Oh, I Wish I Was In The Land of Cotton...

"...look away, look away, look away Dixie Land." Please.

Whenever the subject of the Confederacy raises its ugly, toothless head, I always take comfort in knowing that Texas is officially classed as a Southwestern state not a Southern state. I also think fondly of Sam Houston, staunch unionist and leader of the Texas revolution, and his principled stand against secession that got him run out of office by those 19th century wingnuts who wanted Texas to side with Davis not Lincoln. So, in short, I feel justifiably smug that I'm not stuck in a sh*thole like Alabama or Mississippi desperately clutching at even smaller straws to find ways of defending those states' unredeemable histories.

I felt smug again today seeing this picture of a recent country club party in South Carolina where Senate president pro-tempore Glenn McConnell and other Repub luminaries dressed up in period costume to mix it up with jolly antebellum characters like... errm... slaves. The shindig, put on by the National Federation of Republican Women's Board of Directors, was billed "A Southern Experience".

Yes.

That's right.

Republicans whooping it up at a swank southern country club with black folks paid to dress up as slaves. It sounds like a dream Newt Gingrich would wake up from with a raging hard-on.