Texas band uses Nazi flag on Jewish new year

[UpInArms]

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0930Band-Nazi-Flag-ON.html

DALLAS - A Texas high school band leader is apologizing for his band's half-time performance on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year.

During a half-time show at a football game at a Dallas high school last Friday, a student from Paris High School went running across the field waving a Nazi flag.

At the time, the band was playing the composition that eventually became known as "Deutschland Uber Alles".

Band director Charles Grissom says it was part of a show entitled "Visions of World War II," in which the flags and music were intended to represent the warring nations.

...more...

:wtf: are these people really so clueless?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. No they aren't clueless....this was deliberate

Error in judgement my ASS!

[Guaranteed]

21. Where'd they even GET the thing??

This wasn't a faux paus. PLEASE. Only an absolute IDIOT would think that it's appropriate to be running around with a Nazi flag at the halftime show of a football game.
I'm the first to defend the First Amendment, but this is just ridiculous. It's a SCHOOL.

[Kellanved]

36. I hope clueless

The "Deutschlandlied" or "Deutschland über alles" (the first stanza) is/was the song of the German democratic movement (and yes: it is nationalistic; the message was that one German nation should exist.).
While the first stanza was the Weimar Republic's anthem, the third ("Unity and Right and Freedom") is the anthem of the Federal Republic (The composition is older and Austrian; it was used for an old Austrian anthem as well).

The Nazis never abolished it, but used one of their songs, the "Horst Wessel Lied", as first national Anthem.

I'm shocked about the whole affair I can't find words to describe my feelings.

That they did not even bother to look up the song used together with that flag - I don't know if I should take it as an argument in their favour.
I can only hope that the kids had no idea what they were doing - the teacher is a another matter. Whatever ignorance can be an excuse in this matter is different question altogether...

[Karenina]

49. Es tut mir leid

Ich bin ahnungsvoll und glaube gar nicht das der Dirigent ahnungslos war. That was an intentional BELEIDIGUNG. And for any who are unaware the Deutsch anthem is a beautiful theme from Schubert. Very melodic, peaceful and beautiful as are most who have their roots in this country.
Heads SHOULD roll, but as it happened in Texas one can only consider it "business as usual."

[Kellanved]

51. Thank you; you're not at fault

Only the dirigent and the people not objecting (parents, the principal must have known) before something like this happens.
And while the choice of music was not on target, it is no big deal. The flag on a jewish holiday however; that was the thing that left me speechless.

:hug:

[Karenina]

54. That IS my point.

A nazi flag waving on Rosh Hashanah? Only in Texas could anyone find "plausible deniability." :puke:

Bayern, Texas... Gleiche Scheisse. Veilleicht sollen wir alle Dorfdummkopfen nach Siberien schicken. VIA SCHNECKE POST!!! ;-)

[CO Liberal]

2. On Easter.......

....will they play Monty Python's "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life"???

[greyl]

9. ROTFLMFAO

both of us. :)

[goforit]

12. Yes..HereHere......ROFLMAO!!!!

:bounce:

TEXAS FASCISTS ON THE RISE!!!!

UNPATRIOTIC!!!!

[Tyler Durden]

55. NO, No. On "Good Friday!"

Only in Texas.

[realFedUp]

3. Gads, howabout a big fine, apology and probation for that person.

The band director may need some diversity training also...

[LifeDuringWartime]

6. because this isnt europe

that would require displaying a nazi flag to be illegal........which im 99% positive it is not. i dont quite understand the point of that, but it seems like a silly thing to go onto probation for. :wtf:

[nolabels]

38. Starts at the top, sometimes, don't ya know

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2003/09/85494.php

Arnold, Bush and Baghdad
by CODEPINK Sunday September 28, 2003 03:14 PM


"Bring them on." GEORGE W. BUSH (AP) JULY 1, 2003: “You guys are the true terminators" Speaking to US soldiers on a visit to Baghdad. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER- (AP) JULY 4, 2003

NOTE: Did you know Schwarzenegger was sent by Bush & Co to Baghdad in July? For those of you who were at today's very successful and large demonstration against the occupation of Iraq, please consider attending one of more of the ant-Arnold actions this upcoming week. The biggest one being the state-wide coordinated CODEPINK event on Friday 5 PM outside Arnold's Headquarters -1338 4th St. (between Santa Monica Blvd. and Arizona) in Santa Monica...Don't forget to bring lots of friends.

****************

Arnold, Bush & Co, and Baghdad


"Bring them on."
GEORGE W. BUSH (AP) JULY 1, 2003:

Just days later….

