It’s way too much ado about nothing.

I was offended when the radical right stole my great grandfather’s battle flag and began waving it in the name of racial bigotry. Before I had seen it as part of our nation’s history where our region’s sons fought on the losing side.

It seemed even more odd when Ole Miss booted Colonel Reb as its unofficial mascot and found no replacement. Some thought Colonel Reb offensive. It must not have been the university because they still sell his likeness on memorabilia. I have my picture with the Colonel on my computer desktop. I don’t own a Rebel flag.

Ole Miss’s eradication of the Confederate Stars and Bars was brought about through a process. It took a little time but they slowly diminished until they finally disappeared.

Now Ole Miss Chancellor Dan Jones is threatening to take away my favorite song because a bunch of amped college students are singing “The South Will Rise Again,” at the end of Battle Hymn of the Republic in the school’s traditional medley of “From Dixie with Love.”

Chancellor, now really. . . Do you think the best way to get a bunch of teenage college students, and others who act like them, to go along is to tell them what not to do?

Now coaches, student government and alumni leaders have joined in support of not repeating the phrase.

Folks, the South has been rising ever since eradication of malaria, recovery from yellow fever and the invention by Willis Haviland Carrier of the modern air conditioner.

Those college students don’t know what or why they’re saying what they say. They don’t even know what life is like without air conditioning. I do, and I don’t want to go back there. Hot times there are not forgotten.

I’m a little biased here.  

When I hear Dixie, I don’t think about our region’s racist past. I think about things like not locking doors at night, saying “yes ma’am” and “no sir,” going barefoot, the smell of burning leaves, pole fishing, sitting on porches, skinny dippin’, political rallies and stump speeches and a way of life that we are no longer able to live.

When the presidential debate was held at Ole Miss last year the University was flooded with journalists from all over the world. I read one CNN report that stated something about how students from that university would “…sing old South songs.”

It was obvious some writer was going after the school’s unofficial anthem of Dixie and didn’t quite know what they were going after.

Every time the Rebel football team gets their rears whipped, I think, “Yeah, but we’ve still got Dixie.”

Mississippi State has their cowbells, Tennessee has Ole Smokey the hound dog, Alabama has their houndstooth hats and we’ve got Dixie.

We may not have it much longer as my chancellor seems to have drawn a line in the sand.

I wonder, if the Rebel football team was contending for a conference championship, would we even be having this conversation?

Look away, look away, look away, Chancellor Dan.