Speaking Of Burning Things…Liberal Says Confederate Flag-Torching Scheme DOA

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Burning symbols in public has developed something of a bad reputation this week, so perhaps this is no surprise: the Oregon progressive blogger’s plan to organize Confederate flag burnings at 9/12 tea party rallies this weekend appears to have gone basically nowhere.

JC Christian, the pseudonymous blogger who hatched the plan as a way to expose tea party racism, told me last night that after more than a month in the planning phases, not a single person is willing to publicly say they’re going to burn Confederate flags.

“I don’t think it will be big,” the blogger told me. “Looks like people like the idea more than the action. We’ll have to see what happens.”

Christian’s Facebook group for the flag-burning event grew to more than 1,400 members since he announced it in August. Christian said he’s been in contact with a few people, but that in the end, no one wanted to come forward and say they were going to go through with the plan to burn Confederate flags at tea party rallies Sunday.

“[I] had a few people say they are doing neighborhood events, but don’t want to publicize it,” he told me.

I asked Christian if he thought the suggested flag burnings lost any appeal among the progressive set as plans to burn Korans on 9/11 dominated headlines — and freaked out most, if not all, of the nation’s political and military establishment.

“It might be that people have soured on these kinds of things,” he said. “The bigotry expressed over the Islamic center has been gutwrenching for me, but Terry Jones never really bothered me–he’s just another huckster capitalizing on hate, a low-rent Beck.”

On the other hand, he said, his refusal to publicly identify himself could be responsible for the lack of willingness of progressives to back him publicly. JC Christian told me back in August he wouldn’t name himself for fear of reprisal from conservative colleagues.

“I just think it’s more of liking the idea more than the action. I’m also not a great organizer,” he said. “And it’d help if I wasn’t anonymous, so I could set up a national event.”

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