30 for 30 running thread

He's got a broadcaster's voice, that's for sure.

 

I feel stupid for saying this but I didn't know James Meredith was still alive. I don't think I've ever seen him interviewed before.

I also feel bad for laughing at the Ole Miss QB underthrowing the Molotov cocktail.

 

Would be kind of cool to hear him call a baseball game, or tell a story next to a campfire in the New Mexico desert.

 

All these accents are making my ears hurt.

How in the F does the Ole Miss 1983 yearbook have a Klan photo in it?!? That school deserves what it gets.

 

Nah, I think it was Steak who mentioned J.R. Richard and I thought he was deceased. That QB came across as such a self-deprecating fellow I chunkled a little too.

 

"...before every home game, every time they go out and lose to Vandy or State or even a SWAC school, today's Ole Miss Rebels honor a team that refused to crumble... When everything else did."

 

Agreed, Thompson would've been better off keeping the camera off himself (and his "look at me, I'm an eclectic writer" hat) and stick to narration.

But I did quite enjoy it otherwise. Although, frankly, it's kinda can't miss material. That was such a quintessential moment of different eras and cultures in American history all coming to a head at once, it'd be pretty damn hard to make a documentary over that subject matter that wasn't compelling. I'd read enough about that topic that nothing here was new to me (other than seeing Meredith interviewed today--like AQB noted, I wasn't sure if he was even still with us today), but it wholly captured my attention nonetheless.

 

Had a bit of the Hank Moody look going on with the hat.

 

I was impressed some of the players, particularly Bobby Boyd (the guy who threw — and missed — with the Molotov cocktail), were as candid as they were. Too many people from that era don't want to talk about that kind of stuff, and what really happened gets lost to history more and more every day as the people involved fall into infirmity or die out completely.

But what went down at Ole Miss in 1962 was a crazy, crazy event, and one that has been under-reported in the overall context of the Civil Rights Movement. Part of it was because the Cuban Missile Crisis started about two weeks later and knocked it off the front page, but also because it happened before the movement really got going (Civil Rights didn't really gain traction as a national story until the following year, with the Birmingham police dogs/firehoses in May 1963 and the March on Washington late in the summer of 1963).

George Wallace's Stand in the Schoolhouse Door at Alabama in June 1963 is one of the enduring images of the Civil Rights era, but that was pure political grandstanding. Wallace quickly stepped aside and let Vivian Malone and James Hood register for their classes.

Ross Barnett openly defied the federal government, and looked the other way during an insurrection on the campus of his state's flagship university (and you could argue that he openly encouraged it). And when you consider how big a deal Ole Miss football was in those days, it's even more amazing.

Just a fascinating topic, and a well-told story. Getting batshit crazy James Meredith on camera was a bonus.

 

?????

 

Stewart Patridge isn't walking through that door.

I realize it was a lot to stuff into an hour, but I think the transition away from tens of thousands of Confederate flags in the stands, Col. Reb, slow Dixie, etc. was really glossed over. It has hardly been smooth sailing, and several of the changes were made in the name of recruiting, not the greater brotherhood of man.

At the same time, I feel for them. Birmingham will get it's 50th anniversary treatment next year (Bull Connor, church bombing, etc.) and while it needs to be acknowledged, it will mostly be a chance to rub The Footage in our faces all over again.

 

To piggyback on what dixiehack said, I did think it odd they identified Bob Khayat only as "Ole Miss chancellor" when talking about how he'd spearheaded the movement to remove all the old Confederate symbols from Ole Miss football games in the 1990s. Khayat was also an All-SEC kicker at Ole Miss in the late 50s.

Would have been a nice way to tie it all together.

(Khayat is also the brother of gloriously inept 1970s Philadelphia Eagles coach Ed Khayat Jr., as well as the son of a legendarily corrupt local politician in my home county, but those are stories for another time).