This would have been over by Tuesday if Lott said segregation was wrong, racism is wrong. My statements implied it, it was distasteful, I apologize. The end.
Instead he sent his PR flack out first with an outraged response. Then sent a I am sorry if you are offended you jackass response. Then 2 radio interviews, now this. It is almost like a soap opera. I am being entertained, but saddened that Lott is such an idiot. Forget a white sheet, he should be wearing a dunce cap on his head.
By the way, is there a part in all this for Judge Wapner, or Judge Judy?
Stuff like Lott said is said all the time...and it was not a comment about segregation, by the way.
Hillary Clinton was just looking for an opening to weaken the majority leader right before Bush begins his powerful policy push in January.
This will backfire on Dems. They are about to lose even more popularity.
Secondly, he is keeping a controvery going, that his enemies have stirred up out of next to nothing at all. As I posted a few minutes ago on another thread:
I am getting rather tired of feeling a need to post in Trent Lott threads. My feeling is that Lott has been too moderate, for too long. But to give credibility to attacks on him for praising the Conservative stalwart Strom Thurmond on his 100th birthday, is beyond absurd. It undermines the coming together of Conservatives, necessary for any of us to have much hope of advancing any of our agendas.
The Left has drummed this up, not because the public cares what anyone's historic sentiments may be. The public is interested in stands on issues on the table today--and many of them probably wish some of the 1948 issues were back on the table, but that also is beside the point. It is really only Conservatives, who care rather passionately about yesteryears' issues. It is in our Conservative nature. And the Left keeps trying to trigger a melt-down of Conservative ranks, by trying to stir up arguments over historic issues--what they see as our Achilles' heel. That is what all the hoopla over the Confederate flag is all about, also.
That Lott is falling all over himself to apologize for a harmless sentiment, is to his discredit. But to purge him while anything associated with this is going on, will not only tend to divide the Conservative base; it will be picked up by the media as a repudiation of Strom Thurmond, and those Thurmond brought into the Republican Party, when he switched in 1964 to support Barry Goldwater. Whether some of those calling for Senator Lott's scalp--in a frankly silly panic to humor a completely contrived outpouring--understand the point or not, you can be certain that the propagandists of the Left will exploit such a purging in precisely that manner.
The Left will also try to use this to prevent any reexamination of the assumptions underlying all American Social policy since the middle of the last Century--not just questions that involve race, but questions that involve the whole question of whether the rich exploit and hold down the poor, etc.. Many, who have uncritically accepted the Socialist rationalizations for the differences in human achievement, on America's college campuses in recent decades may not even be aware how deep the distortion of all issues involved, has actually been. But the racial assumptions of the Left are only one manifestation of a much broader and deeper concept--the fundamental idea that runs through every form of Socialism, including the Nazi, that you can remake mankind by remaking his socio-economic environment.
If you once realize that you cannot, you will understand the Achilles' Heel of the Left. It is to prevent that understanding, that they always scream, whenever anyone questions the interchangeability of human types, whether the issue is race, ethnicity, class, or whatever. It is the same underlying fallacy that underlies their immigration policy.
Republicans should have laughed off the attack on Lott. The correct answer was, "We are not going to apologize for a sentiment that a Senator expressed over an election that took place over 54 years ago. We will discuss any current issue. But we will leave anything over half a century past to the historians to argue over." That and a smiling reference to the fact that the Lott comment was a personal tribute to a well-loved Senator on his retirement, would have been sufficient. Apologetic arguments seldom fly. The Democrats understand this, I do not know why we do not.
On that last, I will cite just one clarion example. A couple of weeks before the Goldwater/Johnson election, the assistant on Johnson's staff who was the first one he saw in the morning and the last one he saw at night, was arrested in a D.C. area Men's Room--caught in a Homosexual Act. How did Johnson handle that? He never discussed it. It simply was treated as though it never had happened!!
Anyone who thinks that a statement in honor of a birthday "boy," to the effect of "Gee, wouldn't have been great for America if you had been elected President, 54 years ago," has the same potential legs as the story Johnson killed by simply ignoring it, doesn't begin to understand the capacity for scandal.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
I also wasn't alive yet when all this happened, so feel free to argue all you want about it, 'specially if u R a 'dim.
I wish we could all just drop this non-issue soon. I think it is a MUCH larger story that Al-Qaeda now has VX gas, and a tiny droplet no bigger than the width of a human hair will kill you in less than a minute. Your muscles will convulse and spasm violently until your spine snaps like a chicken-bone.