When we moved to a college town a few years ago, we discovered a few unexpected details about a small city that simply aren't true of the tiny towns we had lived in up to that point. We discovered that being able to walk to the store or to work of to church is even better than we expected it would be. We discovered that each little neighborhood in our new city has a personality of its own. And we discovered that here, unlike anywhere we'd ever lived, there was a significant homelessness problem.

​Sinve we live very very close to the center of town, we sometimes have homeless people come by our house and knock on our door. They're usually looking to do odd jobs around the yard to make a little money to get them through the day. Several different people have come to us over the last couple of years, and they have always been respectful and polite. They've never asked to come inside. They've never asked for handouts, only for work. But it's clear that they're struggling.

One of the men men who has come by a few times is a fellow I will call Ed, to avoid using his real name. Ed is a quiet, soft-spoken fellow. He is contrite and always asks if we have any odd jobs he can do to earn a little money. Ed is missing several teeth, and rides a bicycle with a few canvas bags strapped to it. Presumably they hold all his worldly possessions. We always ask him, "Have you found a place to stay yet?" and he always replies that he hasn't. We've referred him to churches and shelters, but they never seem to offer permanent solutions. Recently, Ed came by the house one morning when I was at home, and I answered the door.

I feel I should take a moment here to clarify that Ed's visits are not frequent. He seems to drop by only once every six to eight weeks or so. He isn't constantly at our door. But occasionally he does come by, and when he does, we try to do what we can for him.

That morning, I was the one to come to the door. Ed asked me, as always, if I had any odd jobs around the yard he could do. "I really need some money, but I'll work for it! I'll work!" But that day, I simply didn't have any money. Like most people these days, I do all of my purchasing with my debit cards. I just don't keep cash. I told him this, and I asked, "What do you need? Are you hungry right now?"

Ed was indeed hungry. And Ed needed something else too. He needed socks. I looked down at his feet and saw that he wore heavy leather work boots. Yes, this man needs to wear socks. So I went inside. I made him a turkey sandwich. I packed up some canned fruit and some cereal bars to hopefully get him through the rest of the day. I grabbed a pair of socks from my drawer. I took the modest haul outside to Ed, saying, "These aren't new, but they're clean. Is that ok?" He responded politely, "Oh, yes, sir. That's just fine!" And I handed over the food.

Ed looked into the bag and asked, "I'm really hungry now, do you mind if I just sit here and eat this sandwich now?" I told him that would be fine and invited him to sit on my front porch to get started on his lunch while I went inside to get him a glass of water to wash it down with. When I returned with the water, I had a question for him. "Do you mind if I join you out here while you eat?" He smiled broadly, saying, "No, go ahead!" I took my place next to him.

We talked lest a little. We sat in silence a little. We don't have much in common, this man and me. But we're both human beings, and it was good to be sitting on the front porch with another human, enjoying the spring sunshine. I gave some things to Ed that day, but he gave something back. He didn't weed my flower beds or wash my cars. But he sat with me, on my porch on a warmer than usual day and shared those moments with me.

The next time I saw Ed, he was riding his bike through the park. He smiled at me, greeted me and the baby (who was strapped to chest) and said something silly to the dog as he rode by. I like to think those few moments in the sunshine meant something to him, too.

Note: This blog will autopost to Facebook and Twitter, but as I'm taking a break from those two platforms, I'll only see your comments if you post them directly to the blog. Thanks!

Note the Second: Spoilers ahead!

I finished Brian Reed's new podcast, S-Town, on only the second day after its release, and I found it absolutely remarkable. It was, as Sarah Koenig of Serial promised, at times beautiful, at times stunning, filled with unexpected twists and turns. Ira Glass said it feels more like a novel than a true crime podcast, and I guess it is. I found myself missing these characters, wondering about their real lives, putting myself into their shoes. Days later, I can't put it out of my mind. The final image, of young and newly married Mary Grace Brooks McLemore sitting in the Alabama soil, rubbing her belly, and praying that her child would be a genius, will likely be burned into my memory forever.

