Use of Confederate flag to insult Yankees is an insult to Southerners

    This political cartoon is a great example of anti-Southern and anti-Confederate bigotry that one sees too often.

    Yankees and scalawags love to denounce the Confederate flag at every opportunity. So successful have they been at besmirching this Southern symbol that now, to them, it has become a way to insult people in a modern version of Waving the Bloody Shirt.

    The politicians and public figures pictured on the flag above are:

• Sean Hannity, born and reared in New York City or environs
• Koch Brothers, both born in Kansas, educated in Massachusetts
• Roger Ailes, born and reared in Ohio
• Ann Coulter, born in New York City, educated at Cornell and Michigan
• Glenn Beck, born and reared in the state of Washington
• Sarah Palin, born in Idaho, reared in Alaska and an Alaska resident, attended college in Idaho
• Michele Bachmann, born in Iowa, reared in Minnesota, educated in Minnesota, Kansas and Virginia
• Rush Limbaugh, born and reared in Missouri, a border state
• Mike Lee, born in Arizona, reared in Utah and Virginia, now a Utah senator.
• Eric Cantor, born and raised in Virginia
• Jim DeMint, born, raised in South Carolina and was a senator from that state
• Rand Paul, born in Pennsylvania, but moved to Texas as a child
• Ted Cruz, born in Canada, but a Texan of Cuban origin.

    What's interesting is that seven of those featured on the flag have little or no connection to the South. They are Yankees. Rush Limbaugh is a kinda-sorta Southerner from the kinda-sorta state of Missouri. Likewise, Mike Lee spent a portion of his childhood in Virginia, but was born and has spent most of his life in the Far West. That leaves four with an actual Southern upbringing or connection.

    If the cartoonist wants to associate actual Southerners with the flag I wouldn't mind it so much. But simply using the association with the Confederate flag as a way to hurl an insult in offensive.

    I love Yankees and I love most of the politicians or public figures featured in this cartoon. But that doesn't change the fact that they are Yankees and don't deserve the honor of association with our flag. Couldn't the cartoonist at least think up 13 Southerners he didn't like?