Instapundit is rightfully (Right-fully, get it?) outraged at the pass that Trent Lott is getting for his stupid and evil comments as noted below.
I did a quick search through the major media:
New York Times nada.
Washington Post story
Chicago Tribune nada
Los Angeles Times nada
San Francisco Chronicle story
CNN.com nada
Memphis Commercial Appeal nada
Yahoo.com nada
Now, maybe its just me, but I thought the liberal media were against racism.
And to discover that one of the most powerful men in the country is an unreconstructed racist
as opposed, say, to discovering that he doesnt want women to play golf at Augusta
would seem to me to be pretty damn pressing news.
So whats here that I am missing, exactly??
What you’re missing is all these “liberal news” weenies have joined in the war on terra, which means anything the Ku Klux Republikans do is good, nice, patriotic, moral, permitted by all legal authorities [da supreme pretzeldent], and just what jayzus would do.
Let’s stop depending on the media. We’re only five or seven people away from anybody. Who’s got a contact who’s got a contact that can ask Condi Rice or Colin Powell what THEY think of Trent Lott’s comments?
Darryl Pearce / Ventura County, CA
I think “unreconstructed racist” is a little strong. I don’t think Trent Lott really favors segregation. “Complete dumbass” is a better way of putting it, and that probably explains the lack of interest.
Still, it is a little weird that the Augusta National thing is worth 32 articles in the NYT but somehow this isn’t. Talk about skewed priorities!
Maybe the Blogosphere isn’t a leading indicator on the trend of the news after all:
http://donefer.blogspot.com/2002_12_08_donefer_archive.html#85736983
I’m kind of confused, Rob. In your blog you call for Lott to resign and you seem to argue that he must have been talking about segregation. So as far as I can tell, you(like AL and myself) are interpreting Lott’s statement as an endorsement of segregation. How can you then claim that Lott really doesn’t favor segregation? Was it just a slip of the tongue? “She sells shea shells by the sea keep the damn Negros out of our schools – whoops!”
OK, I’m not being totally clear here.
I don’t think Lott actually, in his heart, supports segregation. Certainly I don’t consider his comments to be definitive proof that he’s a racist. The context was an attempt to flatter Thurmond by saying “Gee, you would have been a great POTUS,” and so the comment is, in fact, a fancy slip of the tounge. His error was in tying the comment explicitly to 1948 instead of being more general.
He could just as easily have said something like “Gee, when Strom was running for president, I was only X years old–what a remarkable man to have served his country so long, when lesser men would have retired” or “You should have run against Carter, Strom, we’d be better off” some such harmless flattery. I want Lott to resign not because I think he’s racist, but for purely political reasons–because he is, as I said, a fucking idiot for not realizing what he was saying, and for badly mismanaging the ensuing outrage. (And I should point out that I want him to resign as Majority Leader–I’ll leave it to Mississippi voters to decide his further fate).
All of us make gaffes and imply things we don’t want to. I’ve been called a racist, a sexual harasser, and lots of other things because my mouth got ahead of my brain. What happened here was a mistake. Unlike the rest of us, politicians–especially Majority Leaders–don’t get to make mistakes.
The Republicans should boot Trent Lott out of the Majority Leader’s position if they want to remain in the majority. As for Lott being voted out down in Mississippi, don’t count on it. Lott has spent a lot of his time addressing thinly disguised hate groups. It works well with most Mississippi whties so I am afraid he will remain in the Senate. As for the most soveign state of Mississippi I remmember what a middle-aged white lady from Alabama told me about a dozon years ago, “I do not know why the Good Lord ever created the state of Mississippi unless it was to give folks from Alabama somebody to look down on”! Full disclosure, I have always hate Trent Lott, his slick manner reminds me of a sucessful small town Funeral Home operator.
I think that Trent Lott and a lot of his cohorts are closet racists. Hell Dem. Byrd was a KKK member.
The one thing about racism is that it is completely illogical and irrational and is basically an internal character flaw, therefore if an adult is a racist it will always show one way or another. Just look at Lott. He says this. He says something like this in 1980. He is a part of the CCC. All you have to do is add it up.
A person should not have to use a racial slur to be considered a racist.If an individual said he thought the Hitler was a genius and did not expound on that thought. It would be fair to say he is anti-semetic even if he didn’t say anything bad about a Jewish person.
Trent Lott is to sophisticated to go about using racial slurs in public anyway. But, he still can’t hide his feelings all the time. He got all worked up over Thurmond and his internal mental controls slipped and the real Lott came out for a second.
apparently all you’re missing (along with the rest of us) is an actual list of large media coverage of Lott’s brain-turd… other than that, not a damned thing. he’s getting away with it.