1. Interesting discussion of Walt Kelly, Pogo & race here: http://www.tcj.com/sometimes-a-watermelon-is-just-a-watermelon/ … and here: http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2014/04/walt-kelly-and-me/ …
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Replying to @HeerJeet
2. Riffing on Kelly/Pogo/race debate a little, it has the same cleavages between authorial intent and changing norms as Colbert debate
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Replying to @HeerJeet
3. There's a good argument to be made that Kelly's intent in those early Pogo comics were progressive, but they smack of blackface now.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
4. Like all artists, Kelly was working with set inherited forms, which in his case he tried to transform/transcend, arguably unsuccessfully
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Replying to @HeerJeet
5. What early Pogo comic books show is Kelly's clear debt to Joel Chandler Harris's stories of Uncle Remus, Brer Rabbit, etc.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
6. Kelly's use of Southern folklore (or fakelore) to question racism brings up something missing in debate about Katznelson's "Fear Itself."
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Replying to @HeerJeet
7. Not sufficient to say that New Deal Liberalism was compromised by alliance with Jim Crow South. Flipside was progressive hope for South.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
8. Some 1940s progressives hoped South, hotbed of support for the New Deal, could overcome racism, it would be heartland of US left.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
9. Attempt to see South as having hopeful post-racial future evident in AFL-CIO's Operation Dixie & Woody Gutherie's recasting of folk music
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Replying to @HeerJeet
10. Kelly's Pogo -- a working class Irish guy from Connecticut imagining a post-racial funny animal southern utopia -- part of this story
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11. Funny animals are in the USA often a way of talking about race without talking about race: Brer Rabbit, Krazy Kat, Mickey Mouse, Pogo.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
12. Parallel phenomenon: in Britain, funny animals are a way of talking about class without talking about class. Say,Mr. Bull from Peppa Pig
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