Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 14: Sherman's March Madness (w/ special guest: Campbell Robertson)

Episode Date: June 22, 2017

In episode 14, we welcome the southern correspondent for the New York Times, Campbell Robertson (@campbellnyt), to talk about the movement to remove confederate monuments in New Orleans and elsewhere in the south. Tom and Tarence then do a dramatic reading (sort of) of Brad Paisley and LL Cool J's 2013 song, "Accidental Racist."

Just a good old boy, never meanin' no harm Beats all you never saw, been in trouble with the law since the day they was born Straightenin' the curves, yeah, blindin' the hills Straightening the curves, yeah, blinding the hills. Someday the mountain might get up, but the law never will. Making their way the only way they know how. That's just a little bit more than the normal of life Woo! Hello? Campbell!

Hey, guys. What's happening? How are y'all doing? Surviving. Yeah, we're pretty good. I've got a sinus headache, but... Oh, that sounds lovely. Yeah, oh yeah.

Best kind. Oh, that sounds lovely. Yeah, oh yeah. Best kind. So, Campbell, welcome to the podcast. Joining us today, I'm Terrence. I'm Tanya. And Tom.

Hey, y'all. I'm honored to be on it. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us today. And our guest is Campbell. I guess you could go ahead and give a little... You can introduce yourself better than we could. I doubt it. I'm Campbell Robertson. I'm a national reporter with the New York Times. I spent the last eight years or so covering the south out of New Orleans, and I just moved like four days ago to Pittsburgh.

The Paris of Appalachia. Yeah, yeah, no, that is polar opposite pretty much. But both great towns. I like them both a lot. I don't know anything about Pittsburgh, but I'm kind of looking forward to it. We have a good friend up there who's from the county we live in that we can connect you with. He's a listener of the show. I was up there not too long ago.

I love Pittsburgh. Well, I will take it because I genuinely don't know it. I don't even know how many people are in a hockey team. Have you been to Primanti Brothers yet? Have I been to what? To Primanti Brothers? Yeah. I haven't been anywhere, man.

I'm moving, so my locals, I just go to Subway every day and then come back here and unpack boxes. I haven't done anything. That's been my life for the past three years. I just do it for fun. All right. So let's get started, shall we? Let's get into it.

All right. So, Campbell, we wanted to have you on today specifically to talk about – I think we kind of just wanted to use this as a jumping off space, but we're going to see where it takes us. We wanted to talk specifically about New Orleans and even more specifically than that we wanted to talk about the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans so basically we wanted to talk about like how it got started you know how this sort of movement got started

where it came from we know it didn't just come out of thin air like not like the mayor just woke up one day and was like, time to get rid of these things. You know, these are bad. Right. So I think our listeners would probably want to know sort of like a little timeline on when these conversations first started and some of the major players

and how that happened, if you could give that to us. Well, there's a group called Taking Down NOAA, which has been pushing for this for a while. And one of the main players, again, is Malcolm Suber. He's a big activist in town. It's interesting. I talked to him for a little bit recently, and he's from South Carolina. And his family lives on the same grounds where their ancestors were slaves. But they don't want to talk about it, which is interesting, I think.

But anyway, they'd been pushing for a – to take down the monuments for a while before the Dillon Roof stopped. And I think the mayor had been sort of entertaining it, not publicly. And then after the Roof killings, he kind of publicly came out and basically said, I think we need to do this. The Landmark Commission voted and the city council voted, but basically this is the mayor's baby. And the city itself never voted at a bigger referendum. And so he is taking the heat.

He shouldn't get all the credit because these activists were pushing for long before he came out publicly. But he's getting a lot of the credit, and he's definitely taking a lot of the heat. You know, the sort of uptown, which is the New Orleans way of saying sort of wealthier whites, just are livid, man. I completely underestimated.

You know, I've lived there for a long time. And I thought in good old traditional New Orleans tradition, people just kind of say like, well, I could have strong feelings, but I'll have another Sazerac, and we'll talk about it later. But people are angry. They're still angry about it. And that's mainly focused on the mayor. And so a lot of this anger is coming from, like you said, wealthy whites? Well, the surprising amount of it. I mean, I knew there would be opposition. You know, the immediate suburbs of New Orleans, there's a long history of racial stuff there.

I mean, that's where, you know, armed men tried to block, including police, tried to block people fleeing the city. Katrina, David Duke's legislative district on one end, on the other. So that's one end, you have David Duke's legislative district. Right, who's a white, I mean, a little bit, just short background on David Duke. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. No, it's okay. short background on David Dukes. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry.

No, it's okay. I'm sorry. He was a former leader of the Klan, or a grand wizard in the Klan. Now he ran for governor last year, and he's sort of a random just talking head racist guy now who still lives in the suburbs. Was he ever in the state legislature, Campbell, or did I bring that up? He was a state legislator, and he won a majority of the white vote in 1991, but he lost the election. Right. Oh, I'm sorry.

He ran the majority white vote when he ran for governor, but lost the election to Edwin Edwards, who is a four-term governor. who is a four-term governor, and that spawned the famous bumper sticker because Edwin Edwards is this sort of famously philandering, kind of ha-ha, crooked, you know, Cajun playboy guy. And he was running for a third term against David Duke. And the bumper sticker that that election spawned was vote for the crook it's important and uh people still talk about it and the edwin edwards who is really smart he's 80 something years old his wife is in her 30s i think now his third wife naturally Wow and he had a great he had a great life so that election spawned that bumper sticker and Edward said during

that election he said somebody said what are you and David Duke have in common and he said well we're both wizards beneath the sheet and he said this apparently the first time he said this is to the guy who went on to become the executive editor of the new york times who's from new orleans he was a reporter at the time in in louisiana and he's in this is the famous selection where edward says i only way i'll lose this election if i'm caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. Wow. That's Edmund Edwards. Wow.

