Eight days after the midterm elections, Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler pointed out that anger about the Confederate battle flag had played a part in the defeat of Democratic governors in South Carolina and Georgia (see "Long May She Wave," the second item on the Howler's 11/13/02 page). Somerby wondered aloud why national reporters never mentioned this issue in connection with the two governors' races. His conclusion was that the press preferred the consensus story on the midterm election results -- "Bush Transcendent."

But that doesn't quite explain why the issue wasn't discussed in the national news before the election, or since -- especially in the aftermath of the Trent Lott affair.

Well, now we learn from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that protestors angry at the deemphasis of the Confederate flag on the redesigned Georgia state flag buzzed the inaugural of the state's new (Republican) governor Sonny Perdue, and plan a pro-Stars-and-Bars rally today. They're angry at the governor because during the campaign he promised to allow a referendum on reverting to the old state flag with a greater emphasis on the Stars and Bars, and he's now retreating from that promise.

Angry people, striking visuals -- will it make your nightly news? And if not, why not?

If this story doesn't go national, it's because the national press doesn't want to give offense by telling the uncomfortable truth that there are an awful lot of neo-Confederates and racists out there -- and the major party that gets their votes, the GOP, still won't cut them loose. ("If the governor wants to distance himself from that, I'd like to see him stand up and say this is wrong," an observer of the seg flyover is quoted as saying in the Atlanta Journal article. The neo-Cons may be angry at Perdue now, but he voted for a flag referendum as a state senator before promising a referendum as a gubernatorial candidate.)

The Trent Lott story became permissible for the mainstream press when some GOP-friendly pundits denounced Lott. At that point it became a story about one bad apple, not about a party that has no problem giving a top leadership position to a racist. But notice that the mainstream press won't write about John Ashcroft's ties to neo-Confederates, won't run down Charles Pickering's seg-friendly past in any detail, and hasn't covered the Georgia flag flap. Doing so would convey the message that the GOP has a systemic race problem -- a fact the press would have to tread on powerful toes to tell you.

(Thanks yet again to Atrios for the Atlanta Journal link.)