Quote of note:
It was in December 2002 that Lott uttered the words that led to his fall. ''I want to say this about my state," he told the guests at a 100th birthday party for Thurmond, the 1948 Dixiecrat candidate for president and longtime senator from South Carolina. ''When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
Lott's remarks, reported in The Washington Post, were greeted with ''an audible gasp and general silence." With good reason. If the rest of the country had followed Mississippi's lead in 1948, the 34th president of the United States would have been an unabashed racist. ''All the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army," Thurmond had declared, ''cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches, and our places of recreation and amusement." He had bolted the Democratic Party for one whose platform vowed to maintain ''the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race."
Who but a racist or a witless clod would claim more than 50 years later that America's problems were caused by integration and civil rights? Not even Thurmond, who had long since recanted his segregationist views, would have said such a thing.
Lott's a slow learner
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | August 21, 2005
MISSISSIPPI SENATOR Trent Lott's new memoir, ''Herding Cats: A Life in Politics" goes on sale this week, more than 2 1/2 years after he was ousted as the Senate's Republican leader. The experience, it would seem, has taught him nothing.
As Lott tells the tale, he lost his post because disloyal Senate colleagues exploited an ''innocent but thoughtless remark" he made about Strom Thurmond's segregationist presidential campaign of 1948. He fumes in particular over Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, who succeeded him as Republican leader.
''I considered Frist's power grab a personal betrayal," Lott writes in the new book, according to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. ''I felt, and still feel, that he was one of the main manipulators of the whole scenario."
It is hardly news that some politicians have an endless capacity to blame others for their own self-inflicted wounds. But if Lott truly believes that the ''betrayal" of an ambitious colleague was what returned him to the back benches, he is more delusional than we knew.
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There's a relationship
There's a relationship between this story and the Coretta Scott King story.
Lott was in eulogy mode. The guy was 100 years old, and clearly near the end of any personal power. Lott was speaking uncritically of Thurmond's service as one speaks uncritically to an old man about the old man's life.
No one believed Lott was expressing a preference for 1948 segregation. No one.
That all said, we sure can't blame any black person for what went wrong.
But we can observe the power of political correctness to destroy. The fear carlessness when discussing racial issues.
Strom Thurmond was human
Strom Thurmond was human waste and should've been dealt with after the Israeli fashion decades prior to his natural demise...,
But we can observe the power
Yes, the inability to meet the known standard for correct behavior has repercussions that are unavoidable.
Don't be careless.
Strom Thurmond was human
Strom Thurmond was human waste and should've been dealt with after the Israeli fashion decades prior to his natural demise...,
Those who want no change are strengthened by those who advocate first change and then avenging retaliation against those who previously held power. If your political enemy seeks your physical death, you cannot politically compromise.
Those who want no change are
Those with a unique history and continuing pattern of hateful and subhuman behaviour should simply be glad that their abducted negros were pacified and neuticled a looooong time ago. Facts notwithstanding, the paranoic hell of America's own making is catching up with her on every front.
As Lott tells the tale, he
Well, Lott's right about part of that.
You can argue whether his remark was either innocent or thoughtless. However, he certainly didn't lose his position because the GOP leadership was outraged at what he said. Frist, et al, used this event as cover for a backroom deal to take over the majority leadership.
"No one believed Lott was
"No one believed Lott was expressing a preference for 1948 segregation. No one."
You're right. Like most of his ilk he was yearning for the days of slavery and the Old South. DW get real, in Lott's world you only exist to serve mint juleps on the front porch or pluck cotton bolls on the south forty.