After Stuart Stevens advised Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, he returned to his native South to spend one last season watching Ole Miss football with his father.
Stuart Stevens: You get a lot of air time on MSNBC. If I wanted to send a personal letter to one or two hosts, say Chris Hayes or Lawrence O'Donnell, where would it be Sure to get to them? I sent one to them % MSNBC studios, at 30 Rockefeller Plaza NYC , 10112 and the PO returned it as no mail receptacle, unable to forward. Is the mail room refusing letters or is the USPS messing with my mail? Can you give me a more direct address--I have lots of suggestions for them to help with the midterms. Thanks, Jan in Viroqua, WI. cavebearreader1@gmail
Over at Democracy Docket the resistance movement is necessary and important The protests play a huge roll in the resistance movement But some of us become desensitized and don’t say anything They came for people in LA but I don’t live in LA They came for people in Portland but I don’t live in Portland Then they came for people in Chicago but I don’t live in Chicago Then they came for me and I was in the only city left Outrage is necessary and there is NO GOOD REPUBLICAN at this point in time They are traitors to the country like Cheeto
But building a new opposition(https://bit.ly/3IrVBFy) in parallel is essential as we evolve the resistance movement An opposition movement is based on morality and truth and needs to be seen as being in for the long run, measured in terms of years not months And we should be resilient in our approach to this long term project, the opposition movement
Thank you for that wonderful trip down memory lane. I recently read, and I forget who wrote it, that the reason why Southerners thought college football so important was that they could beat northern teams; a revenge, of sorts, from past losses.
I find it somewhat striking that so many born to the South, Southerners, still somewhat mourn the Confederacy and its surrender to the north, but they don't know why African Americans are so bitter about slavery and continued lack of opportunity and eqaulity in white America. Southerners have reason to be saddened by past losses, but African Americans should just get over it. trump continues that disconnect by glorifying, and saluting Confederate generals while demanding that any African American that achieves success is because of DEI. GOP sympathy for the Confederacy works well with their disregard and overt racism against African Americans. Rename military and raise statues to Confederate military, while removing mentions of African Americans suffering under slavery at the Smithsonian, and trying to erase the contribution of the Tuskegee Airmen from government websites.
trump and his white, kkkristian nationalist admin and 'news' infrastructure whitewash the past to celebrate the Confederacy and demean, disparage and disrespect the past of African Americans who continue to suffer today wile white Southerners are saddened because Confederate flags no longer fly at football games and state capitals...
I love this! I’m a Cornhusker gal whose Dad was a season ticket holder. I got to go one game per season - just me and Dad! By the 80’s, I was a military wife, moving all over the country, searching for Saturday afternoon Husker coverage. I love those memories of Dad, and Saturdays, and the roots formed❤️
“One of the great virtues of the South is the assumption that football is important.”
Maybe. As an old, tired, and beaten-up former football player whose head took one too many bounces to the turf, and whose spinal cord (yes) is paying for that youthful bravado with elder years’ problems, I have my doubts.
We did not encourage either of our boys to play.
Football has always been microcosmic of American capitalism, and the SEC leads the way to the foot of the altar of the golden calf.
Always has.
Not that I do not enjoy watching a few quarters of football here and there; I do. But I find myself more often than not wondering what the whole production is about.
“When you showed up at an Ole Miss-Alabama game or an Auburn-Alabama game, life’s complicated choices were reduced to a binary definition: You were for one team or the other, and whom you were for was pretty much all anyone needed to know. It was an identity that superseded all others.”
Again, maybe. With all the many problems that beset most people‘s lives, there is something about some of these rivalries that strike me as kind of silly, especially when those loyalties partially determine how you look at other people in terms of which “side” or the other they “identify” with.
There are corollaries to this tribalism that can turn downright nasty, and we see some of that with MAGA. What starts out as fun turns into something altogether different.
“They made you want to pick up a rifle and just get killed somewhere.”
There is nothing like an imaginary battle. John Wayne would tell you that. Audie Murphy? Not so much.
“Tens of thousands died for the brief existence of the Dixie nation.” Like you, there is a part of me that still mourns that. I remember when “old “ people recalled “Decoration Day” — not “Memorial Day.”
“But listening to even that ersatz “Dixie” brought those moments back, how it felt jumping up on the wooden bleacher to be a little taller and hug my father and know then, without a doubt, that I was the luckiest kid on earth.”
Congratulations, Stuart. This sings.
“But now I understood it wasn’t about some hidden victory; it was just about loss. We lost. They won. It sounded sad because it was sad. It made you want to cry because loss was sad and defeat painful.”
Powerful. As I age, though, I find myself wanting to camp out in that region less and less.
“No one in the North thinks about the Civil War, which is the ultimate humiliation for the South.”
I do not know about that.
I do know that there are many wounds from that not so distant conflict that are still suppurating and festering. I do know that there were large swaths of my own family that it ripped apart — never to be brought together again. Never to be healed.
Irony is a movable feast, a rolling metaphor.
