[billbears]

I'm suprised really. It didn't take as long as I thought it would. Lott's second mistake was apologizing for a misconstrued statement. If he would have kept his mouth shut it would have eventually blown over

[ewing]

He had got to do a press conferece, the sooner the better..

[zencycler]

Lott's second mistake was apologizing for a misconstrued statement.

To say that Lott's statement was "misconstrued" is not correct. Misconstrued means the listener is at fault - that someone who listened more carefully to what was said would understand the true meaning of what was meant.

This, sadly, is not the case. The fault is not that of the listener in his poor listening, but in the speaker in his poor speaking. Lott's statement was not misconstrued, it was misconstructed. Maybe Lott wanted to say that he likes Strom Thurmond, the man before him today, with the values and the beliefs that he has today, and that this man would have made a good president and prevented many of the problems we have. But he didn't come close to saying that.

Lott constructed his praise of Strom in such a way, that one could only construe the worst. And surely, this was not done because Lott meant it, but because he was so caught up in just saying anything nice to Strom that he didn't pause a moment before speaking to think about what would be meant by his words, given their historical context.

These comments are not proof of Lott being a racist today, but they are proof of him being profoundly stupid. And the GOP doesn't want stupid leaders. After all, we're not Democrats.