Empty Lott
Last night, hungry for distraction while preparing dinner, I turned on the television and watched the film M*A*S*H. In the opening scene, and my reason for mentioning it, Donald Sutherland has just arrived in Korea and is trying to find his way to the 4077th Mobile Surgical Army Hospital. He has a run-in with a black sergeant who gives him an unnecessarily hard time for no reason. When the non-com walks away, Hawkeye utters the epithet, "Racist."
The thought came to mind in reading about the avalanche of attacks by blacks and Democrats against Trent "Empty" Lott for his unfortunate remarks regarding Strom Thurmond on the occasion of the ancient's 100th birthday. Thurmond ran for the White House in 1948 on a states' rights segregation platform, and Lott, who was never the sharpest knife in the drawer, observed at the celebration that his state of Mississippi had voted for Thurmond. He went on to say that the country probably would have been better off if Thurmond had been elected president.
Well, if you know Trent Lott, maybe followed him from the days when he was one of the last supporting Nixon during the House Judiciary impeachment hearings, you know not to expect erudition from him. After all, he is from Mississippi, not a hot-bed of intellect. To offer such support for Thurmond, who came in third in the balloting ahead of Henry Wallace winning five states with 39 electoral votes and was viewed as primitive on his best days, does not say much about the endorser, even on such an occasion. And apparently it was not the first time Lott had echoed such sentiments.
In fairness, it should be said that Thurmond, elected to the Senate in 1952, did something of a turnaround, going so far as to hire Negroes to work in his Capitol office, but his politics were always deep-Southern, which meant right-wing Republican. Lott was never far from the same pit; nor did he show much growth. So his comments, delivered out of schmaltz rather than serious thought, are hardly earth-shaking.
Except that as former and soon-to-be-re-anointed Senate leader and fourth in line for the presidency, you'd think he'd know better than to mouth such remarks. Not that he has given reason to think that; he was never rabid, but he was never thoughtful. What is perhaps more obscene than that such a neolithic mind might run the Senate for the next two years are some of the attacks on Lott. Black leaders claim they can't forgive him, though the only black Republican in Congress, retiring House member J.C. Watts, is willing to. But Tom Daschle, Lott's donkey counterpart, who was at first willing to let it go, now after all the upsetness wants "a fuller explanation;" he almost makes Lott look good.
The Republican party, long at the short end of the black vote, must realize that it would be a good PR move to have Lott step aside. Never mind that he represents their hearts and minds as well as those of The Magnolia State. And that if he does get pushed out, it will only be for cosmetic reasons; not a single Senate synapse will shift. Symbolically it would demonstrate some minor degree of sensitivity, rather than sensibility, and it would be political rather than societal. But in today's climate, those to the left of the right will grasp at any straw in the wind.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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