Interestingly, there has been some controversy in recent days concerning the release of the podcast, particularly as it relates to certain details of the life of John B. McLemore himself. Some pundits have gone so far as to say the podcast shouldn't have been made, that it was exploitative, as it exposed details about John's sexuality, possible partners, and his proclivity, toward the end of his life, for tattooing and piercing. I cannot speak for John, but I can disagree with those folks. And I choose to disagree on the grounds that I, like John, can be myself in two (or maybe more) seemingly contradictory ways.

if you've been following my previous posts here on A Lowlander's Renaissance, you're aware of my multitudinous identity. I was born and raised in the rural South, yet I'm a progressive in mindset and political leanings; I was raised an evangelical Christian but have gravitated toward the liturgical, etc. I've written a post or two (or several) about my feeling that people from the rural South, such as myself, are unfairly pigeon-holed as ignorant or bigoted or uneducated or all three, and more to boot. But that's not my experience at all, and I don't think it was John's either.

​John B saw himself as a citizen of the world. But he was born and lived and died on a 124 acre plot in Woodstock, Alabama. He was a Southerner for sure. His accent was enough to give that away. And he also seemed to have a love of the land, or at least of his own little corner of it. His rants against "Sh** Town" always seemed, to me, at least, to be more about particular people he was having conflicts with rather than an indictment of the south in general, but perhaps I'm connecting it too strongly to my own experiences.

At any rate, my understanding of John is that he wanted stories to be told. He might not have expected that his story would be the one that would reach and touch so many people, but it has. And the lesson we can take from S-Town is that we are all complex and fascinating people, if one only takes the time to look. Yes, even in the South. So I'm thankful Brian Reed took us on this journey. And it may not be too long before I return to the podcast version of 2014 Woodstock, AL, when John B McLemore wasn't yet a memory, but was a man with a clock shop, a hedge maze, and a mother who had, so long ago, prayed for a genius.

In the eight months or so since its release in hardcover, much has been written about Jack Thorne's new Harry Potter story, which he wrote for the stage with the blessing of J.K. Rowling herself. And much of what has been written has been quite negative. By contrast, much of what has been written about the actual London production of the show has been extremely positive, which probably has a lot to do with people sitting in a theatre being immersed in an experience as opposed to people who have never before read a play trying to slog their way through dialogue without the helping hands of Rowling's descriptive prose.

One of the the criticisms I myself had about the play had nothing to do with the tone or the format, but with the central plot of the piece, which involves a super-powerful time turner. (At this point I'll say "last stop before Spoilerville" in order to give those who wish to do so a chance to disembark.) I recently ran across this article which claims that the major plot hole in Cursed Child is that Time Turners (henceforth TT) only work when people go back a few hours. Well, yes. But the TT in Cursed Child is a *special* TT which can send wizards and witches much further back. It's even a plot point. So this didn't really bother me at all. It stands to reason that in the HP universe, where there are plenty of regular invisibility cloaks, but one very special one that works better and lasts longer than all the rest, the same could be true for Time Turners.

However, in The Prisoner of Azkaban, Rowling clearly defines the rules of time travel in the HP universe, but Thorne (presumably with Rowling's blessing) rejects these established parameters, choosing instead to use time travel rules that serve his specific story, rather than those canonically established in the 3rd novel of the series.

This seems an appropriate moment to zoom out a bit and discuss time travel as a popular culture touchstone by addressing the ways in which various authors interpret time travel and its effects. There are essentially three camps. In the first, time travel into the past can actually alter the timeline in which the characters who do the time traveling exist. For an example of this, look to the 2004 Ashton Kutcher vehicle "The Buttrrfly Effect." Each time Evan travels in back in time, the changes he makes there affect his actual reality. He returns to his "own" time to find his life (and sometimes even his physical body) altered due to the choices he made during his journey to the past.

The second way one can address time travel and its effects is the "alternate universe" approach. The time traveler makes a change and creates an alternate timeline, which he will now return to when he goes forward again. See the 2009 Star Trek film for an example of this. Spock Prime even explains it for us: that this is an alternate reality created by the event of the Romulan vessel traveling back and altering events. According to his account, the two realities will continue to develop alongside one another. This is clearly done so the Star Trek continuity could be rebooted without throwing out all the previous material. But it's consistent with Star Trek's approach to time travel throughout the series, as evidenced by the Mirror Universe, as well as The Next Generation episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" in which Tasha Yar is still alive in an alternate reality created by time travel. The iimportant thing here is that the original reality still exists; the actions of the time traveler create an alternate universe that exists alongside the original.

