I searched the site and couldn’t find any mention of this, so I apologize if I’m covering old ground here…
Last month the Florida Senate did a really weird thing — they changed the seal of the Senate. Frankly, I hadn’t even known the Senate had its own seal, but there is the new seal, pictured above, at least if I have figured out the revised website. Here is the old one:
Notice the change? Yes, it’s very subtle. Look at the second flag from the left. In the old seal, it’s the Confederate battle flag. Now it’s the current state flag. (The others are the 1513 Spanish flag, the US flag, the 1564 French flag, and the 1763 British flag.)
The proposal to change the flag was introduced by Arthenia Joyner (D-Tampa), and African-American woman who had not noticed it herself for some time. She mentioned this to Senate President Andy Gardiner (R-Orlando) who brought up the subject in a bipartisan panel. There was no opposition to the proposal, and it went to the full Senate about a week and a half later, where the change passed without a formal vote. The only delay came when one senator asked why other designs weren’t considered. Here’s what the (Republican) chairman of the rules committee had to say about the change:
"If we're going to have a seal, we should be dealing with sovereign nations that are — in fact — legitimate, sovereign nations."
Allow me to point out that there were no objections to the removal of the flag.
None.
There were no protests.
Nobody tried padlocking the seal to prevent its removal.
The KKK did not hold a rally.
Just a bunch of state senators — the majority of whom are Republicans, no less — all just deciding without argument that the Confederate battle flag had no place on the seal of a state institution.
Yeah, that's just crazy Florida...
By the way, there may be more of this coming, too. A committee in Florida’s House (whose seal doesn’t have any flags on it) voted last week to remove the state of Confederate general Edmund Kirby Smith from the National Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. It still has to go to the full House, and some of the support isn't for what should be obvious reasons -- most people don’t know who Kirby Smith is, and some of the reps see this as a way to boost tourism, but hey, better to do the right thing for the wrong reason than to not do it at all. The other Floridian in the Statuary is John Gorrie, the father of air conditioning, and he might be out, too. Problem is, there's no consensus on who the replacements will be. Henry Flagler, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, and Walt Disney have been suggested. I had thought of Chief Osceola, but if we’re removing a white man because he waged war against the United States, it would seem hypocritical to replace him with a Native American who did the same.
As for me, I nominate Tom Petty. Because, well, Tom Petty.
Meanwhile, the Statuary remains full of racists from other states.
Now that’s crazy.