He's great, man. He eventually went to federal prison. Well, all great governors do, I guess. All the interesting ones. So anyway, David Duke, the legislative district that he won, he got to the legislature, is the New Orleans suburbs. And the other suburbs were people who armed themselves to keep black New Orleanians from fleeing the city after Katrina. And then on the other side of the city are suburbs where white flight suburbs, where to prevent lowincome housing going up, they actually tried to pass a law that says you could only live in the suburb

if you had tested blood, you had blood relations in the suburbs or something like that. Holy shit. I mean, crazy stuff. Wow. That was like six years ago. Yeah. Seven years ago.

God. So, okay. But anyway, I'm sorry, I'm long-winded. No, it's all right. I do the suburbs of the Fired Up. What I was surprised about, maybe naively, was how much animosity over the monument removal came from white Norlinians.

Sort of old money white Norlinians were just really worked up over it. And what was, did you talk to a lot of these people? Like, what was their, like, why? Why were they so worked up about it, I guess? It's funny, a lot of them wouldn't go on the record, which is interesting, kind of telling. The people at, you know, who were actually protesting at the monuments waving flags and stuff

they tended to be from alabama mississippi um you know they'd camp out for days but you know then you'd get in private conversation with some of these uptowners and you know they talk about well this is our city and like these monuments or history and it kind of starts as a preservationist argument but then it's sort of slippery slope do we rename jackson square do we rename all the streets in new orleans i mean you know race is deep in new orleans uh and so there's a little bit of a, I think there's a frustration about anything that sort of threatens the balance of who has power there. I don't want to over-interpret it. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, one of the things I thought was interesting in one of the pieces that y'all had published, it was, I can't remember the name of the woman you published it with, but it was stories that you were telling. you had sort of quoted a few people um one of them was like the great great great grandson of um jefferson davis uh well he was a descendant of jefferson davis i can't remember what i think it was great great grandson yeah yeah I think it was great-great-grandson. Yeah. And it was interesting.

It's interesting to see how a lot of these stories, like we talk about history as if it's history, but when you read these stories, you see that it's not. It's living with us every day. History is never dead. And it is with us all the time. And that was on both sides of the issue. It seemed like that was a huge issue. This question over who gets to tell history and what history is going to be sort of like hegemonic, if that makes any sense.

Well, it's interesting because I think on the white side, there's this idea. It's like, look, this is history. Why are we tearing it down? My great-great-grandfather. Whereas, and I say white side, which is reductive because there are plenty of white people who wanted a monument. It's not perfectly lined up like that. But opponents of taking the monuments down who are white use this argument about, well, this is history. And my great great grandfather was lieutenant so and so. But, you know, you talk to black folks and they're like.

Who gets who says it's history? We've got history too. It's just not in monuments. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's like who gets – the reason y'all have monuments is because y'all are in power. And so what I found, and this is what Katie Rechdahl is the reporter I worked on that with.

on that list and what she had found was that black people in New Orleans in the course of the debate over this had started doing sort of DNA testing and archives work and had been discovering relatives that they didn't even know about a year ago in where they were and in what plantations they were on and all that stuff and so this is just something that they were, you know, a lot of these people were just sort of learning about now. Right. Something I was going to add to that.

No, I can't space that. Yeah, no, so one of the things that Jefferson Davis, that's a really good point you bring up. One of the things that Jefferson Davis, that's a really good point you bring up. One of the things that Jefferson Davis's great, great, great grandson or whatever was talking about was that, you know, we can't just erase history. We can't just like, you know, these are monuments, but people have to, we need to have discussions about them and all this. And it's like, okay, fair, whatever. But it's like you said, there are plenty of people. There are plenty, and you didn't say this,

but there are plenty of people who are in the South who fought against Jefferson Davis and fought against the CSA and didn't join the Confederates. You look at Appalachia in particular. Well, especially Appalachia. Eastern Tennessee, man. They were a total union. Oh, sorry.

That's a really... I wanted to bring this up at some point, but just sort of tangentially, there's like an alt-right, neo-nationalist, neo-Confederate rally in East Tennessee on July 8th or something like that.

And it's just like... Those guys have been total pariahs. Well, yeah, it's just like, okay, you care so much about history, but you don't realize that East Tennessee tried to secede from the Confederacy. It was called the Free State of Franklin. There was a huge population there who were unionists and who died for that cause. Yeah.

There was plenty of massacres in East Tennessee and North Carolina of people who refused to fight for the Confederacy. You know, it's interesting. The county in Alabama, I'm from Alabama, and I'm not tying these two together, but it's just an interesting coincidence that the county in Alabama that went by far the strongest for Trump was Winston County, which was the free state of Winston. They were a union county during the Civil War. Wow. Just one county.

Yeah. And they didn't want to fight for the Confederacy at all. And I just think it's interesting that that county went strong. And, you know, you can make the argument, look, those were poor whites in the West. They didn't want to fight for some, you know, plantation guy, you know what I mean, for the rights of some guy, some rich guy to have slaves. So there are a million ways to look at it, but I do think it's kind of an interesting coincidence.

Right. Right. ways to look at it, but I do think it's kind of an interesting coincidence. Right. So, okay, so, like, I guess we have some of the players established, like, who was advocating for taking these monuments down and all this. So, like, were you

at the protests around the monuments while they were being taken down? I was not there for Davis, and there was a big alt-right sort of carnival one weekend where they weren't taking them down, but they flew in people, you know, they had a big rally, and a colleague of mine covered that, but I was there when they took

down Beauregard, and finally when Lee came down. And by the time Lee came down, there really weren't that many protesters. I thought it was going to be big, but just about everybody I saw when Lee was being taken down, which was the biggie, that's the big one that's sort of a big landmark. Everybody there was cheering that I saw. cheering that I saw. Maybe all the Neo-Confederates were hung over that day. Tarried too long at the wine on Bourbon Street.