The third way an author of fiction may approach time travel is what I tend to think of as the Lost approach. In the 2004 TV series Lost, time travel paradoxes and alternate universes just didn't exists because "Whatever happened, happened." That is to say, if a person goes back in time and takes some sort of action, then the result is whatever has already taken place. A person can't change events in the past because the timeline is set in stone. In the show, Syed can't kill Ben in the past because Ben isn't dead in the present. In fact, the actions that our heroes take in the past are what ultimately turn Ben into a villain because that is simply what happened.

To return to the Potterverse, let us begin with The Prisoner of Azkaban, which clearly adheres to the Lost-style "whatever happened, happened" theory of time travel. By way of example, consider the ordeal of our three young heroes during the latter chapters of the novel. They go to Hagrid's hut and are distracted by pebbles that are thrown at them. As the evening wears on, they are saved from dementors by someone Harry assumes is his father. He sees this person form across the lake. It is eventually revealed, of course, that the pebbles were being thrown by the heroes themselves, who had traveled three hours into the past to prevent what they believed to have been the execution of Buckbeak (though the beheading sound they had head was actually just a pumpkin being crushed).

The person on the other side of the lake, of course, was Harry himself. Three-hour-older Harry went to the other side of the lake precisely because three-hour-younger Harry had already seen him(self?) there. It had already happened. And so it happened. And of course, they were guided into doing the things they would do (had done) by master manipulator Albus Dumbledore, who allowed them to believe that Buckbeak had, indeed, been executed, though he knew that hadn't actually happened.

In The Cursed Child, Thorne takes a completely different approach from the one Rowling herself consistently adhered to in her novels. In Thorne's plays, young Albus Potter uses the aforementioned super powerful Time Turner to alter his existing reality. The comparison to The Butterfly Effect is apt here, as each seemingly tiny change Albus makes results in huge alterations in the world he returns to. These are not presented as alternate realities, but rather as rewritten versions of the base reality in which Albus lives. But whether they're different universes isn't the point. Either of those approaches rejects the canonical approach to time travel as presented on the novels.

I do concede that Harry Potter isn't the only property to bend and/or blend the rules. Back to the Future, for example, has Doc Brown give an explanation of the alternate universes approach, while the story itself seems to adhere much more closely to the theory that a person can alter his own timeline. That is to say, if the multiple universes theory were true in Back to the Future, then Marty at the end is still stuck in an alternate reality where his parents are actually cool and he has a nice pickup truck. And Doctor Who picks and chooses its approach to time travel based on the needs of whichever story they're telling this week.

That said, this particular use (misuse?) of time travel in the HP universe is particularly troubling to me for one important reason; Voldemort. Many people have made the argument, "Well, if they have time travel, why don't they just stop Voldemort in the past before he becomes a threat?" It's like the old saw in our own universe--practically anyone with actual time traveling abilities would try to kill Hitler on their very first trip. Wizards can go back in time. But they go back and don't kill Voldemort because whatever happened, happened. Their universe is set up in such a way that they can't make those changes. Or at least it was, until The Cursed Child.

I will close by se by saying I didn't particularly dislike The Cursed Child as a play. I enjoyed reading it, and I like having an official Harry Potter stage play that I might one day be able to produce with my students. That said, I do not consider these two plays to be canon. The departures in time travel rules are enough, in my opinion, to make the world of The Cursed Child an alternate reality caused by Rowling's decision to let someone else write it.

Well, here I am just sort of dangling from the precipice of my final day of being 40 years old, waiting for sinister old Mr. Midnight to pry my fingers loose and drop me, ready or not, into 41, where I'll no longer just be "40" but will rather be "in my forties" which seems a good deal older when you say it aloud, although those two states are really only separated by a thin wall represented by the narrowest hand on my metal and canvas, still analog because I insisted on it wristwatch I received as a Father's Day present earlier this year, somewhere between half a week in the Smoky Mountains and our return to the swampy lowlands, our squat brick cottage, a very excited terrier, and two of the most discontent felines ever to pad their way across the soft green surface of the coastal plains.

