Posts Tagged ‘lee’

“Spike Lee to make an all-Black version of Hogan’s Heroes,” trumpeted the headline in Variety.  

Hogan and his heroes throttling the Nazi war machine. Sgt. Kinchloe on the left.

As I breathlessly absorbed those sweet words that I’d waited almost 50 years to read, a lump the size of a Sherman Tank began to grow in my throat. Could this really be happening? I mean it wasn’t the Beatles getting back together, but it was close. One of my fondest boyhood memories was cozying up to the TV on Friday night at 8:30 to watch experience Hogan’s Heroes. The show had everything the pure heart of a 6 year old boy yearned for: good army men outsmarting bad army men, a bunch of secret agent GI Joes camping out in a barrack, and plenty of pretty frauliens inexplicably parading about in a backwater POW camp – who cared if it didn’t make sense? It made me happy. Still does. This new Spike Lee Hogan’s Heroes would make me even happier.  

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“This unbidden dilemma vexes me to no end.” 

In 1861 United States Army Colonel Robert E Lee was the South’s first choice for a commanding position in the Confederate Army. His outstanding military reputation and patriotic lineage merited a similar offer from the North. Ultimately he chose to resign his commission in the United States Army and sign on with his secessionist home state of Virginia. He was promptly named a General in the Confederate Army and in short order the patriotic brotherhood of the Revolution devolved into the bitter animus of the Civil War.

We will never know what would’ve happened had Lee decided otherwise. We only know the predictable result of his imprudent decision – a prolonged and lethal struggle to defend a state’s right to extend slavery into the territories. Of course I’m not suggesting Robert E Lee was entirely responsible for the abomination of the Civil War. What I am suggesting is that his faulty decision amplified the length and breadth of this irrepressible conflict. Read the rest of this entry »