“You guys are the true terminators"
Speaking to US soldiers on a visit to Baghdad.
ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER- (AP) JULY 4, 2003

* "I think he'd be a good governor." President George W. Bush said on Friday.- Reuters-8/8/03

* "‘That would be nice,’ Mr. Rove said of the prospect of a Governor Schwarzenegger. ‘That would be really nice. That would be really, really nice.’" -New York Times 4/15/01

* Schwarzenegger met in April with Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser. White House officials said at the time that Schwarzenegger simply dropped by to talk about an after-school program that California voters approved last year and to see what he could do to support U.S. troops overseas.- The Guardian UK 8/8/03

* "This is really wild driving around here (Iraq). I mean the poverty. And you see there is no money. Disastrous financially. Then there is a leadership vacuum. Pretty much like in California right now," Schwarzenegger said.- Reuters 7/4/03

* The advantages of Hollywood's Terminator suggest an unanticipated windfall for George W. Bush…. George W. Bush welcomes anybody invigorating a comatose California GOP. -
Robert Novak townhall.com 8/14/03

* The California governorship would also give Bush a key organizational base for fundraising and campaign activity in 2004. If Schwarzenegger sweeps into office, bringing a wave of new voters with him - and if the state's budget situation improves as a result of either new policies or external forces - it could reap dividends for the president.-Christian Scientist Monitor 8/14/03
(snip)



http://www.infowars.com/print/nwo/exclusive_arnold.htm

[stopthegop]

4. most likely they did not know it was the beginning of the

Jewish new year...thinking it was intentional would require a little proof...

However, I would not have had Nazi flags at any time..unless dragged on the ground behind horses or the like

[ablbodyed]

7. Your second statement...

negates the first. You're giving them too much credit for stupidity. They're freeper thugs who knew just what they were doing. Texas white trash

[stopthegop]

8. how do you know they knew what they were doing?

other than the fact you appear to hate any/every thing from Texas?

[ablbodyed]

11. Don't know...

But only a brain-dead twit would carry a Nazi flag at a high school game. And I LOVE Ann Richards, and Molly Ivins.

[Wickerman]

39. Please don't forget Jim Hightower

[ixion]

50. And Robert Jensen

he's in Austin...

[goforit]

14. Yes they knew!!!.....That type of show takes planning.It is not

spontaneous spur of the moment decision. Certainly he was approach
by someone before it was displayed.

This is like the first shot heard across the world!

[zonmoy]

47. in other words

demonic nazi wannabes.

[JasonBerry]

60. Wow.....Can't BELIEVE you wrote that

"Texas white trash."

I have visited Texas on many occasions and have met some great progressive people there. Your generalization and racist statement deserves an apology to all the Texas members of DU. How would most of us react if someone made a statement about, "New Jersey Black Trash?" It would be reprehensible - but no more so than your statement.

[Flying_Pig]

5. What the hell do they put in the water in Texas??

(no disrespect to Texas DU'ers intended)
:eyes:

[dkamin]

13. I hate texas

austin's ok. the rest of it can bite me. if Texas and Texans had never existed, this country would be a better place.

my idea: take the money we were going to use to fund Star Wars and the reconstruction of Iraq. Use it to fund an advanced science program where we develop land cutting technology and advanced continental rocket boosters. Then cut Texas off from the rest of the country, attach said rocket boosters, and ship it off to the Middle East, right in the contested areas between Israel and Palestine.

this would solve the Israel/Palestine issue and would refocus Middle Eastern terrorists into Texas. at the same time, the Bush family could start their monarchy without having to undo a longstanding democracy, a time consuming affair to be sure, and they could join OPEC. they could have dinner with the Saudi royals and the bin Ladens of course could come over as well. it would be just grand.

f*ck texas.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

16. We have many great Texas Du'ers who would disagree

and Texas gave us Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower, LBJ's great society, Bill Moyers and many others..therefore your comments are just as bad as the subject matter of this thread...that's what bigotry, irrational fears and intolerance are all about..ignorance and the failure to consider the big picture.


Love,

a Californian

[dkamin]

18. whoopty do

it's not ignorance. i spent a year in texas. people there tend to be blithe, underinformed, blustering half-wits. ("everything's bigger in texas").

of course there are good texans. obviously, blanket statements are not true. however, what is true is that texas, as a concept, is an abysmal wasteland. and no, that is not bigotry, anymore than saying that the Zeitgeist of southern Germany in the 30s was an abysmal wasteland. nor is it bigotry or intolerance to say that the majority of Texans are idiots.

as for a bigger picture, i don't know what the hell you're talking about. it's very simple. if texas never existed, this country would be a better place today. i don't think that's a controversial proposition.