Dearest Nellie, I drank too much wine. What are they doing with these statues? It's funny you should ask. The mayor kept saying we're going to treat them, it's funny you should ask. I mean, the mayor kept saying, you know, we're going to treat them,

we just want them in context, and we're going to treat them, you know, with sort of respect and stuff. And then somebody got a photo that they were being kept in, like, a junk pile behind a police motor pool. Yeah, I saw that picture. And so all the, you know,

all the opponents of this got really angry. But, I mean, they've been outside for 100 years. I think they're doing a request for proposals. They want to do museums or schools or something where they can put it inside, is what they said, in sort of proper context. I don't know what that means. An old-timer here, when he caught wind of this, saw it in the papers, I guess, he said that he thought we should try to get them all brought here

so we could put them on trial as a big public theater action. Oh, my God, that would be fantastic. That would be so fun. Well, his daughter was sitting there and she said, yeah, Dad, but the headline would be Confederate Monuments Head to Whitesburg. That's all people would say. One of the organizers with Take Them Down NOLA I saw in this article in The Nation said that they should grind it up and use it to strengthen the shoreline

that you keep losing day by day in New Orleans. So, yeah, by the time they took down Robert E. Lee, a lot of the crowd had dissipated. Imagine that. The alt-right can't really Stick to their guns On anything They were all in Charlottesville I guess How about Tom

I guess you're right Yeah so I mean it's interesting This is a You know this isn't just New Orleans This is sort of something that's all over The south But interestingly enough it's not even just the south You know, this isn't just New Orleans. This is sort of something that's all over the South. But interestingly enough, it's not even just the South. It's also in Arizona.

You know, there's states like Arizona that have a lot of monuments to the Confederacy and to Confederate figures. figures um and i don't know have you uh covered any other sort of um events like this in the south or is there is can you put this into a sort of like regional context is there anything like i mean that you know i was i was in uh south carolina when they took down the flag after the dylan roof shooting and i was really surprised that they did that. I mean, I was talking to white legislators, and they knew it was unpopular. If they had voted on it, I bet you the state would have voted to keep them at that time. And then I wrote about it in Mississippi, and that thing's never come. You know, I wrote some gullible story where it's like, you know, so-and-so says that they have the support and the power to get this flag down.

Of course, nothing happened. I mean, that flag isn't going to change in a long time. All the universities in Mississippi have taken them. Don't fly the flag. All the public ones. And a lot of towns don't fly the flag because, you know, it has the stars, not stars and bars, the cross in the flag. But it's just not going to change. People don't want to change it.

But you're right. I mean, you know, I've seen Confederate flags here in Pennsylvania. I was on vacation once in France, and I saw confederate flag hanging from somebody's house that's fascinating I've always wondered it's been an ongoing joke it was in the south it was like

prime Le Pen country you know it was in the south of France did they also have truck nuts on their truck truck nuts is more

of a Belgian thing what was what was what was was there like a community it wasn't in brazil or paraguay that all the confederates like a lot of confederates flocked to brazil was it yeah i think it was in brazil and a colleague of mine wrote about it and they like dress in hoop skirts and like have big southern bustle yeah every year on Confederate Memorial Day. Wear those string ties and stuff. Yeah, sort of like when the Nazis fled to Argentina after World War II, the Confederates fled to Brazil after the Civil War.

But then we didn't commit to Reconstruction, so they all came back. Which is fascinating. South America just gets our best and brightest. I guess they do. I guess they do. Brain drain. Yeah. Brain drain. came back which is fast America just gets our best and brightest right brain drain yeah yeah no it's interesting too it's interesting that it took it it's not it's terribly tragic and ridiculous that it took a mass shooting for them to sort of be spurred along to do something about that flag. But it also just says a lot about, I think it just says so much about America in general, how it persists even in places like Pennsylvania and Arizona. Like we've never sort of comprehensively or collectively rejected the idea of the Confederacy.

It was attempted for about 15 to 20 years during Reconstruction. And that, well, we all know what happened there. Well, actually, I guess some of us know what happened there. But I just think that it's just such an interesting and important lesson for the future, which is that what they did to the Nazis after World War II is what we should have done, honestly, to the Confederates after the Civil War, which is like you bury that idea. That idea is a toxic idea that cannot be allowed to flourish. But now here we are in 2017 still. I mean, it's good. I mean, I think it's great that they

took down the monuments. And I wish they would take them down everywhere. But yeah, I don't know. I think it's just interesting just how history plays out that way. If you don't take care of an idea, if you don't actually get rid of it, how it can persist and people latch onto it over time.

Well, it's also interesting to me that, like, you know, people say, you know, this is a historical artifact. You know, the Civil War was really fought, and, you know, it is a part of our history. But these monuments, not necessarily the ones in New Orleans, but all the ones in New Orleans went up after Reconstruction.

And the majority, I don't know if the majority, but the plurality of monuments, Confederate monuments around the country, there were two big spikes when the monuments really went up. when the monuments really went up. One was in the early 20th century when Jim Crow really took off, and there was federal action against it. And the other was in the 50s. I mean, Georgia put the battle flag and its flag in 1956.

Right. And Alabama put the battle flag on the state capitol when Bobby Kennedy was coming down there to meet with Wallace, Right. of civil war they were they were explicitly put up there uh as a sign you know as a big middle finger to the federal government on racial matters a lot of them were right um i mean you know just like the georgia one there's no question and mississippi uh not mississippi south carolina put its flag on the state house grounds in 1961 and they say it's like it was 100th anniversary of the civil war um maybe that's right but it's you know it's like it was the 100th anniversary of the Civil War. Maybe that's right, but it's awfully convenient given the tenor of federal

state race issues at the time. The first one in Arizona went up in like 1945 or 1946. It's crazy. Only a small part of Arizona was part of the Confederacy, apparently. Back to New Orleans real quick.