And I'll admit it: 40 was my year. 40 was the year we finally purchased the property we intend to be our forever home. It was one of the most decorated years of my career, thanks to some amazingly talented, dedicated, and hardworking youngsters who cared enough about the art, the work, each other, and me to put together a string of some of the strongest shows I've ever worked on. This year I lost 15 pounds and gained 6 of those back, which isn't great but isn't a disaster either. 40 was the culmination of hard work in a lot of different areas.

And at the same time, 40 was abundant with blessings that were beyond my control but for which I'm just as thankful. A wonderful student of mine named me STAR teacher for Cook County Schools this year, an honor I will never forget. I climbed mountains looked out over valleys. I walked among ancient ruins in Mexico. I wept as stood in Hemingway's writing room for the first time. I sat with my parents, my brother, and his family around the table that once belonged to my wife's late father, all of us connected through food prepared by loving hands in fashions old, new, and somewhere in between. I sat in church and watched my wife teach my son to sing into a microphone with the praise band, just close enough to be heard, but not so close to destroy the balance of voices. I was invited to join our local community band, where I've strengthened old friendships and forged new ones, all while beating out the strong rhythm of a Sousa march or tapping out Latin sounds with my bare fingers against cured hide, playing new music on drums whose design has barely changed in thousands of years.

40 had indeed been one of the best years of my life, and it's tempting to hold on a little tighter, letting uncertainty twist my fingers into talons as they dig into the cliffside. But it is with faith, hope, immense gratitude, and a love for the life I have led this far that I will instead let go, dropping into 41 with the confidence of a toddler being tossed into the air by a loving and possibly overzealous uncle. 41 will catch me. I will look up into 41's eyes knowing I can't crawl back up the the cliff to 40. And we will both laugh until we're out of breath at what was and is and will one day be. And it will all be ok.

Lately I have been trying, with varying levels of success, to live by the adage "it is better to be kind than right." Most people who know me well know how much I love to be right, so this has been a struggle, but I believe it is a valuable one. Today someone was very unkind to me. This person was unnecessarily venomous and hurtful to me. I don't wish to rehash the minutiae of the situation, and yes I get that it's annoying when people say, "Hey, Internet, this thing happened but don't ask me about it," but I have a reason for sharing this.

If I have been unkind to you, deliberately or unintentionally, and haven't apologized, I would like to take this moment to sincerely ask your forgiveness. Being verbally attacked was horrible. Standing there and taking it without counter-attacking is something I doubt I could have done even a few years ago. I want to remember how this felt so I can put myself into the shoes of anyone I speak to from now on.

I'm sure I will falter. I'm sure I will lash out. But this experience has strengthened my resolve to be kind, even when my inclination is to be "right."

I often find myself meditating on this famous quote from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large; I contain multitudes." The 2008 Broadway musical version of Shrek has the ogre version of Fiona belt "I'm a mess of contradictions in a dress!" That's pretty much me. But I think it's pretty much all of us.

Lately I have often found myself at odds with... well, myself. The respective sources of the two quotes above, I think, reflect this contradictory nature. I am equally at home on a trail in the wilderness or in a fancy theatre space. I find myself spiritually fed by nature as well as by art. Specifically, theatre, which is a pretty unnatural art, at least in its current form. I'm extroverted at times, introverted at others.

I am amused when I teach American Romanticism and I must confess to myself that some of my favorite authors are in opposite camps: I love Transcendentalists and Anti-Transcendentalists alike. I'm not sure how much that says about me, but there it is. I have learned to embrace this swirling, contradictory nature of mine. But it wasn't always so.

When I was in high school, I wanted to have somewhere to fit. I wanted to be one thing. I tried on several hats. I tried being the redneck kid, the goth kid, the Jesus freak kid, the hardcore band nerd, and on and on. I tried to only like one type of music. But of course the "one type" changed every couple of months. I felt I needed a label. After all, that's how it works in the movies, right? People are one thing. Even the greatest high school movie ever, The Breakfast Club, told us that. Sure, it told us to break out of the mold. But first there has to BE a mold to break out of. Right?

