Posted on 12/24/2002 1:09:54 AM PST by goldstategop
TRENCHANT (I HOPE) COMMENTS ON THE LOTT AFFAIR By Don Feder December 22, 2002
At the outset, please note the following:
1) I am no fan of Trent Lott. As Senate Majority Leader, Lott was an unprincipled pragmatist. So much so, that when he first became majority leader, DC conservatives produced buttons proclaiming: “Lott For Sale, Will Build to Specifications.” At the height of the current manufactured crisis, the Mississippi invertebrate went of Black Entertainment Television to plead that he now supports affirmative action (racial quotas) “across board.” That declaration was more profoundly racist than anything the Senator said at Strom Thurmond’s birthday party. In many ways, Lott does indeed represent everything that’s wrong with the Republican Party – lack of purpose, lack of courage, at times, even lack of consciousness – though not in the way his critics charged.
2) Segregation was evil. To tell a man that he can’t use a public restroom or that he has to sit in the back of a bus, -- to bar his admission to a public school or university -- on the basis of skin color is loathsome.
3) Had I voted in the 1948 election, it would not have been for Thurmond – or Thomas Dewey, for that matter. I would have supported Harry Truman, one of the few Democratic presidents I admire (along with Andrew Jackson). If not for Give ‘Em Hell Harry, we might have lost the Cold War at the outset. Truman also integrated the armed forces, another courageous move.
Enough disclosure. Lott’s resignation highlights a profound double-standard regarding racism. I doubt Lott’s opponents really believe his dumb remark reflects ingrained, or even visceral, racism, or a desire to return to the era of Jim Crow. But America now has a racial sensitivity Gestapo that pulls out its truncheons at the slightest sign of hostility – real or imagined -- toward people of color.
Of course, the reverse is not the case. Black grudge-bearers are free to condemn whites as a race, to say virtually anything about them, however vile and unjust, and to support policies (quotas, reparations) that are manifestly racist – designed to punish people for an accident of birth. And Democrats are free to race-bait to their hearts’ content, a tactic almost as reprehensible as racism itself.
You think Trent Lott’s awful?
You know what Lott didn’t do? He didn’t refer to New York City as Hymie-Town and complain that Jews are always “whining about the Holocaust.” He didn’t call Judaism a gutter religion. He didn’t spark a race riot in Crown Heights that led to the death of a young man or organize the picket of a white-owned business that resulted in the deaths of five (all minorities). He didn’t write a poem about Jews blowing up the World Trade Center.
He didn’t try to justify the thugs who burned down a large part of South Central LA in 1992 by calling their crimes “a spontaneous reaction to a lot of injustice and a lot of alienation and frustration.” Oh, and he didn’t suggest that George Bush had foreknowledge of Sept 11, but did nothing to prevent it so his business friends could profit from a war on terrorism.
In case you’re curious, those laurels go to Jesse Jackson, Louis Farakhan, Al Sharpton, New Jersey Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka (the artist formerly known as LeRoi Jones), Congress-creature Maxine Waters and soon-to-be-former Congress-cretin Cynthia McKinney. But don’t hold your breath waiting for any of them to be taken to the woodshed.
An unspoken assumption of our culture is that it’s racist (or insensitive, at the very least) to criticize a black person. Thus if I observe that Jackson is an opportunistic jerk – a person of limited intelligence and low morals – in the establishment’s eyes, my views must be shaped by racial animosity. (The more unscrupulous black leaders invariably exploit this assumption.) Thus it would seem that prominent blacks suffering from foot-in-mouth disease are to be the exception to Martin Luther King’s dictum that Americans should be judged by “the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”
Democrats passionately embrace the accountability double standard. Republicans meekly acquiesce.
When it was disclosed last year that the Reverend Jackson had fathered a child out-of-wedlock and used his influence to engage in corporate shakedowns, President Bush called the race hustler par excellence to commiserate. In the 2000 election, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Al Gore each made a pilgrimage to Sharpton’s Harlem headquarters to kiss his ring.
Black-on-white crimes are roughly ten times as prevalent as white-on-black offenses. How many of the former are hate crimes is anyone’s guess. Surely the anti-white racism that pervades our culture (the idea that whites as a race are responsible for black suffering) -- encouraged by the liberal elite and black race-baiters – plays a part in these crimes.
The Democratic Party, the media and groups like the NAACP are avid proponents of racial quotas in education and hiring. Cut through the rhetoric and murky reasoning in defense of these vile programs and it’s clear that they penalize or reward solely on the basis of race. What’s worse – to praise a form of racism long dead (if in fact that’s what Lott did), or to support a virulent strain of racism that’s alive and kicking?