The very first new like sort of Confederate monument to go up there. And I'm just pulling this from one of your articles. I didn't even know about it, but it was the first one they took down. It was a sort of commemoration of this white militia called the White League that had some sort of like uprising in 1874 or something. Is that right? And then they put up that commemoration shortly after that. Well, they had a governor's race in 1862, or not 1862. 1872. And the white pro-Southern Democrat probably won, but it helped that they had armed men standing at the polls telling blacks not to vote. And so the federal government was like, well, the Reconstruction governor really is the real governor.

I mean, you guys, intimidation, corruption. And so they put the Reconstruction governor in, and he had a multiracial cabinet. And it's interesting, Longstreet, who is Lee's right-hand man at Gettysburg, was working for the Reconstruction government there, the multiracial Reconstruction government. Longstreet's an interesting, complicated guy.

And so the governor in exile, like the white Southern Democratic governor, on his behalf, these thousands of white guys formed this paramilitary group called the White League, and they basically just invaded New Orleans. One, they defeated the police and the State National Guard, or the State Guard, and took over the state government. And eventually they were, you know, Grant sent down, Grant was president, sent down, you know, threatened to send down federal troops, and the White League left. and no federal troops, and the White League left. But that battle was one of the first monuments commemorated that was up, and in the 30s they added a line to the monument that said something like, this is in honor of white supremacy and the blow that was struck for white supremacy. So it was pretty unequivocal what that was about.

And they had a big fight over it in the 90s. David Duke was a big part of it. And so they moved it. It's like these things happen. They want to get rid of it, but they're like, we can do a compromise. So it was sitting in the corner of this parking lot by the train tracks on the way to the aquarium. You literally had to be intensely interested in the White League monument to even know where it was.

So it's kind of not surprising that they took that down first because nobody would know how to get to it to protest. Yeah. You know, back on that note of, like, you saw an explosion of these monuments go up right after Reconstruction.

There's a quote that the daily—I'm going to say this. I've always—I hate to say this, Campbell. Is it daily picayune? Picayune. Picayune. I've always wondered how you say that. But when the Robert E. Lee statue went up, they wrote, By every appliance of literature and art, we must show to all coming ages that with us, at least, there dwells no sense of guilt.

That's, I mean, like, that is kind of like the sort of impetus, right? Or the sort of, like, ideology of, like, putting these up in a lot of ways. Right. The sort of like. And I'm not even a nerd here, but like I'm unpacking my desk because I'm moving. Right. And I just found out this little brochure that somebody that I got years ago. This is the dedication of a Confederate monument in Oxford, North Carolina, in 1909. And the governor says that he was glad that many of the Confederate veterans had lived to see the day, quote, when the world is beginning to appreciate that it is not in the power of all the armies ever drilled or any constitution ever written to make the white man and the black man equal on this earth.

Like he said it at the dedication, like 50 years after the war was over. Right. You know, it's fascinating how obsessed, on one hand, you get these alt-right, neo-Confederate types, and y'all quoted them, you and Katie quoted them in one of your stories. This wasn't Jefferson Davis's grandson. This was another guy. I can't remember what his name was. But he, you know, he goes on like, oh, people, if people knew the real history. You always hear this.

They're always talking about the real history. The revisionist history taught in schools. Yeah. And they're always talking about, yeah, it's just like you've got the vice president of the CSA just talking about how white supremacy was literally the whole point of the CSA just talking about like how white supremacy was literally the whole point of the CSA uh but then you've also got this idea of the war of northern aggression which is like blows my mind because like the south fired the first fucking shot like the south fired the first shot like it wasn't the north that was the whole reason there was a war because PGT Beauregard who actually was one of the monuments that they took down, fired on a fort outside of South Carolina.

Like, what Northern aggression? I don't know. It's just. Trigger warning. Yeah. I guess so. Well, I mean, you know, it's interesting because I went to Montgomery for the 150th anniversary of the Confederate inauguration or whatever. And I sat with some SCV guys, some Confederate veteran guys.

And like to them, it's like, I'll say, well, so this is about, I mean, look, I got Confederates up and down my family tree. And I'm like, I know what they were fighting for. I'm not, I'm not dumb. And I'm like, so this is about, and they're like, they're just process. It's all about the process, not about the substance. They're like, well, we'll debate that later. The issue is that within the Constitution, the state has the right to secede under the – and I'm like, that may be true, but I think you're thinking about the Articles of Confederation. But anyway, regardless of the process, they did it for – I mean, the state's rights were for slavery.

It was very clear. Everybody knew at the time. And they were like, well, let's don't get into that. Let's focus on how states have rights to secede from the compact. So they're just talking purely about process and not about substance, which is interesting. Right. Well, yeah, because the substance is owning human beings. Right. Well, yeah, because the substance is owning human beings.

And ever since the 18th century, they've been trying to justify that, whether it's through process, legal judicial process, or an appeal to property rights, or it's in the Bible. You know, that kind of stuff. I don't know. It kind of all comes down to Romans, I think is what we're getting at right yeah i think you're actually right because we did base a lot of our laws on roman jurisprudence um but yeah no i mean so uh you know i don't know if we could talk a little bit about reconstruction at all. I love the topic of reconstruction.