I say no. Even the molds are things we create for ourselves. When I went to college, I started to embrace these many sides of myself. And I came to the realization that my contradictory nature is the very thing that defines me. I don't need to be just one thing. I can be many things. I've tried to live into that over the years, to like what I like because I like it, not because I fit into a particular group that likes a certain thing. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking of myself as "geek" or "hiker" or "Southerner" or "artist" but I have to remember that I am all of those things. And the way they go together equals me.

Our natures are numbered as the stars. Even within ourselves, we have these millions of bright spots that are the tapestry of our personalities. We can't shine as vividly if we're busy covering up the ones we think don't belong.

I try to tell my students this as well, but I see so many of them trying so hard to put themselves into little boxes. To draw visible labels on their invisible souls, marking themselves as "in" this group or "out" of that one. Of course, I'm the old guy who doesn't know too much, but I hope they find a way to embrace their contradictions & live into their multitudes. I use Whitman's words in my classes and in my life. We are, indeed, large. We do contain multitudes. They are us. And to deny them is to deny ourselves.

In the next few days, go out of your way to find a part of your multitude you may have been neglecting. Do you like a genre of music you're not supposed to like? Blast that Ke$ha or WuTang Clan or Culture Club album you've been hiding under your mattress. Too old for cartoons? Too manly for musicals? Too womanly for MMA? Who cares? Let yourself be yourself. And love it. Shine on, little stars. Shine on.

Being the good, forward-thinking progressive that I am, I have recently (in the last couple of years, anyway) begun following a few web sites, Facebook pages, and email lists that cater to my particular political & social awareness interests. I'm concerned with gay rights in particular, but also with civil rights in general. I believe in equality no matter the religion, race, sexuality, or gender of the person in question. I have stood for this for many years now. As I browse through the posts & comments and such on these sites, I am beginning to notice a disturbing trend. Many so-called progressives treat the southern states as if they're ghettos for the ignorant & bigoted.

This stereotyping seems to be the same type of thing progressives are opposed to in the first place. Aren't we supposed to be the open-minded ones? Aren't we supposed to be the peace-loving offspring of the hippies? And yet some of the remarks I've read are downright troubling. Some say "let the South secede already, we don't want them anyway" or "yeah, go ahead and deregulate guns in the South and let those idiots kill each other off." I'm a little behind on my political reading, so I've only recently become aware of Chuck Thompson's "Better Off Without 'Em: A Northern Manifesto For Southern Secession" which makes that very point. The rest of the country, he proposes, would be better off without us.

This puts me and most of my friends in a terribly precarious situation. Many of my friends are, like me, open to diversity in its many forms. We are pro LGBT rights, pro science, and pro racial diversity. We are highly educated and we value charity and equal access to healthcare. We voted for President Obama twice. And most of us were born and raised right here in the South. We do not wish to be viewed narrowly. We do not wish to be lumped in together with bigots and young-earthers. But at the same time, we don't wish to let go of the land and the heritage that has made us who we are.

Perhaps the best example of a Southerner who is both Southern through and through and a well-known progressive is former president (and fellow South Georgian) Jimmy Carter. President Carter has recently been outspoken on LGBT rights. His administration was, in fact, the first to meet with leaders of the gay community and even 40 years ago he opposed legislation that would allow teachers to be fired for their sexuality. He has been a leading voice in combatting poverty domestically and across the globe. I cannot believe that President Carter is the kind of person Mr. Thomas believes he would be better off without.

And it must be pointed out that one of the greatest civil rights leaders in the history of the United States was himself a Southerner. Dr. King was born and raised in the Deep South. He was the pastor of a Christian church. He was, on the surface, all the things that people choose to bring up when talking about how backwards things are here, but he was one of the men who helped this country to make some of its greatest strides forward.

In my experience, there are a whole lot of Jimmy Carters and Martin Luther Kings in this part of the country. The Southern states look very red from a distance, but there are many, many pockets of blue. By choosing to lump us all in with the David Dukes, the progressives in other parts of the country leave behind those of us who truly want to move forward. We just don't want to have to leave our homes in order to do it. Negativity and stereotyping is counterproductive. Rather than wishing to cut us off from the union and let us drift off into the Atlantic, I invite progressives from the North and the West to reach out to those of us who are fighting for what is right here in the toughest battleground in the nation. We might have more insight than they think.