[Lone Texan]

35. dkamin........

Obviously you are ignorant if that is what you think. Where are you from anyway? And while you think about how to answer that, why don't you go fuck yourself punk.

[rl6214]

41. Hey buddy,

and I use that term loosely, you can blow me and the rest of Texas as well.

[lightbulb]

19. Please lay off Texas

There are hotbeds of closed-mindedness within every state of the union. Ever been to Fresno or Bakersfield CA? Live is hard for the progressive minority in these places, and the last thing they need is to be lumped together in the minds of outsiders with their Freeper neighbors. After all, would you have called the White Rose Society a bunch of worthless Nazis?

[ablbodyed]

29. Or Western NewYork...

Don't forget that Tim McVeigh came from here. Also Mormans, and Jehovah's Witlesses came from wersten PA. It's a hotbed of idiocy, too.

[ablbodyed]

28. It's satire...

get some perspective

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

46. It's an ad hominem and a stupid generalization

get some manners.

[booksenkatz]

24. Fuck you

Texas is the same as any other place: it consists of both good people AND assholes.

I don't come to DU to be told that my family and I should never have existed. Sheesh.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

27. patsified...you !!!

:pals:

[booksenkatz]

34. Aww gee

that was nice! Shucks.

[ablbodyed]

31. How's the kitty...

Maybe she doesn't like Texans either. SATIRE. Hope he's calmed down.
Could be midlife crisis. "I'm 10 years old and what have I got to show for it? A PATSY CLINE foodbowl!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[booksenkatz]

33. Hee hee

Thanks for asking. He's still unsettled, I've got a close eye on him. Definitely something going on with him.

Hey, now there's an idea: a PC food bowl!:D

[dbt]

26. Hey, only Arkansas Razorbacks fans are allowed to say

'Fuck Texas!' And all Longhorns fans know that we love them and their state.

Lay off.

:grr:
dbt

[Fenris]

10. Now that's classless! And compassionate conservatism!

The two go hand in hand!

[gratuitous]

15. Wow, folks are really going to hate the Paris High Christmas program

A full dress rendition of "Springtime for Hitler," complete with machine guns.

[MoonAndSun]

20. Good One, LMAO

I can just see Hitler dancing the jig.

[rudeboy666]

17. Maybe this has something to do with it

"...Band director Charles Grissom says it was part of a show entitled "Visions of World War II," in which the flags and music were intended to represent the warring nations..."

Maybe it was insensitive on that particular day.

But would it be equally offensive on any other day?

(assuming, of course, that that was the intention)

[GinaMaria]

32. Sounds like

performance Art, which seems a little off for High School Band, but I haven't been a high school student for a while, maybe things have changed. Still, it would give me pause (at a minimum) (if I were band director) to have a high school student wave a nazi flag no matter the timing.

[voter x]

22. Ladies and Gentlemen

the MAAAARCHING MENGELES.....no WAY! I was waiting to see that it was some Neo-Skin-Wannabe Punk group. I had a tough instructor in junior high band, but....

[voter x]

23. error

[mojowork_n]

25. Springtime for Hitler and Germany, Winter for Poland and France

Once upon a time, the whole topic was considered so laughable, nobody could possibly be amused. See IMDB.com "The Producers"

[davidinalameda]

30. I have to say this was the peak of stupidity

what the hell were they thinking?

[peterh]

37. Pesonally…I see it as an attempt to glorify war…

With a direct or indirect correlation to our current fiasco. Was it meant as a slap to the Jewish New Year? Nahhh…highly unlikely. I think it was nothing more than a fucking texas neoconish hawk that decided to design a half-time show that plays into the spirit of like-minded ignorant trash. Like organized religion, it’s also designed to capture (brainwash) the young mind.

[stopthegop]

40. you are very open minded...

like-minded ignorant trash...
sorta like people where you live?

[peterh]

42. I’m very open minded…

But, I have no control on how some just aren’t up to rudimentary interpretation.

[stopthegop]

43. but of course...have a pleasant evening...eom

[Fovea]

44. While we get our foot stuck farther in the muck of Iraq

We definately should celebrate wars past...Not.

[pretzel4gore]

45. ignore the ignorance please!

for the love of god let bygones be bygones! (it's over, ok)
Now that takes care of the cia leak thing...
As far as this ignorant action by these silly schoolkids GET OVER IT please! just ignore the ignorance innocent and try to remember the good things (ie: the pageant was very colourful) instead!