I like to talk about it at any chance that I get. You must be great at parties. Yeah. In this corner, I'll be holding forth about reconstruction. That's actually happened. We're just only half joking about that. That's why he gave me a podcast. Let me break in real quick and honestly ask you,

does this whole Confederate thing come up a lot in Whitesburg? Do you all hear people talk about it? Well, we're surrounded by it, you know, just like, I guess, like any other place that could be considered Southern. You know, there's the monument they built on the Kentucky-Virginia line, like, maybe 10 years ago. Yeah, there's a Confederate, yeah. Yeah, and there's, you know, they fly the flag and all that stuff.

And then, you know, it's sort of ubiquitous, the flag is, you know, about anywhere around here. Right. When you're driving in from Virginia, one of the first big images you see is a Confederate flag coming toward Wattsburg right on the main road just a mile from the state line. Right, that somebody hung on their house. And then, you know, everybody's got sort of their crackpot theories about, and this may be true, I actually don't know. I should maybe walk that back. About the center star and the Confederate flag being for Kentucky. For Kentucky because Kentucky was neutral.

Anytime you question the southernhood of a Kentuckian, they get kind of pissy about it and point that out. That's their kind of thing. I don't know. Yeah, I mean's it's everywhere but do people i mean because they're people you know i grew up around a lot of confederate reenactors but they weren't like ideal they weren't like ideological people who like but you know would take long arguments about john c calhoun anything. They just like running around in the woods shooting smoke.

I mean, do folks, I mean, is it real or is it just like, I like the flag, I like how it looks, and I'm a rebel, blah, blah, blah. Or is it like, I really, I'll tell you John C. Calhoun's speech

in 1847 when, you know, blah, blah, blah. Next time you drift through here, I'll introduce you to my old psychology teacher from high school, Butch Shaltus, who plays Robert E. Lee on the weekends in Cornetsville, this town nearby. Yeah. Or Leatherwood.

Yeah, because Leatherwood is the closest... Reenactment. Reenactment battle, right. It's the closest site where there would have been a battle. And he does Facebook statuses in the character of Robert E. Lee. I'm not saying

he's not dating at Captain's Log 18-whatever. He's talking like Robert E. Lee still exists today. So I think he could be a little bit into it. I always thought Robert E. Lee was more of a Snapchat guy. Facebook's a little beneath it. I mean, yeah, it's pretty ubiquitous.

I think it means a lot of different things. There is a very complex sort of psychology or psyche that's been constructed on top of it. But it's also everywhere, like, in the sense that, like, I grew up in New Mexico, and people even had them in New Mexico, which was... Yeah. I mean, I guess at that time you could make the argument that it was part of Texas. But you were born in Texas. Your parents or your dad's a Texan.

Right. That area of New Mexico is largely West Texas culturally. Right, right. But he's never, you know, despite being a very conservative guy, he's never been pro-Confederate or anything. So yeah, out West, it is a very interesting thing. I think it has all these sort of like

don't tread on me undertones to it. Yeah, yeah. I do remember thinking right after after trump was elected i do remember thinking that the whole trump administration with jeff sessions and trump was the the literal embodiment administrative embodiment of the guy you see that's flying the american flag and the confederate flag it's just like those two are those flags. They don't go together. There's a stretch of Interstate 65 south of Birmingham, right near where I grew up. And on one side, you have the Sons of Confederate Veterans with like a 40,000-foot-high Confederate battle flag.

a 40,000 foot high Confederate battle flag. And like across the highway, like a half a mile down, there's just this big billboard with this angry, patriotic, America, love it or leave it. And I'm like, that's actually what they did. It's exactly, that's a good description of the Civil War. Between here and Gate City, Virginia, there's someone flying a Confederate flag next to an Israeli flag.

And I've always really wanted to talk to that person. I want to talk to those people. Oh, that's totally fascinating. Yeah. But yeah, so like Reconstruction. It's interesting. You have this sort of explosion of Confederate monuments and stuff after Reconstruction. Probably this sort of explosion of confederate monuments and stuff after reconstruction

probably just sort of common sense or pretty obvious as to just what happens when you have a military occupying force that literally makes it illegal to advocate confederate causes

I mean at one point you had Ulysses Grant that was sending the Army, United States Army, after the KKK. That's pretty fascinating stuff. It's pretty fascinating history, and it doesn't get told a lot. That's not the history that we sort of traffic in. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, it's a lot more like Iraq than it is like World War II in the sense of like mission accomplished, but then you have insurgents for years afterwards. You know what I mean? Like fighting the occupying force. Right. Right. So you had the Caddo Parish Massacre and all these. I mean, you know, the Confederacy was fighting a long time after mathematics. Right.

Yeah, you're right. That was Nathan Bedford Forrest's, like, that was his claim to fame, really. It was a great general in the war, but, I mean, really came to his... Was his body ever exhumed from Memphis? Remember when that was the—they were talking about that? Did they ever forget that? Where did they put it? Did they just kind of, like, throw him in a creek somewhere? It's propped up at the B.B. King Museum.

He's taxidermied. He's that kind of— No, but, I mean, you know, the Klan, you know, a lot of these groups, they're not that different from these Iraqi, you know, these post-Iraq insurgent groups. Right. That's interesting. That's really interesting because, yeah, there was this sort of debathification process in Iraq, too. Totally. Yeah. too. Totally. Yeah. And like in Iraq,

you know, in Iraq, Paul Bremer says, well, we're going to disband the army, but we're not going to arrest it, you know what I mean? Right. And that's how Reconstruction worked. Like, they didn't want to make it punitive. Right. And those guys said, all right, we're going to join up, and we're still armed.

Yeah, you're right. Whereas Nuremberg, they just hung everybody. They're just like, you collaborated with the Nazis. You're done. You're done. I'm sorry. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Oh, yeah.

That's a really good point. Well, so yeah. No, I don't know. I think that probably brings us sort of up to speed. Do you want to? I'm curious what took you to Pittsburgh and what your plans are there. Me too. I've been talking for a while about sort of our coverage of rural issues.

