I see no difference. Most of what Wal-mart sells comes from third parties. The only difference is that eBay’s third parties are not companies, they’re private citizens. Well, except for the thousands and thousands of companies that sell through eBay. Ok, I’m back to seeing no difference.
EBay is also a company, not a force of moral suasion (and can we stop using that word?). Companies act by taking items off the shelf, not by trying to persuade people that those items shouldn’t be sold. You may see EBay differently but I see no other way for them to act.
Then they should get a different symbol, simple as that. This one has been co-opted by racists and is widely offensive. I did it before, people flying the flag know is seen as racist so they better not mind being confused as racists. If people want to be upset about that, be upset at the racists, not at the people who are offended by it. This whole thread is like blaming Jews for being offended at swastikas. No, Nazis fucked up the swastika image and racists fucked up the confederate flag. How’s about denouncing them with half as much energy as you’re denouncing eBay?
What do you mean? You want me to fly to New York and do the Post’s job for them? They have one guy’s unsupported theory and an unchecked upon claim by the MTA spokesman. So I can safely assume the reporter and the newspaper don’t give a shit about the truth and just wanted to publish a story that contained the words "Confederate flag ".
So start a new auction site. If eBay and Amazon are truly forcing their unpopular views on poor, voiceless third party sellers, people will doubtless flock to do business with you.
No, it’s the difference between expecting people to show some sign of responsibility for their actions, or being OK with wafting through life oblivious to one’s semiotic weight.
Now if he’s saying he wouldn’t even fight to remove the flag from the statehouse grounds, I disagree with him on that. The flag has no place there, nor on any courthouse grounds or other public building (except maybe a battlefield). But beyond that, I think we are getting into dangerous and divisive territory.
I think we should shame those who display it. That works pretty well. The link I just put up to the goofball Confederate parade in Dalton, GA is a good example of shaming. I assure you, those dead-enders got as much derision in my Facebook feed as they probably did in yours.
But trying to turn the flag into an unperson and rewrite its history such that anyone who displayed it ever is “RACIST!” well, that is doubleplus bad.
That’s exactly my point. The time to defend that flag was back in the sixties when they allowed it to be co-opted by a bunch of hateful racists without a whimper. They let the KKK and Lester Maddox and George Wallace drag that flag through the sewer, and now we’re not supposed to complain about the stink when they bring it into the house? Fuck that noise, you had a chance to protect the flag and you fucked it up.
I agree with that. The flag is hopelessly tied up with racism, and should come down at statehouses and courthouses, and on private property. The question is how to approach that goal.
No, not impossible. What we’ve been discussing in this thread is the best way to do just that. Some seem to think attempted corporate censorship of the flag is the way to go. I think persuasion and shaming are better.
The attempt to extirpate the flag by denying it access to the market is, it seems to me, born of the same sort of puritanical impulse which drives those who want to ban same-sex marriage: the desire to repress behavior in others which you yourself find morally objectionable.
If eBay said it was no longer allowing rainbow flags to be sold on its site because its executives found them morally objectionable, how would you react? I am guessing many of my fellow Dopers would be pretty perturbed by that, and wouldn’t be satisfied with a “Well they have a right to do it!” response to their objections. And I’d agree with them.
It may be impossible.
It is only unconstitutional if one seeks to have the government enforce it. It might be possible for shaming to work in the way that producers of food no longer use caricatures of black people to sell watermelons.
No, that’s what you’ve been discussing. You keep attributing that motive to those companies and repeating it as fact but I don’t think it’s part of a corporate plan to keep people from owning the flag, they’re simply deciding not to sell something offensive. It happens all the time. They held a meeting and said “do we really want to be associated with this?” not “how do we deny people these flags?”
WalMart doesn’t carry Hustler magazine. By your reasoning, that would be corporate censorship and wrong. Instead, they should sell Hustler and hope that moral suasion convinces people not to buy it.
You’re looping this argument about a motive that you thought up, assigned them, decided was fact, and decided was wrong. And anyone who doesn’t agree is automatically in favor of corporate censorship.
Why am I the one who gets quoted? Spoke accused another poster of thinking everything was racist. Frankly, I’m tired of the double standard on this board.
“Tom Petty on Past Confederate Flag Use: ‘It Was Downright Stupid’
“[The flag] shouldn’t represent us in any way,” Petty says. “We should be more concerned with why the police are killing black men for no reason””
*If we ban one offensive flag than we need to ban them all. They aren’t banning the confederate flag. That flag was NEVER an official flag it’s the battle flag. You can try to erase history all you want which is what people are trying for, but it won’t really erase it.
Those who do not know the past are condemned to repeat it.*
I’m sure this is pointless, as its probably been said all over this thread already, but for the sake of my daily “bang my head against the wall” dose… no one is trying to erase history. Instead, some are just finally deciding not to celebrate it. Kind of like how Germany doesn’t fly the swastika and claim it’s nothing but heritage.