For admissions to the University of Michigan, whose affirmative action program will soon be before the Supreme Court, race (minority status) counts for more than a perfect SAT score combined with an excellent essay. To tell a man or woman that they won’t get in to an elite school – even though they’re bright, studious and creative – because they also happen to be white (or Asian) is a species of racism every bit as ugly as get-to-the-back-of-the-bus or whites-only restrooms.
Although still just a sick notion (whereas affirmative action is a sick reality), reparations is racism writ large. It seeks to hold today’s (largely white) taxpayers responsible for the racial sins of the past. It’s a giant rip-off scheme, favored primarily by the least responsible black leaders – who believe they’ll be the ones to divvy the loot – and the loopier white liberals (which, come to think of it, might be a redundancy).
Race-baiting is almost as bad as racism. At this the Democrats excel. It is for them mother’s milk.
You may recall that during the 1998 election, the Missouri Democratic party ran ads which said, in effect, if Republicans win, more black churches will go up in flames. (Newsflash: “Newt Gingrich was seen fleeing the scene of a burning black church, a can of kerosene in hand.”)
Former felon-in-chief, William Jefferson Clinton (who actually believes he was born a poor black child) used the Lott fiasco to pontificate that Republicans are the second coming of the White Citizens Councils.
In the last election, Republican gains in the South were due to racist appeals to white voters, Clinton opined. “How do they think they got a majority in the South, anyway? I think what they (Republicans) are really upset about is that he (Lott) made public their strategy.”
This from a leader of the party that has it’s own unspoken strategy – to do whatever it takes to monopolize the black vote, including terrifying black voters with lurid visions of Republicans seeking to disenfranchise them, reestablish segregated lunch counters, and send them back to the plantations in chains. Simultaneously, Democrats strenuously oppose those measures that have the best chance of ameliorating the condition of urban blacks – including education vouchers.
Soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi have intimated that it’s now up to congressional Republicans to prove that they aren’t a bunch of cross-burners by supporting affirmative action, a general expansion of welfare programs and DC statehood -- in other words, to embrace racism to prove that they aren’t racists.
And so, as we rejoice in the political demise of the villainous Lott, we can all congratulate ourselves on this historic victory over racism. Meanwhile the most prevalent racism in America – camouflaged as compassion, justice or sensitivity -- is either tolerated or celebrated. Ah, well.
Get over it. If you truly believe that, then you don't understand the dynamic between the parties in this country. This country is already predisposed against us. Anything we do will be scrutinized more closely than anything the liberals could do - no matter how bad. You want proof? Look at Billy-boy. At best, he was a mysogenistic idiot. In any event, he was more wrong than anything that anyone on our side of the fence has been able to come up with in more than 100 years. But thanks to the handwringers, bedwetters and their friends in the media, he's been whitewashed (pun intended) into being two steps short of canonized.
Hell. To hear them tell it, Clinton could walk on water. All Lott did was to stick his foot in his mouth. And now you're upset because Bush cut his losses? Please. Bush may be a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them. Get over it, and let's move on. If you and others who are also crying in their beer (and no, I won't hold it for you) can't get over this, then what hope do we have against Hillary! and whoever else she finds to go up against us in 2004?
Considering that those particualar Southern states had to be forced to do the right thing for many people who are alive today, can you reasonably dispute it?
Seriously, why are you here?
Seems like some aspects of corporate America might have some liability some behavior back then, too.
And I'll remind you - that wasn't way back when.
The White House, which suddenly is taking a very proactive approach to its dealings in the Senate, does not want Lott on Budget, where he would have to work with both the Bush Administration and Democrats. "You saw how fast he sold the Senate Republicans down the river to save his job," says a White House legislative liaison staffer. "Can you imagine the kind of deals he'd cut on Budget?"
The same reasoning holds for Rules, where prior to the Lott debacle, Republicans were said to be holding tight to demands that Democrats not get an even close to equitable shares of staff levels and budgets on committees. Again, there would concerns about Lott's ability to stand firm on conservative, Republican policy and game plan.
There is no puzzling. There are no potential recipients left who were slaves. The government did not actively enslave anyone. There is no way to accurately account for the individuals who were slaves, as census records were spotted at best. And finally, I have no desire to be given something for nothing; and I have no desire to be the recipient of blood money.
If you have the measure of guilt that compells you to pay something to someone, then find a suitable charity and give them whatever you want to give them. It's even tax-deductible. But don't you dare tell anyone else here that they've got any obligation in that regard - and especially not on my behalf.
Oh, please. Take your guilt and go assuage someone who gives a damn. You sound as bad as Lott.
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