I mean, way, way back before the election and stuff. The election is sort of a lagging indicator of these sort of issues that we haven't really been writing about. Yeah, we've tore apart our fair share of New York Times articles here on this podcast. Hey, I've got a weird idea, Campbell. There's an enterprising young podcast that could use a national profile that I hear is really picking up steam.

They're going to assign J.D. Vance to write a deep profile of you guys. I would love that. That'd be very meta. So anyway, and they told me, you know, the South is, you know, I've governed the South for years, but it's just the

sort of forces in the deep South are kind of the same. I mean, it hasn't changed that much. It's very static politically. And so they told me I could pick a place. And, you know, I don't know anything about Pittsburgh, but I thought it sounded cool. And I'm interested in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and so I just kind of picked it.

Well, yeah, we probably, I'd say, get ready to cover a lot of industrial disasters and things of that nature. Well, they have their share in South Louisiana, too. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely true. They lose like a football-filled-sized parcel of land every hour or something in Louisiana. Yeah, I saw you tweet something out, Kim. It's the fastest-disappearing land in the world. Yeah, didn't you tweet something out that that process is even faster than previously thought or something like that?

Yeah, there was a study that they assume that it's going to go twice as fast. And that's from just, like, what, gas drilling? I mean, there are a lot of causes. The two major causes are, one, and I'm going to bore the hell out of you, so forgive me. I'll try to keep it quick. One, the Mississippi River just used to wander around down there like when you throw a garden hose out and it just kind of flaps around and goes every direction. And you got a third of America dumping silt into the Mississippi River. So when it flooded every spring down in the bayou, it built land.

So flooded land is built land. So it was about to jump banks in the early part of the century. It was going to leave New Orleans high and dry. And they built levees for flooding and to make sure it stayed by New Orleans and all this kind of stuff. And it's great. It doesn't flood. The Mississippi hasn't flooded since the 20s. But that prevents all that silt and so the land is so new i mean it's the newest land in the in the u.s because it was just you know half the marshland down there was put there

by the mississippi river in the last few hundred years that It's just sinking and there's nothing to replenish it. So that's part of it. The other part is oil and gas has drilled so many canals that you have these freshwater marshes that are new and fragile. And, you know, an oil and gas company with a bigger canal and all that salt water will come in and kill all the marsh. Right. And when they drill beneath the marsh i mean you think right you're you're that oil and gas is solid material that you're sitting on top of so when they suck it dry

the land just sinks and so between those two things and now rising sea level um it's gone you know my little sister lives in Charleston, South Carolina and when I go down there to visit the beaches that we go to almost all of them now have huge pipes dredging land from under the ocean to the beach

to the beach I swear me and my mom were leaning against a pipe on the beach. That's so wild. Humans. That's really scenic. Yeah.

My mom was like, what is going on? I was like, climate change. Climate change. I'll tell you. Aren't Louisiana, people in Louisiana the first U.S. climate refugees? People, didn't I hear that? Or some islanders? Yeah.

Campbell wrote about that. Yeah. There's a, I mean, we wrote a story about that. It's, I don't love that term. I mean, that's what the federal government called them, climate refugees. This is an island that shrunk by 95% over the last 70, 80 years. So climate's not what did it, but climate's probably what's going to tip them over. did it but climate's probably what's gonna tip them over right it's a it's a american indian tribe um or it's two of them actually of course that live on this little island ilja and charles it's just a lovely little play little community they're all fishermen and stuff like that and it's i mean literally you'd stand on you stand on the levee with a guy and he's like i

used to hunt deer over there and and it's just ocean. Wow. In his lifetime, he was deer hunting. That's wild. It's wild. And you get on boats, and they have these little maps, these little computer programs that are really outdated, but that are sort of maps that they look at. And the boat's going over land on the computer, because when the computer program was drawn up, where they're going was land

like 20 years ago. That's kind of like the TVA lakes. The what? The TVA? The TVA lakes, all these man-made lakes in Tennessee that the TVA made, they're all the lakes are all over communities like there are graveyards under there churches.

The last scene in Oh Brother we're out there Oh when the water starts coming out? Right, right. churches. The last scene in Oh Brother were out there. Oh, when the water starts coming out? Right, right. We were working with a contractor on a stream remediation project and I was like, well, where were you brought up at? And he said, at the bottom of Carfork Lake. Wow.

That's amazing. That's wild. Yeah. Yeah, well, Campbell, we appreciate you coming on and I guess we'll That's wild Yeah well Campbell We appreciate you coming on And I guess we'll Cut you loose Yeah come by and see us

Yeah Thanks for having me I'll have my secretary Tom connect you with Dean shortly Yeah we'll have our interns Tell Tom to do that that'd be great We'll do that Tom connects you with Dane shortly. Yeah, we'll have our interns. Tell Tom to do that.

That'd be great. We'll do that. Campbell, thanks for joining us, and we hope to see you soon, and have a great week. Yeah, appreciate it, man. All right, y'all. Have a good one. Take care.

Bye. All right, I think we're going. We're good. I've stopped bringing all things into the studio on my phone. I've just brought them all. I'm just going to bring them all on paper now. So I have the song itself on paper. What song?