Yes, there are many people in this area who want to go back to the plantation era. But there are many others who want freedom and equality for all people. We are the South too.

This morning I awoke to the sounds of the 2005 film "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" coming from the living room, as my son had awoken early to gorge himself on movies as a fitting beginning to the week-long break he's about to get. It also occurs to me that the new version of "Robocop" just came out this weekend. All in all, this put me in mind of remakes and sequels and such, and how strongly many of my friends feel about such things. So I realize it's an unpopular opinion, but I, for one, love sequels, remakes, reboots, and reimaginings. I honestly do. And I know there are plenty of arguments against them, but just hear me out.

As a theatre director, remakes are essentially my bread & butter. We are constantly redoing shows that dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people have done before us. In the case of the classics, those numbers might be even higher. The point is: this is almost all we do. And people come to see these shows. In fact, in my experience audiences are much more likely to come to a show they've seen or heard about in the past than a brand new title. For that matter, we find it difficult to fill seats when the play is unfamiliar to our particular audience, nevermind that it may have won a Pulitzer Prize or garnered critical accolades. Broadway even has an award for best remake every single year, only they call remakes "revivals" to make them sound a little fancier. People are more likely to pay attention to entertainment properties with which they are familiar than to those that are new or different. This is simply human nature.

For support of this hypothesis, let us go back a few thousand years. When audiences went to the Theatre of Dionysus for the annual play festival, they didn't go in expecting to see entirely new stories. They went to see new retellings of old stories. The same can be said of Shakespeare's plays, especially the tragedies and the histories. Audiences already knew the stories. They knew the endings. They just wanted to see the stories in a new way. "Romeo & Juliet" is the perfect example: the ending of the play is laid out for the audience in the first 38 seconds. Audiences didn't go to see the works of Sophocles or Shakespeare because they were new or fresh. They went because the stories were familiar. Sophocles and Shakespeare worked their respective poetic magics on these stories, of course, and we now remember the plays and still perform them for that reason. But the original draw came from the same thing it still comes from today: name recognition.

Filmmakers know this trick as well, and they've known it for decades. Even when there were no films to remake, many of the earliest movies were adaptations of books and stage plays. In fact, there are still, to this day, two separate Oscars awarded for screenwriting: one for original screenplays, and one for adaptations. "Gone with the Wind" wasn't made on a whim, and neither was "The Wizard of Oz." These stories were made because they were already familiar to audiences. They would already sell. The same is true today. Books, comics, plays, and even older films get made into new films because they will draw people in. And this is nothing new. It could even be argued that even an "original" work is still a remake to some extent, especially when it comes to mainstream entertainment.

So we've established that remakes are nothing new. Sequels and prequels are nothing new. Name recognition drives ticket sales. But that's why they're made. That's why these projects get green-lit. And that isn't what I said I was going to write about. It is important to realize these things, yes, but I said I would tell you why I love these projects, so that's where I'll try to take this post from here.

I love creative people, and I love creativity. I like remakes, reboots, and sequels because I like to see how the next person will reinterpret the material. I once saw a steampunk adaptation of Hamlet. I've seen (and done) shows that push the limits of the source material. Sometimes this is a great success, other times it's a bit of a disaster. But every time someone approaches a work, something new is brought to that work. Remaking something adds to the conversation about that thing, and that's almost always good. I love to see people flexing their creative muscles, bringing new to the old. And even if the new doesn't surpass the old, there's still something valuable in the creative process.

And speaking of the new not surpassing the old, I'd like to wrap up this musing by mentioning one of the arguments against remakes, reboots, and the like. Many folks will say that a remake, by its very existence, somehow diminishes the original. I disagree. Each work of art is its own thing. If you like the original work, a new work doesn't take away from it. The new work may not add anything, but its creation doesn't take away from what has already been made. The 2010 Karate Kid remake doesn't make the 1984 version worse, no matter your opinion of either film. The upcoming Terminator reboot may seem superfluous, but nothing it can do can change the film that is already so entrenched in our culture. A remake can only add, not take away. No, not every remake can be as good as the 1986 version of 1958's The Fly, but every one has at least something to offer.