[eek]

48. Happened at my alma mater!

This Bizarro World bit of entertainment took place at the highschool I attended.
I've sat through plenty of games at the very field they mention.

Funny to see it in the news, to say the least.

When I went to Hillcrest mumbldeymumble years ago the majority of kids were Jewish.
Whenever one of the High Holies came around those were some mighty empty halls!
Dunno if the demographic has changed over the years but I doubt it has much.

Hillcrest is smack-dab in the middle of the city of Dallas.
Though it gags me to say it, Dallas is fairly urban, cosmopolitan, sophisticated.

Paris, Texas? Hicks. Dairy Queen, football, racism, guns, date rape.
Well, Sam Shepherd wrote a play named after the dump so its got that goin' for it. Which is nice.


Go frickin figure what sort of message, subliminal or otherwise or collossal brain fart led these yay-hoos to such a thing.

[elcondor]

52. I can't believe a grown man would be THIS ignorant

How could he honestly believe no one would have a problem with this? And what about the students? Why did they go along with this? I would have been protesting up to the school board, the teachers, the principal--anyone who would listen if I got wind of something like this was going to happen at my school. (Even before I converted to Judaism.)

The stupidity of some people continues to amaze me.

[DoNotRefill]

53. I'm torn....

On an emotional level, it seems very wrong for them to play Deutchland Uber Alles and display the Nazi flag at a football game. But, from the articles I've seen, they represented many of the nations involved with that conflict with both flags and national anthems (the main omission seems to be the Soviet Union). Should they have only played the national anthems and displayed the flags of the Allies?

I've seen nothing that suggests that they were trying to aggrandize or glamorize Naziism.

This is strange. If a person was compiling a CD of the music associated with WWII, it would be incomplete without a few German
songs (top 3 representational picks for me: Deutchland Uber Alles, Panzerlied, and the Horst Wessel song, because those three seem to capture the general "feel" of the times from a German perspective) and a few Japanese songs. Other songs that would have to be included would be things like the US National Anthem, "Over There" (which dates back to WWI), maybe "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company C", the Internationale, the Marsailles, Hail Brittania, et cetera. Such a compilation might display the flags of all the involved powers on the jacket art. And I don't think such a compilation would have any kind of racist overtones, provided that each power was equally represented.

I own a book on propaganda posters from WWII. It includes sections on all of the propaganda posters put out by the major powers, but concentrates on the German and Soviet posters of the times, probably because they had the most prolific propaganda machines in action. Would such a book seem to be inappropriate if found in a public library? When I was taking historical cinematography classes in college, the faculty showed "Triumph of the Will" and "Birth of a Nation" as part of the courseload. These weren't shown to promote the views of the films, but because of the ground-breaking development of cinemagraphic art contained in them. Was that somehow racist?

Where does the line get drawn between being culturally insensitive and editing history? I don't know.

[carpetbagger]

57. They did edit history, as you pointed out.

The conclusion is that they consider Nazis less controversial than Soviets, even though the Soviets eventually fought on our side, and probably prevented Germany from winning the war.

I've been in enough homes of southerners, including in my own family, that I can say Nazi sympathy runs high in people too young to remember the war.

[DoNotRefill]

59. Here's the thing...

when I was in high school, for our homecoming parade in the 1980's, they did "nations of the world" as the theme. The class that had been assigned Russia for their theme did a float entitled "Stamp out the Red Menace!" I was shocked.

The Russians are a much fresher "enemy" in the minds of a lot of Americans. I'd expect much more of an uproar over playing the Internationale and parading the Red Banner than over the Nazi flag, since the Nazis were defeated so long ago.

[cosmicdot]

56. why not a Broadway show tune theme?

"Visions of World War II"

imo - what a bizarre theme for a half-time show

[DoNotRefill]

58. I don't know...

I once talked to a middle school history teacher for a major public school system. We got to talking (OK, I was doing most of the talking) about WWII history, and she informed me that WWII was fought in the 18th century. No kidding. :wow:


Those that fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it.

[fortyfeetunder]

61. Error in judgment my @$$!

The Music Educators National Conference should take that so-called band director in a room and read him the riot act. WTF was he thinking? Music teachers, are generally a peaceful lot, and try to create harmony through their concerts.

Why in the hell was he trying to glorify WWII in a band concert? Surely there are many other positive themes to be brought across. Was he after "Shock and Awe"? Hell, why didn't he just do the Tchaikovsky 1812 overture and call it a day?