Real hayseeds have more to worry about than bills about Confederate statues | Anderson

Last Sunday, I was reading along in the Jacksonville “Florida Times-Union” – a fine Gannett news source, by the way, for local news – all about a ridiculous bill being deposited in the public consciousness by Dean Black, R-Jacksonville, a nitwit, to be sure.

The bill would (if it ever passed and somehow made it through the judicial system, both absurd notions) prevent the removal of any “historical” monument and threatens that the governor would “remove” any municipal official that encouraged such a move.

The bill is directed at Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan, who has promised to get rid of an artistic and moral obscenity called “Women of the Southland” that squats in downtown – a lurid celebration of the Confederacy.  Theoretically (or, perhaps better “in someone’s graphic novel fantasy meme”) if Deegan moved to pry this thing out of her city and turn it into a load of gravel, not only would she be “removed” by the governor (unlikely, in any case, but clearly unconstitutional) but she would be up for doing time in a state prison for her trouble.

The bill is puerile. And Black, who should know better, is just another fool trying for instant fame (even this kind).

The thrust of the article is spot-on, but as I read, something jumped out and smacked my sensibilities. The author wrote:

“The legislature is full of hayseeds just like Black, and if his clumsy effort fails to shackle the city's hands, another will come right behind it. Tallahassee lawmakers love them some preemption and Confederate statues.”

“Hayseeds.”  Wait a sec.  Hold the heck on there, buddy.

Columnists, myself included, writing their autopsies of the various absurdities displayed by the Florida legislature, struggle to find appropriate slurs and descriptors for the dreck and churn that often spews out of those bodies, and I’m sympathetic. As we work through “nitwit,” “foolish,” “argle bargle” and so on, consulting Roget’s Thesaurus, “synonyms” in MSWord, and scraping our memories for the last ugly adverb, we sometimes default to rather narrower terms.

“Hayseed” don’t fit.

As one who has spent a good portion of my early career in the flatlands of Nebraska and Kansas, my regard for “Hayseeds” is pretty high. The folks in agriculture suggested by the term are some of the most pragmatic, focused, active citizens in the nation. Some of my very best students have and do come from agricultural backgrounds.

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Get me started on the FFA sometime to hear my lauding praises for one of the country’s most effective organizations for developing young folks (and they truly “get their hands dirty”). In such a program, my sisters raised cattle and horses, and I was once, briefly, the proud farmer of a brace of “New Zealand Reds” – giant rabbits bred for the pot.

I will go far out on a limb, maybe, in pushing forward the idea that the “Hayseeds” of Florida could care less what the good people of Jacksonville do with or to an ancient marble billboard to a racist war. A good bit less, anyway, than they care about the desperate battle they are currently waging for their own way of life amid citrus greening, faulty crop insurance programs and encroaching developers who want to pave their fields with trailer parks, condos and hotels for the tourists. There are serious matters that must be addressed in “Hayseed” land, or an eruption is certain.

The more time the legislature spends on drivel like Dean Black’s stupid bill, the more the “Hayseeds” worry that their issues will never be addressed. Practical, pragmatic legislation to preserve and protect our farm and range communities has been non-existent or non-starters for this legislature for better than a decade, and it shows.

Black, a farmer himself, should know this, and get to work – or face a primary opponent with a farm to save.

Bruce Anderson is the Dr. Sarah D. and L. Kirk McKay Jr. endowed chair in American history, government and civics and Miller distinguished professor of political science at Florida Southern College. He is also a columnist for The Ledger and a political consultant and on-air commentator for WLKF Radio in Lakeland.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Real salt-of-the-earth types worry more about their farms than statues