Posted on 09/16/2002 10:32:41 AM PDT by WhiskeyPapa
Barbecue is a religion in the American South. Some folks swear by a thick tomato sauce; others baste their barbecue with a watery conconction based on spiced-up vinegar. In South Carolina — the home of what might be called Extreme Barbecue — folks slather their pulled pork sandwiches with a mustard-based sauce whose blaring yellow color comes as a shock to those of us who grew up with more orthodox versions.
For more than a third of a century, one of the most widely available mustard sauces was made by Maurice Bessinger, owner of the legendary Piggie Park barbecue chain, which ships its sumptuous takeout far and wide under the aegis of the Flying Pig. Two years ago, however, Mr. Bessinger suddenly decided to unfurl the Confederate flag over the Piggie Park restaurants. Even if he had not also been found selling a tract that justified slavery on biblical grounds, the flags would have been a marketing disaster.
Several retail chains have since dropped the sauce and associated products. Things have since gotten worse for Mr. Bessinger. Last month, The State, a Columbia, S.C., newspaper, reported that one of South Carolina's largest employers had taken a step that would discourage its workers from eating lunch at Piggie Park. Scana, the parent company of South Carolina Electric and Gas, has forbidden employees from parking corporate vehicles on the grounds of the restaurant, except during service calls. The company believes that Mr. Bessinger's views are inconsistent with its core values.
The Piggie Park sanctions mark a departure for the corporate community of South Carolina, which has worked quietly behind the scenes to de-emphasize the Confederate flag in the civic life of the state. The very public animus directed at Mr. Bessinger seems partly rooted in liberal and corporate hostility toward the State Legislature, which kept the Confederate flag flying above the Statehouse dome for decades until protests reached a fever pitch just a few years ago.
Faced with an uprising from the Chamber of Commerce and a possible tourism boycott, the flag-waving legislators consented to have the emblem removed from the dome, but then hung it near the Capitol entrance, where anti-flag citizens have to suffer it at even closer range than before. Black legislators acquiesced, however, in hope of revisiting the issue when tempers cooled and modernity got more of a foothold in South Carolina.
Most South Carolina businessmen and women have been flag-phobic since that period, convinced that public flaunting of the symbols of Old Dixie is, at very least, bad for business. When the flag moved from the dome to the Capitol grounds, they took a deep breath and hoped they had heard the last of the issue. Mr. Bessinger, however, could not resist giving the deposed banner a home at Piggie Park. His decision to fly the flag above his nine restaurants was the equivalent of grabbing hold of a live wire, and, thus far, he has been unable to let go.
In doing so, he removed the target that activists had painted on the backs of certain state legislators and put it firmly on the front door of Piggie Park Enterprises Inc. The resulting controversy has wreaked havoc with the Bessinger empire.
The sudden appearance of the stars and bars at Piggie Park reminded people that Mr. Bessinger was a staunch segregationist during the 1960's who agreed to serve black customers on an equal footing with whites only after the courts forced him to. African-American and white liberal barbecue lovers had seemed willing to let bygones be bygones, until this sudden new flaunting of Confederate ideology.
The tracts Mr. Bessinger had on sale also undercut flag apologists' argument that the Confederate flag is all about regional pride, not race. They claim that the flag came to be over the Capitol in the first place because it was put up for the centennial of the Civil War, then mistakenly left flying. In truth, it went up a year later, in 1962, after a conflict between the state and the Kennedy administration, which had urged the integration of the Charleston, S.C., hotel where a centennial convention was being held. When black delegates were refused, the convention was moved to a military base. The flag's appearance on the Statehouse dome was an endorsement of the segregationist creed.
Mr. Bessinger has filed a lawsuit against one of the retail chains that removed his products from the shelves. At the same time, a powerful state senator named Glenn McConnell has threatened a legislative vendetta against the power company, arguing that Mr. Bessinger has the right to hold unpopular opinions.
The business community is bracing for bad publicity. Meanwhile, Mr. Bessinger has competition from his estranged brother, Melvin, who is keeping a discreet distance from the family name while marketing sauce and barbecue of his own.
