By: Myles Kantor September 25, 2003
A relatively small distortion often indicates a web of falsehood.
The Summer 2003 “Intelligence Report” of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) contains a diatribe by George Ewert against Ronald Maxwell’s recent film, Gods and Generals. His charges include:
- “‘Gods and Generals’ is part of a growing movement that seeks to rewrite the history of the American South, downplaying slavery and the economic system that it sustained.”
- Gods and Generals “has two black characters, but they are wildly unrepresentative of blacks in the South of that period. One, Martha, is a slave who remains in her master’s house after his family flees so that she can protect it from the ravages of Union troops. The other, a freedman named Jim who volunteers to be Gen. Jackson’s camp cook and mumbles in clichéd black dialect, is similarly depicted as a loyal Southerner.”
Having seen Gods and Generals, I must conclude that Ewert either has not seen it or suffers from memory loss.