Firing Stephen Foster, Promoting Uncle Ben

What follows is completely true and yet unreal.
Stephen Foster met Uncle Ben in my radio reverie this morning. For real, or so it seemed. (Y'all know I hear odd connections in that place between asleep and awake.)

Two southern stories that seem literally black and white, but turn out to be anything but.

Radio news reported that the Southland's good old-fashioned composer is on his way out; our conservative and affable new governor actually refuses to have our state song played in his presence! (yet in the same breath he says "whatever the people want satisfies me" and that sure sounds unreal to me.)

Nobody said anything unmannerly or politically correct about unpopular language, although that's likely the truth. One legislator did mention the word "darkies" but to hear them tell it, it's not that, just the times they are a'changin' . . .hey, now THAT would make a great state song!

Meanwhile good old-fashioned Uncle Ben got a promotion to Chairman of the Board. He isn't the kindly kitchen rice-cooker anymore, now he's the Donald Trump of Rice, with his own fancy penthouse office, jet-setting schedule and authoritative rice-education curriculum. (You can poke around his empty office, open his travel journal, it feels almost like corporate espionage, with him hanging on the wall watching your every move!)

One a real human, the other made up as marketing image. (Although real and made up aren't "really" opposites either, see Straight Dope's "Were Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima real people?".)

The composer and the kitchen help, one going down for the last time, the other movin' on up.

One dead and therefore dismissed; the other never alive in the first place and therefore lives on (hmm, an apt juncture to consider all the meanings of "immortal" fitting together. . .)

And silly me, I thought "Uncle Ben" was already made over by the Spiderman blockbusters anyway.

But what they do share and why my mind connected them unbidden, is that their famous identities were both born of affable cultural stereotyping, human belief embodied in "art" that first captures our imagination but grows real enough to threaten us and thus need killing (or elevating to higher power, either way is risky in itself). . .which btw connects to a third radio story this morning, Dr. Anne Daugherty's review of the new dvd, "The Prestige" . . . if Ogden Nash is right and we'll all be Kansas by and by, at least she'll be there to make the cultural reality of that a bit more bearable.

Are those the only two choices we have as a people, to satisfy ourselves? Kill or exalt our own stories in turn, what kind of integration or progress is that?
Is "affable conservative" the old style, or the new -- and should we kill it, or worship it now?

Besides I think we tried both already, what's left? (yeah, okay, pun intended)
If "whatever the people want" will satisfy affable conservatism, then what DO we want? Why don't we ask ourselves what the heck we need an official state song for anyway -- and a state flower and animal and bug and tree, much less a state brand of rice?

Maybe instead we could focus on something that we might all actually *want* and be able to use, wouldn't that be more likely to "satisfy?"

When current culture and diversity tires of, wears out, or just can't fit into old wardrobes, what to do? Save them in the cedar chest for the grandkids? Restyle and repeat? Burn em, hang em, hand em down intact to those less fortunate, apologize for ever having worn them at all (yes! if we're talking the 1970s) -- or maybe makeover the culture instead of the clothes? There are no simple answers and not much common culture to draw on (or about) anymore.

Diversity has its own edgy style, and dress codes don't fit diversity. The state cannot hope to adopt any official anything that will fit, to satisfy all the people. Maybe statewide song choices can't be one size fits all any more than schools, churches or Uncle Ben's rice can. (Or homeschools.)

Need. More. Coffee . . .

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