So I guess my battle cry is: "give remakes a chance." Or at least lay off the negativity and let the rest of us enjoy them. Don't think of remakes as rip-offs. Don't think of them as the result of a director trying to destroy something you love. Think of them as a new expression of an old idea. Remember the Ancient Greeks, trudging up the hill toward the amphitheater, thrilled to see a depiction of the life of Oedipus from the third or fourth different playwright. The arts of playmaking and filmmaking are about telling stories, and some of those stories are retold many times in many ways. Embracing the remake is one of the ways we can both hold on to the past and look forward into the future.

A lot has been made over the Phil Robertson comments in GQ this week. Given that my last post had Duck Dynasty in its title, I felt the need to throw my thoughts out there as well. As I said in that post, I have never seen the show. I've heard of it and I'm familiar with the basics and I'm fully aware of what a pop cultural sensation it has become, especially here in the rural South. Many of my friends and acquaintances are fans of the show. Some of those folks will agree with Phil and some will not. I hope this incident will serve as more than yet another Chik-Fil-A style lightning rod for controversy, but will instead help us to begin a real dialogue about bigotry in our culture. I have a number of things to say about this topic, but let me first get a couple of things out of the way:

1) This is not a free speech issue.

Mr. Robertson has every right to say what he said (and anything else for that matter) to whomever he wants. No one is stopping him from doing so. He just has to live with the consequences. Many people have already made this point, and there are myriad blog posts dedicated to it, so I will leave it there.

2) This is about more than religion.

If we take Mr. Robertson's comments in the order they were printed (and presumably in the order the questions will asked and answered), it becomes clear that Phil's primary reason for objecting to homosexuality isn't his religious beliefs. He doesn't start with scripture. He starts with the age-old "that's just icky" excuse, as if any state of being that doesn't align with his own is inherently wrong. Then he throws in some scripture to justify it.

3) The "gay stuff" isn't even the worst thing he said.

The comments Mr. Robertson made about how much happier black folks were under segregation are simply appalling, as are his comparisons between Nazis & Muslims. These things have taken a back seat to his first comments, but are a great cause for concern. This man is clearly bigoted against multiple groups; it seems that anyone who isn't like him is subject to his judgment.

Having said those three things, I feel I must reiterate that I completely support his right to say these things, although they certainly raise some concerns. And this brings me to the main point I'd like to make: Not all Southerners are like this. In fact, let's go a bit further & emphasize that not all white straight rural Southern Christian men feel this way. Wow. I certainly have a lot in common with Mr. Robertson when you look at it that way. However, I do not hold the same beliefs he does, and I know a great number of people who share those same characteristics but do not hold those beliefs.

When this story first hit the internet, I was troubled by the comments in the interview and by the people rushing to support someone who said such abhorrent things. But I was most disturbed by the comments I read over and over from both "sides" of this debate: "He's a rural Southern Christian, why is anyone surprised?" Friends of mine who were angry with Phil posted this so vehemently I could almost see their eyes rolling through the tiny lettering on my smartphone's Facebook app. Friends of mine who are self-proclaimed evangelicals shouted it too, but their phrasing was almost triumphant, as if they had found their champion. People on both sides made sarcastic memes declaring the obviousness of Phil's positions on gays, blacks, and Muslims. This made me terribly sad.

I have posted on this blog before (and I'm sure I will again) that I feel that Southerners get unfairly shoehorned into the category of bigot. People look at the political map & see that all 13 states of the former confederacy are still as red as the blood shed in the war fought to bring them back into the fold and assume that all of us believe the same way. It's simply not true. There is great diversity here in the South, and many of us are very proud of the fact. For example, I can count five different religious persuasions just among my closest circle of friends. We are Southerners now, though a few are transplants from other areas of the US. We are all friends despite our different beliefs. This is who we are.

Phil does not speak for me on the subject of religion, nor does he speak for me on the subjects of race or sexuality. I and so many other Southern folks honor diversity of every sort. I know many gay couples and many interracial couples who are very happy here and wouldn't want to live anywhere else. Yes, I agree that much of what Phil said was unpleasant. I agree that he can say whatever he wants. But I do not want people to look at me and hear his voice.