Posted on 01/01/2003 8:43:17 AM PST by TLBSHOW
Ok...I'll answer post #161.
It's a freakin transcript of the same controversial Lott statements which everybody with a TV set has seen and heard over and over again a 100 times.
Did you think seeing it in print was going to change everybody's perception of it?
Or change that fact that Lott's said the same thing before...that he also called the GOP the party of Jefferson Davis and lead a successful effort in college to ban blacks from a fraternity?
Perhaps if we paste a few smiley faces and LOLS in there it will make it alright?
What is your point?
How nit-picky of you. lol
You were eventually told what to infer from these remarks and that's what you did.
Right. None of us could understand;
"I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theatres into our swimming pools into our homes and into our churches."---Strom Thurmond, presidential candidate, 1948
We had to be told what it really meant.
Are you trying to make me laugh on purpose or what?
OK Jorge, I'll be waiting for you to show me your post's decrying Strom Thurmonds segregationist past and calling for his resignation as President Pro Temp of the US Senate.
Will I be waiting long?
Describe for me the context of the following Lott statements. "...And I knew that the previous remarks would be just as they were. I mean, after all, Bob Dole received the Republican nomination and dang near was elected President of the United States telling Strom Thurmond jokes." [Laughter]
Was Trent Lott making a light hearted joke about Bob Dole and Strom Thrumond or was he being serious?
Was the previous speaker -- Bob Dole -- telling jokes about Strom Thurmond or was the previous speaker making serious statements?
What have I written that doesn't make sense to you? Are you specifically referring to post #183 or others? That post referrs to my response to:
TLBSHOW WROTE: "What does the Trent Lott affair now say about the Republican Party?" (Emphasis mine)
The gist of my response to TLBSHOW was that real Republicans won't tolerate a Party "LEADER" who even remotely implies racist tendencies, but that the RATS WILL and DO.
Although WE don't want a LEADER like that, it is up to the VOTERS of a particular state to CHOOSE THEIR OWN SENATOR---one THEY feel REPRESENTS THEM. There is a lot of HISTORICAL EVIDENCE that Frist is ABSOLUTELY NOT a racist.
This:
It says that UNLIKE the RATs, who had Byrd, a RACIST former KKK GRAND KLEAGLE OFFICER (and CURRENT PRO-TEM of the Senate), LEADING THEIR Party, Republicans won't tolerate even a HINT of STUPID racist-sounding remarks from the LEADER of OUR Party.
Your VERY CONCERNED comments make no sense because by them you assume that the Senate Majority Leader represents only his or her own political party. That is patently absurd and absolutely untrue. Every senator in Washington represents all Americans.
You are eager to remove the Republican Sen. Lott from one position of representation for remarks he made that have been spun as racist/segregationist, yet wish him to remain your representative in that political body until the voters of his particular state remove him. It is nonsensical to assume that a US senator represents only those of his own state. United States senators represent the United States.
At the same time that you are busy policing your own political party, you are perfectly willing to allow a former member of the KKK to continue to represent you, because he is a Democrat. Both Lott and Byrd are your representatives in Washington, though one bears an "R" and the other a "D" behind his name.
You feel justified in holding to account only those Senators who, in your mind, senselessly, represent you because they call themselves 'Republicans.' This CONCERNS me. All of them represent all of us, and all must equally be held to account. Sensible persons know this.
Will I be waiting long?
Uh, yes... it might be rather silly for me to call "for his resignation as President Pro Temp of the US Senate" since he is already retired from the Senate.(officially, Strom is not even a Senator as of today)
In any case, he renounced his segregationist past a long time ago.
Which makes Lott's comments even more inappropriate.
Lott dug up a part of Strom's past and made it the subject of present day scorn...when Strom himself would have prefered it be forgotten. Lott is a klutz.
I have no way of knowing since I never heard Dole's speech and you didn't quote it.
But even if I accepted Lott's characterization of it as Dole simply "telling jokes about Strom Thurmond", clearly Dole was tactful enough not to open up old wounds and offend large numbers of people.
Besides, I've heard Lott's speech over and over again and cannot see how the statement in question could ever be taken as simply being a joke.
He said the country would have been better off, and we could have avoided a lot of problems we have if Strom had been elected President.
If he wasn't serious and didn't mean it, that would have been an insulting form of humor.
And let's face it, Lott, in all of his apologies, never tried to explain away what he said as just being a joke.
He claimed he meant it, but was refering to things like "a strong national defense" etc. which was really not believable at all.
I will say one thing about Lott. I didn't like what he said or how he handled the controversy initially.
But I do admire him for doing the right thing and stepping down as SML when he realized it was time to, that his attitude does not seem to be one of self-pity, nor bitterness toward the Democrat and media hypocrites.
He seems to have landed on his feet and I like that.
It appears to me, most people (and possibly you) that all of Lott's comments preceeding the above comment in question were said with the intention to lightheartedly joke about friends and self.
Given what I thought was a joke telling context, I took the two previous comments to mean -- me and my fellow Mississippians were so stupid, that we proudly voted for somebody who ran on a segregationst platform. The audience seemed to take it this way too, because they laughed at those two comments. Then the last comment in question, the comment you mention above, would be just an extension of the self-effacing humor -- Lott mocking the opinion of a segregationist wishing that the country went down the segregationist path. I find it hard to imagine how somebody would turn on the dime from telling light-hearted self-effacing jokes to making comments, waxing nostalgic about segregation.
And let's face it, Lott, in all of his apologies, never tried to explain away what he said as just being a joke.
I've thought about this same point and have no argument except to say that Lott rarely stands up and defends anything.
Anyway, I will check Lott's full apology quotation and if he doesn't mention that he was joking, then I will take him at his word, which would mean that his statement is in poor taste.
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