Americans love to celebrate memorable anniversaries. Next month will be the 30th anniversary of the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s scurrilous anti-Semitic reference to New York Jews as “Hymies” and New York City as “Hymietown” in a January 1984 conversation with Washington Post reporter Milton Coleman. Jackson’s hateful remarks were later published in a WaPo story by another reporter, creating a nationwide outcry and condemnation of his callous, insensitive behavior. The Nation of Islam’s radical leader Louis Farrakhan, an aggressive anti-Semite, Holocaust-denier, and old Jackson ally, made a difficult situation worse by threatening Coleman in a radio broadcast and issuing a public warning to Jews, made in Jackson’s presence: “If you harm this brother [Jackson], it will be the last one you harm.” This time Jackson is playing Farrakhan’s incendiary role by fanning the flames of race hatred and bigotry directed at Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson.

This Culture War is America’s longest-running conflict, reaching back to the colonial settlement of the eastern seaboard.

Here is the always perceptive Jim Goad’s iconoclastic take on the A&E/Robertson Family controversy.

The Best of Charles Burris