Stories and the telling of them may be amongst the most important things human beings do together.
Lovely piece, Stuart. I take slight issue with the idea that no one in the North thinks about the Civil War. I was just telling a friend yesterday about my move from Augusta, home to one of the tallest Civil War monuments, to Madison, Wisconsin, where the Badgers play at Camp Randall, so named because that’s where the Union soldiers mustered out. There’s a monument to them a block from my first apartment in that city. A friend’s ancestor served in that war and is buried in there. Family legend has it a bone from his war-injured leg is buried separately (but atop his grave). In addition, nearby, there is a section devoted to Confederate soldiers. The war is not nearly as omnipresent, but it is visible.
I love reading exerpts from this book Stuart. I’m still a bit of a Lost Cause girl - father’s family surname Wimberly from Jeffersonville in Twiggs county Georgia. The men in my dad’s family were all doctors until my dad came along and became an architect. My folks came to Hawaii in 1940 so my dad could work “just for a year” at the shipyard at Pearl Harbor and I grew up here in a totally multi-racial society. But there were almost no African American people here when I was growing up, and when I went back to school to Radcliffe College I was confused by the hostility that I felt from some of the girls that I encountered there.
You’re my interpreter of the phenomenon of Southern Culture. Thanks for sharing- I have your book, It Was All A Lie- perhaps I will buy this one as well.
Beautifully written, Stuart. It will be my next book. I did not grow up in the south so your descriptions are new to me. I understand now, I think. At least I get it better than before. 🙏🏻
This was lovely! I few tears in my eyes as I think of my father and his southern roots in Alabama. This must have been how he and his cousins felt about Auburn and Alabama. He spent his fall weekend in the downstairs with the console TV. As a teenager , I enjoyed a few Atlanta falcons games with him, but for some reason we never got hooked as a family watching college football.
I really think a New south is poking its head making its self quietly heard. Its gonna take time and constant battles but its rising and willing to battle.
Beautifully written. I have a friend who went to Ole Miss. It's a complicated history, but I understand the South better now. It's hard to let go of loss, even necessary loss.
Thank you Mr. Stevens for this article! I could feel your emotions while reading about the old South and football traditions with your father. I'm envious of your memories as I have none like those. Well written.
P.S.---Later, as I set sipping my coffee this old gospel song, "Precious Memories", flooded my thoughts. How these thoughts do linger. A very nice way to start the day.
Stuart Stevens: You get a lot of air time on MSNBC. If I wanted to send a personal letter to one or two hosts, say Chris Hayes or Lawrence O'Donnell, where would it be Sure to get to them? I sent one to them % MSNBC studios, at 30 Rockefeller Plaza NYC , 10112 and the PO returned it as no mail receptacle, unable to forward. Is the mail room refusing letters or is the USPS messing with my mail? Can you give me a more direct address--I have lots of suggestions for them to help with the midterms. Thanks, Jan in Viroqua, WI. cavebearreader1@gmail
What Happens After Cheeto??
Over at Democracy Docket the resistance movement is necessary and important The protests play a huge roll in the resistance movement But some of us become desensitized and don’t say anything They came for people in LA but I don’t live in LA They came for people in Portland but I don’t live in Portland Then they came for people in Chicago but I don’t live in Chicago Then they came for me and I was in the only city left Outrage is necessary and there is NO GOOD REPUBLICAN at this point in time They are traitors to the country like Cheeto
But building a new opposition(https://bit.ly/3IrVBFy) in parallel is essential as we evolve the resistance movement An opposition movement is based on morality and truth and needs to be seen as being in for the long run, measured in terms of years not months And we should be resilient in our approach to this long term project, the opposition movement
So who are our heroes in this movement?
Thank you for that wonderful trip down memory lane. I recently read, and I forget who wrote it, that the reason why Southerners thought college football so important was that they could beat northern teams; a revenge, of sorts, from past losses.
I find it somewhat striking that so many born to the South, Southerners, still somewhat mourn the Confederacy and its surrender to the north, but they don't know why African Americans are so bitter about slavery and continued lack of opportunity and eqaulity in white America. Southerners have reason to be saddened by past losses, but African Americans should just get over it. trump continues that disconnect by glorifying, and saluting Confederate generals while demanding that any African American that achieves success is because of DEI. GOP sympathy for the Confederacy works well with their disregard and overt racism against African Americans. Rename military and raise statues to Confederate military, while removing mentions of African Americans suffering under slavery at the Smithsonian, and trying to erase the contribution of the Tuskegee Airmen from government websites.
trump and his white, kkkristian nationalist admin and 'news' infrastructure whitewash the past to celebrate the Confederacy and demean, disparage and disrespect the past of African Americans who continue to suffer today wile white Southerners are saddened because Confederate flags no longer fly at football games and state capitals...
