And sometimes a political pat on the back is just a political pat on the back.
I hate to imagine the hard work that the liberal news media went through to overanalyze and deliberately misinterpret what Lott said.
At a politician's birthday party, it is a long tradition to say to them, "Gee, things would be better if you were in charge," in some form or other. Lott, not thinking that his remark would be taken way out of context, tossed about the press room a few times, and read into way beyond their shallow meaning, chose to tell Thurmond that things would be better if he had won in '48. I doubt he knew that Thurmond ran as a segregationist, and even if he did, he probably didn't think of it, and certainly not that someone would take it and stretch it to the nth degree, into something that is completely different than what was meant. It takes a lot of imagination to think that Lott meant that he favored segregation and racial discrimination, and a lot of research to find stuff that was done 15-20 years ago to support the imagined offense.
The fact that so much about Lott's past has come out in such a short time after his comment, says something about the press, which isn't entirely respectable.
That said.
Lott's past isn't squeaky clean, and I can't say that he's done a lot of respectable things, especially after reading some of the links provided. In light of that, it could also be time to have a PRESENT tense evaluation of Lott and what he's doing for or against the nation. (He's not the only one that needs that, there's 534 other people in Congress who need the same thing!) In other words, he may not necessarily harbor the same racist opinions as he once did. People change, people grow, it is entirely possible that in 20 years, Mr. Lott has changed some of his opinions. Who knows.
Now, after all that, the only thing I have to say is this: Lott should have been able to say what he said to Thurmond, without it being read into. A harmless comment is all it was. |
