Every Monday at Reran Tragedy, Editor-in-Chief Cal Alabaster Jr. draws on his considerable experience in Southern politics to round up news, notes, and blatantly pasted-in press releases that readers may have otherwise missed.

BIRMINGHAM — Looking ahead to next year’s key civil rights anniversary, black Birmingham residents say that much work is yet to be done toward making the city a desegregated and fair places to all people of different kinds — and also that gay people are awful individuals who deserve little to no rights.

Dora Freeman, 59, grew up here during the era in which Birmingham was the home of a battle that changed the nation.

She said that while Jim Crow may have died, his spirit still remains.

“People may not come out and say how they feel anymore, but things aren’t that different than they were in 1963,” Freeman said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely wonderful that we can go in the front door of restaurants now, but whites and blacks here still live very far apart, and it’s not like we get much of a break from the police. One day, we need to come together and try to admit that while we are different, we are all human beings, and we all deserve to be free and we should be able to walk down any street and not feel like we are not allowed.

“And then we got all these damn fruits and sodomites prancing around Southside who think they are havin’ their own civil rights movement right now. Look at what that Good Book that gave us all that hope way back when things were really bad says — they’re just animals, and the only right they have is the one to be locked up in jail cell for the nasty things they’ve done.”

“We have suffered so much as a race. Given what we’ve been through in Alabama, in America, I don’t think things will ever truly be ‘right’ for black folks here,” said the Rev. Michael Saunders, 44, a black Birmingham minister. “But at least we’re not one of these weirdo gay people who think about sex with boys all the time.

“It’s beyond an insult that they’d even remotely associate their need for the law to recognize them sodomizing another male with our civil rights movement. That’s our movement, the one we fought for, the one that’s right. We were looking to be respected for the way God made us. They are looking to change the way things are. Those two things are different.”

Though he grew up in a time when the civil rights movement was said to be “over,” 22-year-old Darnell Thomas of Birmingham, a medical student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, does not feel that way.

He said the de facto racial divisions in the Birmingham Metro — usually much poorer blacks living in the Old Birmingham with whites having long fled to suburbs on the city’s periphery — “is what we need to work on in the civil rights movement’s next phase.”

He said that he too is deeply offended by gay people and their fight for rights being termed as similar to struggle a half century ago to obtain equal rights for blacks. Yet, he feels like he has spotted a solution.

“Gay dudes, that’s gross,” Thomas said. “But as long as they are off in their own separate little places where I don’t have to see or deal with them, I’m good.”

Siegelman supporters still deeply concerned about Republican conspiracy to convict corrupt Democrats of corruption

A Legal Schnauzer graphic overviewing the major players Don Siegelman's supporters claim were part of a Republican conspiracy to undo him. Clockwise around the photo of Karl Rove's American Crossroads headquarters: Alternate universe Alabama Republican Gov. Bizarro Jim Folsom Jr., former Bush administration adviser Karl Rove, former Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, former Bush U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, present Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and U.S. Attorney Leura Canary.

Loyal Alabama Democrats hopeful to see something good happen remotely related to their party are angrily protesting the Supreme Court’s decision not to take up an appeal of former Gov. Don Siegelman‘s corruption conviction, saying the High Court’s choice further proves that Siegelman is a victim of a malicious Republican conspiracy to convict corrupt Democrats of corruption.

“It’s no surprise that the activist conservatives on the Supreme Court would not want to take up a case clearly decided wrongly, and they probably only did it because it was a Democrat whose term in office was repeatedly marred with allegations of corruption and wrongdoing,” wrote Glynn Wilson on his liberal Locust Fork Journal blog site. “If they had more journalism degrees and didn’t spend so much time down on their hands and knees literally kissing Karl Rove‘s rectum, then maybe they would see that these Republicans are only going after corrupt Democrats for corruption is because it benefits them.”

Roger Shuler, who writes the liberal Legal Schnauzer blog, also decried the Siegelman ruling as “a tragic day in the history of our Republic.”

“When a Republican does something that I disagree with or think is unethical, they don’t get prosecuted for it,” he wrote. “But just because a Democrat who ran one of the most ethically questionable administrations in recent memory — and in Alabama, of all places — does it, they get prosecuted.

“That President Obama has not sent troops to liberate Gov. Siegelman out of the country is a dark mark on his administration that should be physically branded upon his forehead.”

Despite the defeat, Siegelman supporters maintained last week that they will not give up on their fight for justice for something else like, say, moving the Democratic Party forward on things that actually matter and recruiting viable young talent that could get elected.

They said their immediate plans will focus on referring to former Republican Gov. Bob Riley as “b00b Riley” in a lot more newspaper comment sections.

Artur Davis announces he will eat at Checkers instead of Rally’s

Artur Davis.

As expected for weeks, Artur Davis announced last week that should he eat at a freestanding dual drive-thru fast food restaurant in the near future, he will eat at a Checkers instead of a Rally’s.

Davis, a former Alabama Democratic congressman turned probable Republican congressional candidate in Virginia, had previously asserted that he would always eat at a Rally’s. But since losing the governor’s race, he has frequently criticized Rally’s font on its sign and its food as less in touch with the problems of the middle class than that at Checkers.

Political fast food watchers also note that there are more opportunities for Davis to eat at Checkers branded drive-in restaurants in Virginia than at Rally’s.

Davis wrote on his blog that a personal experience led to the switch.

“Despite not really ordering, there was no food waiting for me when I drove through the drive through of a Rally’s in 2010. They were very rude to me when I started blaming them exclusively for why I didn’t get the food I thought I was entitled to because of who I am,” Davis said. “I have not yet tried to order food at a Checkers, but it seems like the best opportunity to continue my drive-thru eating career.”

Washington Republicans said they were happy to have Davis among those who share their Checkers preference because it helps their election year attacks on President Obama. They also said they look forward to Davis’ eventual congressional run and that they always welcome a perpetual rising political star who does not know how to run a big-boy campaign or talk to real people.

Headlines from this weekend’s Alabama newspapers

Mobile Press-Register: “Exciting rape and murder comes to Mobile”

The Birmingham News: “New Miss Alabama crowned and please God don’t read our online comments section on this story we don’t stop them for some reason”

The Huntsville Times: “HUNTVISLLE TIMES!”

Anniston Star: “Anti-HB56 activists’ anonymous hash tag confused for reports of fatal natural disaster”

Daily Mountain Eagle: “Dora man in custody after holding entire Taco Bell staff at spork-point”

This week in Alabama history

Today 49 years ago, former Gov. George Wallace tried standing in a schoolhouse door to block integration, but through federal and University of Alabama officials’ strategy and perseverance in the face of brainless racial hatred, two black students were allowed to register for classes at what had been an all-white institution.

If you believe the Yankee aggressors’ version of it.

Reran Tragedy is Weld’s satirical blog about politics and life in Alabama and the South. Much of what you will read here is fictionalized, except for all the parts that are unfortunately true because they are about politics and life in Alabama and the South. You can like this blog on Facebook and follow it on Twitter @ReranTragedy. You can reach the blog’s author at calalabaster@gmail.com.

The artist known as Cal Alabaster Jr., if that is his or her real name, may or may not also be the author of the Alabama humor blog called “King Cockfight.” If true, you may read Cal’s work there at kingcockfight.wordpress.com.