South Carolinians have always been passionate on the question of which barbecue pit cooks the best food. But the Bessinger controversy has given barbecue a starkly political dimension as well. The pulled pork sandwich you eat is now taken as an index of where you stand, on the flag, the Civil War and on Maurice Bessinger himself.
Walt
Notice how the Times does not mention that Scana also banned employees from having Confederate flag bumper stickers on their own personal cars.
"Sacred constitutional republic?" Looney-tunes.
There's absolutely nothing "sacred" about what man makes.
If you're ever in Sedalia, there's a guy who cooks BBQ in the Food 4 Less parking lot. Not a restaurant...Just a takeout BBQ stand, and it's very good and inexpensive.
Well that's true and in the Maurice's case he offers a convenient target of opportunity for some folks to posture against the South ...they get this chance every so often; couple of years ago it was Bob Jones U, next year it will be something else....
.. I expect Maurice will go broke and when he does a great "victory" will be declared by the demonizers of the Confederacy.....he won't go broke due to business at the restaurants, but over the disasterous cancellation of his chain store customers....when I read between the lines I think I know what happened here....anybody that's ever done business with WalMart (and my old company did) knows that you have to be very careful...a little guy can't handle their volume....he's got to go to the bank and borrow capital to expand his production because with Walmart you have to ship on time and in full.....no excuses are tolerated from Bentonville.....and they will also beat you down on price so bad that you're working razor thin....a big guy like say GE can tell them to go to hell, but a little guy with a big note down at the bank is in trouble if he loses their business....I expect that's where Maurice finds himself now.....the restaurants probably don't throw off enough cash to keep him afloat....so he appeals to people of Southern heritage to patronize him, and we will but I doubt it will be enough.....he would have probably been better off if he'd have just stuck with the restaurant business...if he'd flown the Stars n' Bars then, he would have gotten a local boycott; but he wouldn't have near the vulnerability that he has now.... Stonewalls
I like to stay informed and know my enemy (I read Louis Farrakhan too!) and though I don't particularly agree with either Maurice or Lewis, I do find their rants and raves highly entertaining.
Not being from the south, I appriciate the un-politically correct point of view as an alternative to the liberal garbage I've been fed all my life. (and as far as the sauce, I prefer a vinegar/brownsugar/tomato mixture).
Why, of course. Through their website. All God's chillun got websites. Go here
At the risk of turning this into a recipe thread here goes:
The BBQ Sauce
Mince an onion or two real fine and sauté in butter (Oil or margarine will ruin it)
When the onions turn brown, add about a cup of packed brown sugar, you can add molasses or honey here to taste.
Cook until the sugar melts and starts to caramelize (turns dark brown.)
Deglaze and stop the browning with a cup or so of cider vinegar.
Add a couple of cans of tomato sauce and a couple of tablespoons of ground chilies. .
Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. .
Add additional brown sugar or vinegar until the proper balance is obtained. .
You can add more chilies if you desire more heat. .
Enjoy!
Neither of these statements is true.
Walt
The people of the day weren't part of the liberal left:
"The ends for which this Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
* * *
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief.
We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.
Virginia:
...the federal government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of Southern slaveholding states;
Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain, that the ordinance adopted by the people of this state in convention, on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this state ratifying or adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union between the State of Virginia and the other states under the Constitution aforesaid is hereby dissolved,...
Georgia:
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war....
Alabama:
....And as it is the desire and purpose of the people of Alabama to meet the slaveholding States of the South, who may approve such purpose, in order to frame a provisional as well as permanent Government upon the principles of the Constitution of the United States,
Be it resolved by the people of Alabama in Convention assembled, That the people of the States of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, be and are hereby invited to meet the people of the State of Alabama, by their Delegates, in Convention, on the 4th day of February, A.D., 1861, at the city of Montgomery, in the State of Alabama, for the purpose of consulting with each other as to the most effectual mode of securing concerted and harmonious action in whatever measures may be deemed most desirable for our common peace and security.
Texas:
WHEREAS, The recent developments in Federal affairs make it evident that the power of the Federal Government is sought to be made a weapon with which to strike down the interests and property of the people of Texas, and her sister slave-holding States, instead of permitting it to be, as was intended, our shield against outrage and aggression;...
Southerners -gloried- in the term "slave states."
The confederate battle flag -is- the symbol of slavery.
Walt
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