Treason In Defense of Slavery is the Ultimate Patriotism

From the description of a new biography of traitor in defense of slavery (although he privately opposed them both, Scout’s honor!) Robert E. Lee:

In Clouds of Glory: The Life and Legend of Robert E. Lee, Michael Korda, the New York Times bestselling biographer of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Ulysses S. Grant, and T. E. Lawrence, has written the first major biography of Lee in nearly twenty years, bringing to life America’s greatest and most iconic hero.

Really? The very greatest American hero? We can’t think of a single of the many Americans who have not rebelled against the American government in order to protect the right of wealthy whites to own black slaves who might be worthy of this honor? Martin Luther King? Abraham Lincoln? Willie Mays? The tailor who successfully hemmed the sleeves of my sports jacket last week? I figure we should get around to honoring confederate generals sometime well after we lionize the nation’s telemarketers. Although I might be willing to rank Lee above the people who created those DirectTV marionette ads. (Admittedly, this does seem to track with the definition of “American” that Republicans have been pushing for years — i.e. it would seem to exclude anyone who isn’t white, lives above the Mason-Dixon line, lives in a city, doesn’t have at least five possessions decorated with Confederate flags, etc.)

Whether this book is as terrible as the description suggests, I can’t say. It was excerpted in the Daily Beast, and while the content isn’t abominable the sub-headline certainly is. (Robert E. Lee “saved the union” by protecting slaveholders before the Civil War, doncha know. I guess it didn’t take.) Either Korda has been really badly served by various copy-writers or this book will be epically awful.

…via comments, Eric Foner’s review.