"The chicken was certainly worth a laugh and I waved back at him (her? it?) but from a strictly tactical standpoint I have to wonder if the flagistas haven't plummeted down the slippery slope to Embarrassing Irrelevancy.A man in a chicken suit is like clown shoes, funny the first time around. The second time out, the joke goes stale."....Jimmy Espy of the Dalton Citizen...trying out for the Neal Boortz Media Klan Award nomination.

Flagistas, Jimmy? Is this a Pultizer attempt here? How about Southern Heritage protestors? No, you couldn't use that. It doesn't have a prejudicial derogatory connotation, and what forward thinking 'journalist' would pass up that opportunity.

The pile of bones in the political grave yard of those who have dissed the heritage movement grows yearly. Unfortunately no journalistic bones are there. What a pity. But alas, we can always hope.

The chicken spinning was some of the silliest writing on the subject that I have seen.

I am waiting for the first 'investigative political journalist' to discover that Chicken Perdue was just a tit-for-tat on Sonny's Rat King video. But the chicken suits are only $100 versus the $350,000 that Sonny spent on the video. Heritage folks get a big bang with their bucks. Just ask Mr. '$23 million' Barnes and Mr. 'the flag will never change on my watch' Tom Murphy.

The point, which I discovered through investigative journalism, is simply that the heritage movement can defend itself quite well with a fraction of the money spent by the Heritage Haters. The wild card that heritage supporters have played in Georgia politics is that there is no longer a huge money hurdle in becoming a major player. The flaggers are being closely watched and studied by conservative foundations all over the country.

By the way, the passersby love the chicken suits, which is what those of us with feet on the ground measure in terms of whether they are working or not.

The media hatred toward the heritage movement has been so overdone as to actually benefit the movement now. More of your readers hate the biased coverage, and this is helping to fill out the ranks of the growing grass-roots, populist heritage movement, a subject which I am sure has no interest to you whatsoever. Here in Atlanta, even Yankees consider AJC coverage of the subject a joke.

But it is not a joke to the Military Order of World Wars. I have an inside source...myself...as public relations officer here in Atlanta. The MOWW is an inter-service officer corp veterans organization made up of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines. We support the heritage movement, including the flaggers, because Confederate veterans are official U.S. veterans by act of Congress. Can we say 'reconciliation'?

The history of the '56 flag clearly shows, for anyone who wants to see, that it was raised as part of the Civil War Centennial celebrations as a memorial to our fallen soldiers. It is unique in the world. To have it thrown out, tainted with the bogus diviseness rope around its neck, is nothing more than an American heritage symbol lynching. This so-called divisive symbol has been flown my multicultural freedom movements around the world, a small detail which is ignored by the Media Klansmen. Gee whiz, I wonder why?

That there are those who want to dispose of unique American heritage symbols is not a secret. The real NeoKlan does not prowl the shadows. Their target list is long. Founding Father names in places of honor are being stripped and archived in the local landfill for future generations. The Media Klansmen line the road cheering as they are carried by. All those who do not cheer and support flushing America down the toilet are...well...you know...backward thinking.

The AJC's Sunday article on Georgia's Neo-History program is also part of this historical cleansing. The Cold War Commies had nothing over these folks. We have been predicting this for years.

Soon we will see derogatory articles by the Media Klan dissing those that would want to waste precious educational resources teaching such things as....history. Gone are Lewis and Clark, the Alamo...and in come 'All in the Family' and 'Chico and the Man'...all compliments of the Forward Thinking Klan.

OPINION: Same Tired Tactics
By Jimmy Espy; Dalton Citizen; January 26, 2004