Today’s Jackson Clarion-Ledger runs quite a bit of material on the fallout from the University of Mississippi’s decision to dump Colonel Reb (nobody calls him “Colonel Rebel,” at least nobody I’ve ever met). Of everything I’ve read, I think Ronnie Agnew’s column probably sums up the case best:

Ole Miss is no longer an institution stuck in the old South. It is one of the most culturally enlightened and culturally diverse schools in the Southeast. It deserves a mascot that outwardly demonstrates the progress that has been made.

Now, I fully agree with those who think the administration has handled this with their standard level of ham-handedness, not to mention their penchant for failing to consult with anyone else before acting. On the other hand, it’s hard to see that even an “inclusive” process would have led to a different decision; if they’d gone through the charade of soliciting opinion, most of the same people complaining now about an underinclusive process would now be complaining about Khayat et al. having made up their minds beforehand.

More fundamentally, I think they’re also doing what’s in the best interest of the university and its alumni. Where many southerners—black and white—see an inoffensive, cartoonish mascot and nothing more, I suspect many outside the region see the Colonel as something more sinister: a symbol of nostalgia for Jim Crow and the thankfully-dead Mississippi of Barnett, Bilbo, and Eastland. Mississippi is a state with plenty of accomplishments to its credit—lifting the Delta out of poverty, attracting major new industries, and bolstering education. We should be able to focus on those achievements without needing to be sidetracked into debates over the meaning of symbols that no longer represent who we are today.

Dixie Leigh Barron’s column in Monday’s DeSoto Appeal is worth a read, too.

David Pinto quite properly eviscerates a local sports columnist who longs for the days when baseball scouting wasn’t burdened by such trivial matters as empiricism and illustrates his point by citing exactly one mediocre ex-major-leaguer who was apparently located at the high end of the distribution of the error term.