Accidental Racist by Brad Paisley and LL Cool J. Is this new? Have you heard this song? No. Maybe it's how I'm listened to this over the weekend. Did this just come out? Maybe two years ago? Yeah,

like maybe 2014 or something like that. Oh my God. You've got to hear the lyrics to this. Do you want to, do you want to, do you want to do

LL Cool J in the style of LL Cool J? Here's kind of what I was thinking. We'll just read it however you want to read it. We'll just read it however you wanna read it. We'll read it dramatically. How about I do Brad Paisley's parts

and then you do LL Cool J's parts. How's that sound? He's gonna make me be the problematical. I'll be Miranda Lambert. Okay. You just wanna be Miranda Lambe But be like Be like Woke Miranda Lambe

Who's he married to? That's Blake Shelton that's married to him And they're not married anymore that's what I mean I'll be the divorcee but he's married to like Julia Dreyfuss or something He's married to somebody famous Like Elaine from Seinfeld? Yeah. He's married to a famous actress

or something. If Fred Paisley wrote this song and was married to Elaine from Seinfeld, that would be pretty much the most incredible fucking... I've got the interns on it right now. Brad Paisley. Get the cracked investigative staff together.

Kimberly Williams? Paisley? Maybe we're thinking of Kenny Chesney was married to... What's her name? From Jerry Maguire. He was... Get us a picture. Renee Zellweger.

Renee Zellweger? Yeah. Get us a picture up. I think... Oh, my mic went on. He... I could have swore he was. Oh, she is an actress.

Yeah, let's do a picture of her. She's on According to Jim and Nashville and both of the Father of the Brides. Oh. Yeah. Okay, yeah. She took his name? Why? Why, Laura?

Why? Why the fuck? My mic is fucking up. I got to read these lyrics. Hold on. That's just LL Cool J's part. I just realized. Tom, you take that. I want to do LL Cool J's part, I just realized. Tom, you take that.

I wanna do LL Cool J's part in the style of Brad Paisley. I'll do Brad Paisley's part in the style of LL Cool J. Alright, hold on, let me pull up the lyrics real quick. So the song is called Accidental Racist by Brad Paisley featuring LL Cool J. What was he thinking? Well, you'll find out. Now that I'm remembering this now. You're remembering like, it's

considered maybe the worst song ever written. So I printed by like a lot of people. The court of public opinion. I printed these off at work and I must have only grabbed LL Cool J's part, so I wonder if I left...

Brad pays his parts at the office. In the printer. My boss actually called me during that interview with Campbell, so maybe he was just like... You want to talk about something? All right. All right. This is...

All right. X Dylan Races, verse one. So the man that waited me at the Starbucks down on Main, I hope you understand when I put on that T-shirt. The only thing I meant to say is I'm a Skinner fan. The red flag on my chest somehow is like the elephant in the corner of the south. And I just walked him right in the room, just a proud rebel son with an old can of worms.

Looking like I got a lot to learn. But from my point of view, here's the chorus. I'm just a white man coming to you from the Southland. I'm just a white man coming from the Southland. Trying to understand. Trying to understand. What it's like not to be. What it's like not to be. What it's like not to be.

I'm proud of where I'm from, but not everything we've done. And it ain't like you and me can rewrite history. So let's just call it square, yeah? This is brutal. Our generation didn't start this nation. We're still picking up the pieces, walking on eggshells. That's my favorite part, walking on eggshells. Brad Paisley is

terrified in a room with black people. He hates to be accused of being racist. Fighting over yesterday and caught between Southern pride and Southern blame. Do you think he wrote this song with LL Cool J? Do you think they sat in a room together and wrote this? I think so, and LL Cool J's verse is why I think so,

and Tom will get to that in a minute. Here's verse two. They called it reconstruction, fixed the buildings, dried some tears. We're still sifting through the rubble after 150 years. I try to put myself in your shoes, and that's a good place to begin, but it ain't like I can walk a mile in someone else's skin. I was really hoping he was going to go in someone else's Tims. Just like the most racist shit.

Oh, shit. All right. I think we're going to immediately regret this episode. This might be our best shit. All right, so then we redo the chorus. Now here's Tom. I need you on the chorus. I don't know the fucking chorus.

Y'all want me to sing it again? Because I'm just a white man living in the Southland. Just like you, I'm more than what you see. I'm proud of where I'm from, but not everything we've done. And it ain't like you and me can rewrite history. I like that. I don't like it. I like it.

Ironic. That sentiment of like, man, there's nothing that can be done here. Meanwhile, Terrence is in here fist bumping about it. He's just like, oh yeah, South's going to rise. South's going to rise, Tonya. Our generation didn't start this nation, and we're still paying for the mistakes that a bunch of folks made long before we came

and caught somewhere between Southern pride and Southern blame. What? And then the... Go ahead, I'm sorry. Tell me what Brad Paisley, what he's paying... What discomfort is he in in his life? That he's scared of black people?

I think it's more that he's scared of being called racist. He just wants to wear his Confederate flag without being called racist. So his greatest fear, his greatest daily fear leaving the house is that someone's going to think he's a racist. Can you fathom that existence? I love that he sets this this up like the first lyrics to the man that waited on me at the starbucks down on maine like he he can he figures in it in his mind the place where he goes where people are going to be mad at him for being racist is

the starbucks yeah he's nervous about his starbucks experience yeah totally that is fucking i didn't even think about that that is pretty women are being shot for their children for calling the cops on burglars and he's terrified this is the psychology of the upper middle class upper class middle-aged white man i'm not kidding you and this is how. And what he's trying to get at in this song is that we're the same. We have the same discomfort. We're living this. Literally. Look how much we have in common.

Yeah. It ain't like you and me can rewrite history. You know what I mean? It's, well, while. We can pay reparations, my man. Well, here's. Then the beat breaks down. Yeah, the beat breaks down.

And Uncle L comes on. And he says, Now my chains are gold, but I'm still misunderstood. I wasn't there when Sherman's march turned the south to firewood. That's a... I love that line. I want you to get paid, but be a slave I never could.

Feel like a newfangled Django dodging invisible white hoods. So when I see that white cowboy hat, I'm thinking it's not all good. I guess we're both guilty of judging the cover, not the book. I'd love to buy you a beer, conversate and clear the air, but I see that red flag and I think you wish I wasn't here. And now they sing the chorus together. You ready? So yeah, we sing it back and forth.