I love this! I’m a Cornhusker gal whose Dad was a season ticket holder. I got to go one game per season - just me and Dad! By the 80’s, I was a military wife, moving all over the country, searching for Saturday afternoon Husker coverage. I love those memories of Dad, and Saturdays, and the roots formed❤️
I enjoyed reading this, Stuart.
A few comments:
“One of the great virtues of the South is the assumption that football is important.”
Maybe. As an old, tired, and beaten-up former football player whose head took one too many bounces to the turf, and whose spinal cord (yes) is paying for that youthful bravado with elder years’ problems, I have my doubts.
We did not encourage either of our boys to play.
Football has always been microcosmic of American capitalism, and the SEC leads the way to the foot of the altar of the golden calf.
Always has.
Not that I do not enjoy watching a few quarters of football here and there; I do. But I find myself more often than not wondering what the whole production is about.
“When you showed up at an Ole Miss-Alabama game or an Auburn-Alabama game, life’s complicated choices were reduced to a binary definition: You were for one team or the other, and whom you were for was pretty much all anyone needed to know. It was an identity that superseded all others.”
Again, maybe. With all the many problems that beset most people‘s lives, there is something about some of these rivalries that strike me as kind of silly, especially when those loyalties partially determine how you look at other people in terms of which “side” or the other they “identify” with.
There are corollaries to this tribalism that can turn downright nasty, and we see some of that with MAGA. What starts out as fun turns into something altogether different.
“They made you want to pick up a rifle and just get killed somewhere.”
There is nothing like an imaginary battle. John Wayne would tell you that. Audie Murphy? Not so much.
“Tens of thousands died for the brief existence of the Dixie nation.” Like you, there is a part of me that still mourns that. I remember when “old “ people recalled “Decoration Day” — not “Memorial Day.”
“But listening to even that ersatz “Dixie” brought those moments back, how it felt jumping up on the wooden bleacher to be a little taller and hug my father and know then, without a doubt, that I was the luckiest kid on earth.”
Congratulations, Stuart. This sings.
“But now I understood it wasn’t about some hidden victory; it was just about loss. We lost. They won. It sounded sad because it was sad. It made you want to cry because loss was sad and defeat painful.”
Powerful. As I age, though, I find myself wanting to camp out in that region less and less.
“No one in the North thinks about the Civil War, which is the ultimate humiliation for the South.”
I do not know about that.
I do know that there are many wounds from that not so distant conflict that are still suppurating and festering. I do know that there were large swaths of my own family that it ripped apart — never to be brought together again. Never to be healed.
Irony is a movable feast, a rolling metaphor.
Stories and the telling of them may be amongst the most important things human beings do together.
Lovely piece, Stuart. I take slight issue with the idea that no one in the North thinks about the Civil War. I was just telling a friend yesterday about my move from Augusta, home to one of the tallest Civil War monuments, to Madison, Wisconsin, where the Badgers play at Camp Randall, so named because that’s where the Union soldiers mustered out. There’s a monument to them a block from my first apartment in that city. A friend’s ancestor served in that war and is buried in there. Family legend has it a bone from his war-injured leg is buried separately (but atop his grave). In addition, nearby, there is a section devoted to Confederate soldiers. The war is not nearly as omnipresent, but it is visible.
I love reading exerpts from this book Stuart. I’m still a bit of a Lost Cause girl - father’s family surname Wimberly from Jeffersonville in Twiggs county Georgia. The men in my dad’s family were all doctors until my dad came along and became an architect. My folks came to Hawaii in 1940 so my dad could work “just for a year” at the shipyard at Pearl Harbor and I grew up here in a totally multi-racial society. But there were almost no African American people here when I was growing up, and when I went back to school to Radcliffe College I was confused by the hostility that I felt from some of the girls that I encountered there.
You’re my interpreter of the phenomenon of Southern Culture. Thanks for sharing- I have your book, It Was All A Lie- perhaps I will buy this one as well.
Beautifully written, Stuart. It will be my next book. I did not grow up in the south so your descriptions are new to me. I understand now, I think. At least I get it better than before. 🙏🏻
This was lovely! I few tears in my eyes as I think of my father and his southern roots in Alabama. This must have been how he and his cousins felt about Auburn and Alabama. He spent his fall weekend in the downstairs with the console TV. As a teenager , I enjoyed a few Atlanta falcons games with him, but for some reason we never got hooked as a family watching college football.
Thanks for the memories!
I really think a New south is poking its head making its self quietly heard. Its gonna take time and constant battles but its rising and willing to battle.
Beautifully written. I have a friend who went to Ole Miss. It's a complicated history, but I understand the South better now. It's hard to let go of loss, even necessary loss.
Thank you Mr. Stevens for this article! I could feel your emotions while reading about the old South and football traditions with your father. I'm envious of your memories as I have none like those. Well written.
I believe I have read this before. It is a lovely memory that touches the heart. Nice to read it again.
Thanks for sharing, Stuart. Take care.
P.S.---Later, as I set sipping my coffee this old gospel song, "Precious Memories", flooded my thoughts. How these thoughts do linger. A very nice way to start the day.