The Southern Party

In 1999, the League of the South sponsored the creation of the Southern Party which would, over the years, be little more than another minority party, obscure even, that would hold little clout in the American political system - at least in terms of voting and holding any true power in Federal government.

Across the South and mid-west, from states such as Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri to Virginia, South Carolina and Florida, members of the Southern Party, or members once affiliated with it, hold positions of office at the state and local levels. Back in 1999 when the party was first commissioned by the League of the South, more members were actively in office, but no members successfully gained office in any truly important faculties such as governor or senator.

The tenants of the party have changed little in the eleven years since its inception: states rights, lower taxes, small Federal government, the right to bear arms, and peaceful secession of the southern states to name a few.

The ideas lie clear in the following quote. In a 1999, George Kalas, then the party's chairman, was quoted by CNN, saying,  "We're kind of a nation within a nation. We had four years of independence as a nation to develop that separate culture. That is not co-optable. You can't co-opt our Southern heritage, you can't co-opt our Southern drawl, our Southern cooking, our Southern music, our deep religious faith."

To be more specific, the tenants are very similar to those subscribed to by the League of the South and truly, the League has become the new Southern Party and, most likely, always was. The League has stepped away from its figurehead role in more recent years and assumed a more active stance in the absence of the Southern Party proper - the party essentially dissolved in 2003 after years of infighting between leaders and several factional splits.

Today, the views and ideologies of what the party stood for can be heard through the voices of such individuals as Michael Hill, president of the League of the South, and Donnie Kennedy, a neo-Confederate who attempted to receive the 2008 presidential nomination of the Republican party.He left the campaign in December 2007 as he believed, having brought the issues of southern rights to the main stage, other matters would need his attention and the attention of the League during the election.

It is possible to contend Kennedy and the League saw futility in the enterprise or simply were, as Kennedy suggests, wanting to bring the issues to the forefront that were close to their hearts. Either way, the League has seemed to garner little attention outside of the South as many, but not all, of their views coincide with those of the Republican party... and, moreover, the League may lose clout due to their perceived fanatical stances on many, many issues.

Playstation Move

Motion controls. I'll  be the first to criticize them and the last to take them in with open, unquestioning arms. When the Wii shipped some three years ago, I was excited, ecstatic even, with the concept of another innovative Nintendo system; I was and am a huge fan of what the N64 did for gaming and what it brought to the table. But what got me about the Wii was not stellar graphics or a great and promised catalog of games - neither of which ever came to fruition - but the one innovation that, seemingly, promised to change the atmosphere of gaming: motion control.

To be honest, I never bought a Wii. I was holding out for Sony and the PS3, but I played the Wii every chance I got and came very close, my hand reaching into my back pocket to my wallet at Wal-Mart, to buying one.

The reason this never happened, why I don't have a Wii sitting in my room, but a PS3 in my entertainment center, is that it just got boring. For me, at least, the motion controls didn't, in the long run, make up for the shoddy library and the egregiously embarrassing visuals of the Wii. On certain games - Wii Sports, Red Steel - the latency was bearable, yet in others - World at War, Smash Bro. Brawl, it was frustrating at best.

Quickly, the novelty wore off. And not just for me, but for many gamers. It was fun while it lasted, but motion control just wasn't ready, the research and technology wasn't where it needed to be. Nintendo has made it this far catering to the family-centric gamer, not the hardcore, more critical gamer.

And that's what it seems Microsoft and, more importantly, Sony are trying not to do - leave the hardcore gamer out in the rain. At this point, I haven't heard much positivity regarding Natal - information has leaked that developers are having trouble with Natal, that Natal isn't as responsive or as able to recognize images as was originally touted. But those are all, truly, rumors. The point here is that Playstation Move is the only real pertinent and promising motion controller right now.

I'm excited because of the possibilities - one-to-one- latency, backwards compatibility with older PS3 games through downloadable patches, etc. I'm nervous because of the risk - PS3 could trod the path of the Wii and become old hat within the first few months to a year.

Even being a huge critic of motion control and seeing it more as a gaming augmentation rather than control within itself, at this point I see the potential in the technology. Sony could truly make inroads into the the technology's future. I can see the Playstation Move, with all of its advantages such as one-to-one latency, backwards compatibility, more pertinent titles and titles that appeal to a larger gamer-community, laying the foundation for motion control standards and future projects.  

 We'll just have to wait until E3 and more emphatically, Fall 2010 to truly find out. Maybe, motion control will become more than a novelty and child's play. Maybe motion control will defy its critics and become necessary and wanted, not just a cumbersome periphery.