[revrew]

After the first Rebels game, Graves had called a meeting for the Tuesday after the San Fran victory. He assembled an all-star lineup of talking heads: Jesse Jackson, members of the King family, the head of the NAACP, the governor of Alabama, Commissioner Tagliabue, and so on. The star of the show, just as Graves had planned it, was none other than Jeffrey Davis.

Davis moderated an orderly line of speeches that kept him in the spotlight and made sure to make Davis look like he was the only level-headed person in the building. Clever camera work disguised any details that suggested otherwise.

Each member of a 10-member panel was given 2 minutes to voice an opinion about the Confederate flag being waved at football games and becoming an unofficial, unbacked symbol of an NFL team. Davis ran the panel like clockwork. Graves had even arranged the order of speakers so that the most hotheaded members went first, followed by gentile, articulate arguments that diffused the heat.

Each member was then given an additional minute, in turn, to refute other comments. Again, Davis ran a tight ship. No true consensus could be attained--Graves made sure of that. He stacked the panel with people far more articulate than the reactionaries who wanted to see the flag burned and the Rebels shipped back to New Orleans.

The capping moment, however, came when Davis took the microphone for himself. Davis was given 12 minutes (Graves had determined that the ideal length for maximum persuasion without desensitizing the issue) and a national TV audience to lay the matter to rest. In those 12 minutes I was reminded of the sweet, caramel voice and dazzling charisma of the man who led us to a national debate championship at A&M.

The entirety of Davis' speech can be read in Appendix A of this book, but the words that will always remain with me were: "There's no reason my grandfather's flag cannot be my brother's flag, if indeed that is how I will look upon the men around me--white men, black men, and all of God's children here in the South. So long as I see my brother as the enemy, however; so long as I see his pride in his country and state as a battle flag of my enemy, I have chosen to hate my brother for no other reason than the color of his skin. It's not the pride of the South that I would hate in that flag; it's not the courageous decisions of my grandfather that I would hate in that flag; no, the only thing I would hate in that flag is that one of those damned white men was waving it. And if he waves that flag, and it causes me to hate, who is the bigot then? Who is the hater? Is it the man with the flag? No, it would be me."

Jeffrey Davis had done it again. Did everything he say make perfect sense? No. But Jeffrey Davis had a way of saying the sky was green and the earth was flat and you'd believe it. You've probably seen some of Davis' speeches replayed on television. Right along with "I have a dream," the Black History Channel plays, "If he waves that flag, and it causes me to hate, who is the bigot then?" Do Davis' comments deserve such reverence? Heck, no. Davis was a lunatic with a brilliant spin doctor. But more about that later.