Sing it. You ready? I got Uncle Al's part. I'm just a white man. If you don't judge my do-rag. Coming to you from the Southland. I won't judge your red flag. Trying to understand what it's like not to be.

We say that together probably. Oh, I'm sorry. What it's like not to be. I'm proud of where. Oh, I'm sorry. What it's like not to be. I'm proud of where I'm from. If you don't judge my gold chains. But not everything we've done. I'll forgive the iron chains. Oh, that's so.

It ain't like. Hell. It ain't like me. It ain't like you and me can rewrite history. Can't rewrite history, baby. The pain in my stomach right now. I love that. I love.

Hey. Can't rewrite history. Can't rewrite history, babe. Oh, my God. All right. Now he's got a second verse. LL, no, this is you again. This is giving me an ulcer.

I think so. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now you're doing the refrain. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, Dixieland. The relationship between the Mace and Dixon needs some fixing. I hope you understand what this is all about. Quite frankly, oh, no, no.

It is. We did. It is. So, anyways, I'm sorry. We should still keep going. Oh, Dixieland. The relationship between the Mace and Dixon needs some fixing. I hope you understand what this is all about.

Quite frankly, I'm a black Yankee, but I've been thinking about this lately. I'm a son of the New South. The past is the past, you feel me? And I just want to... I like how LL is just like... He's trying to be... He's just trying to... It's good, baby.

Hey, I'm speaking for everybody in this country. But Paisley's still melting down over here. And I just want to make things right. Hey, at this point, LL's kind of getting a little like, it's good, man. Hey, let bygones be bygones. Where all that's left is Southern pride. RIP Robert E. Lee, but I've got to thank Abraham Lincoln for freeing me. Know what I mean?

It's real. It's real. It's truth. Accidental real. It's truth. Accidental racism. Hey, hey, hey. Accidental racism. That blows my mind. When I heard that, I had that weird sort of surreal feeling that I had right after the

election where I was like, everything is so fucking lopsided and strange when I read that line RIP Robert E Lee but I've got to thank Abraham Lincoln for freeing me know what I mean all right it's like it's the whole song is this total mash like just mishmash of like um it's it is the anxiety oh god i don't even know how to begin psychoanalyzing you know it's at least more testament to um something we've said before is that women only make good country music anymore that's true only women make and and east kentucky boys women and eastern Kentucky boys. Women and Eastern Kentucky boys make good country music anymore. 9-11 killed.

What's so funny is that like Brad Paisley's from West Virginia. So like yeah that's southern but it's not like Confederate southern. Like West Virginia was a union stronghold. You know it was created for that purpose. But his ass now lives in

nashville probably yeah and and we might have should have talked to that with campbell about this for a little bit but that sort of this is interesting that this this i can't really tell what paisley's intentions are here and some of the lines he's like, I wanna do right. To rid himself of white guilt. That's what this is all about. Yeah, this is the earlier salvo. You're right, but it's done in the most half-step apologetic way. Like if some other country singers

would sing something similar, but it would be way more unapologetic. Does that make sense? It would be way more just like it's over get over it there's nothing we can do about it but paisley here is like there's something there's got to be something we can do right but like well he's sitting at a table with uncle l he can't he can't be accusatory his manager worked very hard with l.o cool j's manager to get them in a room together the only thing thing that would have made this more cringeworthy

is if, you know when LL Cool J's rapping about buying him a beer so they can just talk this whole race thing out? If they would have scrapped that idea and went with their original idea, which was Brad Paisley's like, let me treat you to some Hennessy and we'll talk this out.

You know who we really have to blame for this is Tim McGraw and Nelly. They started this bullshit. They knock this out. Oh God. You know who we really have to blame for this is Tim McGraw and Nelly. They started this bullshit. Oh, yeah. They started this shit. You're right. But it wasn't political though. It wasn't really as political.

That was a classic heartbreak song. And I think about you over and over again. That's how that one went. Yeah. This one is totally, it's coming at you from a lot of different directions. again. That's how that one went. Yeah. This one is totally, um, it's coming at you from a lot of different directions. It really is.

Um. Check out the intern. He loves the Trillbillies. He talks to me about it all the time. Oh, that's so great. This guy knows. Yeah. I remember, you've made him sense, but when he first met, he said, who's the guy who always jokes about being a socialist? I was like, that's not a joke. That's not a joke. And then uh eric was telling me today uh on the couches this programmer that came in and left he said that guy used to be a marxist and i was like what do you

mean used to be and he was like he used to be a marxist he used to uh what do you tell me uh he used to is he afraid of that? I don't know but I was just like what are you talking about? He used to be like he's recovering like he's a recovering alcoholic. That guy used to be But that guy used to If I left this on the fucking cop bureau at work

I've got a lot of explaining to do tomorrow. All right, well, I've got to go eat dinner. All right. Do y'all want some spaghetti? Thanks for the offer. I'm going to go home and eat. Thanks for accidental erases. Thanks for being you.

Thanks for being you. All right. This is a wrap. Let's call this one. Um... down on Maine I hope you understand When I put on that t-shirt the only thing I meant to say

is I'm a Skynyrd fan The red flag on my chest somehow's like the elephant in the corner of the south And I just walked him right in the room Just a proud rebel son with an old can of worms Looking like I got a lot to learn But from my point of view

I'm just a white man Coming to you from the Southland Trying to understand what it's like not to be I'm proud of where I'm from But not everything we've done And it ain't like you and me Can rewrite history Our generation

Didn't start this nation We're still picking up the pieces Walking on eggshells Fighting over yesterday And caught between southern pride And southern blame They called it reconstruction Fixed the buildings, dried some teeth

We're still sifting through the rubble After 150 years you you you you you you you you you you