pre-1956 flag against the flag that flew from 1956 to 2001.
This “healing” process, as Perdue calls it, has split the Georgia Democratic Party, angered black leaders and organizations, cast the spectre of economic boycott across the state and caused one state Representative to say, “I like to think Georgia is more advanced than Mississippi, but I’m not sure.”
So, since everyone and their brother has an idea for a state flag design for Georgia, allow me to submit my own.
The flag of Georgia should appear as follows:
“With width two-thirds of its length; with the union square, in width two-thirds of the width of the flag; the ground of the union to be red and a broad blue saltier thereon, bordered with white and emblazoned with thirteen (13) mullets or five-pointed stars, corresponding with the number of the original States of the Union; the field to be divided into three bars of equal width, the upper one blue, the center one white, and the lower one extending the whole length of the flag, red-the national colors.”
Sound familiar? That’s because it was taken word for word from the Mississippi code. That’s right. I think Georgia should adopt a state flag that is a carbon copy of ours.
Why? Because if any of those proud progressives in Georgia thought for one minute that “Georgia is more advanced than Mississippi,” then they were deluding themselves. Take out the Metro Atlanta area and the cult of personality surrounding the governor that has developed in the rural parts of the state and you’re left with … us.
Now before any of you Georgia progressives put fingers to keyboard to rebut, know that I lived in Georgia for 22 years. Just because the Olympics came to town in 1996 doesn’t change the fact that Georgia is still Georgia. Like Guns and Roses once sang, “You ain’t special, so who ya foolin’?” Not me, that’s for sure.
They may believe that they’ve led the way in cultivating a “New South” image ripe with economic development and some higher form of civilization, but Georgia isn’t any better or more advanced than Mississippi.
This new controversy and the rancorous rhetoric that will accompany these elections will only prove my point.
Tony Odom is a graduate student in the history department.