Posted on 12/16/2002 9:55:09 AM PST by an amused spectator
When Trent Lott stuck his foot in his mouth at a birthday party for retiring Senator Strom Thurmond, the nation's mainstream press erupted in rage.
Dozens of newspaper and magazine articles and hours of television time have already been devoted to this non-story. The angst over Trent Lott's racist soul is palpable. "Dixiecrat" is becoming a household word.
Strangely, similar outbursts by prominent Democrats over the years have been for the most part ignored by the national media "information gatekeepers", and even the the sordid record of the Democrats during the battle over the Civil Rights Act of 19641 has been glossed over quite nicely by the liberal media.
Companies and people pay millions of dollars a year to advertise their products in print and television media. They do this for a reason: consumers remember when they see a product advertised.
We are going to remember that Trent Lott "said something bad" for long years after Senator Thurmond is dead and buried and I'm sure hundreds of thousands of other average Americans will too.
We on Free Republic remember that the Democrat Party is the party of Jim Crow who only moved their plantations from the South to the big cities, but I'm sure that just a handful of other average Americans are truly aware of the sordid race dealings of the Democrat plantation overseers. Why the disparity in coverage? Both American political parties have their share of skeletons from the race wars of the late 20th century. Many of the Democrat missteps on the racial front are even more sensational than the Lott tribute to Strom Thurmond.
Strangely, the former member of the Klan whose filibuster wrapped up the resistance to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 still sits in the Senate, and continues to spew racial epithets to this day. These facts don't rate a sentence on page 34 of The New York Times
I regretfully conclude that the reason most Americans are hearing about the "racial sins" of Trent Lott is because they are being used as a free political commercial by the Left, to advertise their views about this country and their political enemies under the guise of "breaking news".
As such, we should now examine all mainstream newscasts or news stories with this question in mind:
1At 9:51 on the morning of June 10, 1964, Senator Robert C. Byrd completed an address that he had begun fourteen hours and thirteen minutes earlier. The subject was the pending Civil Rights Act of 1964, a measure that occupied the Senate for fifty-seven working days, including six Saturdays. (June 10, 1964 - Civil Rights Filibuster Ended)
Thank you! Would that others had your wisdom!
Disingenuous tripe! Lott did not say "I am a segregationist". If words mean something then get a grip on the fact that he never mentioned segregation.
I defende Senator Lott slightly but he really is a spineless pol. It is one thing to be diplomatic yet another to be a complete pushover for a bunch of neo-commies (Hey, I like that! I hope I used it first. :D)
Good riddance to him.
Oh, and TLBshow, thank you for the link. I meant to thank you via freep mail but I drank a few beers and forgot.
I do not want the Majority leader to be weak and ineffectual.
I am not sure you can see the difference.
Do you realize just how silly this line sounds?
If she dropped her affiliation with NARAL and supported the 2nd Amendment and welfare reform for the next forty years instead then the analogy would be comparable and complimenting her would definitely not be an endorsement for abortion unless someone with an agenda against you wanted to spin it that way.
I'm sure it does to those with an agenda against Lott. Take his words out of the context they were spoken in then extrapolate what they would mean if taken to the furthest degree and call that a literal interpretation of what he said and therefore meant.
I don't give a damn what he meant to say, because it's irrelevant. What is important is what actually came out of his mouth.
If he actually meant it the way it came out, he's an evil bastard and should not be the Majority Leader.
If he didn't mean it, then he's an [expletive deleted] fool and should not be the Majority Leader.
Insisting that TigersEye's words MUST be taken literally is as dishonest and bigoted as it gets.
Decided to give up using logic and reason to debate me? A wise choice for you.
Yes and he never mentioned segregation. If what is important is how others take what he said then Hoo Rah Political Correctness. Bow to Je$$e God Jack$on!
If he actually meant it the way it came out, he's an evil bastard and should not be the Majority Leader.
If he didn't mean it, then he's an [expletive deleted] fool and should not be the Majority Leader.
If? If? Let's can his career and lose the majority in the senate and give the racecard credibility on ...IF! If everyone knew he was such a fool before (and we did) then WHY didn't we demand a new ML a few weeks ago when the Senate voted on it? No! All you damn fools want to do it NOW! Now that the Dem's want it. Now that the Big Media wants it. It's a matter of not having the balls to sack him for being incompetent. This is letting the opposition call the shots.
I answered that question.
To come to that conclusion requires you to take Lott's remarks grossly out of context, which is supposedly quite abhorrent. Lott spoke how proud Mississippi was to have voted for Thurmond in 1948, when he was running on an explicitly segregationist platform, and how the rest of the country should have done as Mississippi did.
Now, that's either endorsing segregation (assuming Lott has a minimal understanding of 20th-century American political history), or it's being a complete fool.
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