The Once and Future Senator from Mississippi.

[Persephone]

From an editorial in the Jackson paper today...


You're Trent Lott and that was then and this is now and your Christmas goose is cooked but good and you know it.

You're Trent Lott and who would have thought you'd make a stupid, rookie mistake, that you'd let your guard down, that you'd let the world get a glimpse at your soul, at your Achilles heel, at that hard streak down deep that's been there since ... well, since forever.

You're Trent Lott and you know it's publicly OK to resent Democrats and resent the newspapers, but to resent ... what? Historical inevitability? The inexorable passing of time? A culture that's not your own?

You're Trent Lott, professional politician, policy-maker and name-taker, cold steel in the backrooms where the cards are cut and the deals go down, and you know you're going to be out of the leadership, probably for good, that you'll be some sort of lesser Senator, lesser person, one of the Senate children of a lesser God.

You're Trent Lott and you could absolutely die you're so angry with yourself. You let the world see an ugly part of the real you. In PolySci 101, that's a mortal sin.




http://www.clarionledger.com/news/0212/18/oorley.html

[Meshuga Mikey]

Your trent lott and you have no kissed ass on BET, and are TOAST~!!!

[Flyrod]

Your trent lott and you have no kissed ass on BET, and are TOAST~!!!


That kinda sums it up, I guess!!!! Damn!! Too much kissing demos asses!!!! Hope the next leader can call a spade a spade and not back off!!!!!

[Meshuga Mikey]

NOW,...NOW,...the Sitting PRESIDENT has taken to kissing dark skinned MARXIST ass,..with his KWANZA Greeting, I am beginning to wonder if this nation HAS a Future~!!!!

http://people.delphiforums.com/artcruncher/KwanzaThis2.gif

ITS OBVIOUS THAT THE CONCEPT OF WHITE CHRISTMAS IS TO BLAME FOR DRIVING RON KARENGA, AL SHARPTONGUE and THEIR ILK NUTS~ BUT GEROGE BUSH??? This is BIT much~!! LOTT BEGAN A VERY NEGATIVE AND DANGEROUS TREND with that BET apology fest~!!

[Persephone]

I have mixed feelings about this whole deal. I've never been a big Trent fan, but there have been times when I've voted for him and times when I've voted against him. Either way it is a joke. It is a matter of voting for the guy who is bound to win by a landslide or floating a vote to some guy who will get maybe 12 altogether. There was never a possibility that anyone else would be elected, and I doubt that has changed by much even now.

I don't regret that Trent the man go his comeuppance. I do regret that my state will suffer the blow. If nothing else, his power has been good to Mississippi.

This has been a red letter year for us. We've had two favorite sons caught with their asses showing. I've been imagining Trent and Bernie hanging out at the corner bar together. Or the corner church.

[Slipped Mickey]

Suth - I remain convinced that Lott's unfortunate mistake and a stupid one was a public display of Southern solidarity. Dammit desegregation - as it happened - was in fact a failure. (Anyone disagree?) IF the South had been allowed to handle it's own issues I too am convinced the problems would have been settled to everyone's mutual benefit. But noooo, people who had/have no understanding of the Southern experience were/are compelled to mettle and screw with it. (Years ago I remember sitting in some bar or restaurant in Atlanta and overhearing a conversation at the table next to us. A white man and woman in their 20's were talking to a black man in his 20's. The white people were from Ohio and were apparently in Atlanta on vacation or business and had dinner with their black friend who was from Atlanta. At one point in the conversation the woman told the black guy she thought he should leave Atlanta as soon as he could. She said she felt it was not a safe place for blacks and that something bad was about to happen racially. She could "feel it in the air" she said. ::) To my distinct pleasure their black friend told them he'd lived in Atlanta all his life but they were just visiting. He asked how they could possibly know what it felt like. He said he was comfortable there and that he hadn't liked living in Ohio when he went to Ohio State. She continued to insist that she was concerned and she felt it best that he leave. Finally he told her that she was being racist making decisions for him because she was white and she knew what was best for black people. It did my heart good. And ain't that the way it is?)

What's wrong with playing Dixie? What's wrong with the battle flag? What is so damn good about being New South? Calling Frist New South to me means that he is sellout and a scalawag. Bill Clinton is New South. Bobby Lee is spinning in his grave.

My father and I had a discussion about Lott this morning. He has always voted for Lott. He said Lott has done much for Mississippi. He thinks Lott was railroaded.

[Persephone]

Yes, Lott has done a tremendous amount for Mississippi. And as he wasn't even old enough to vote on a Dixiecrat ticket, I do think his remarks were taken a bit too literally.

I dunno Slipped. If left to handle it on their own, there are some things the good ole boys would have done better and some things they would have done worse.

In the schools, for example, integration forced consolidations among extremely poor schools and moderately wealthy schools. This included poor white schools as well as poor black schools. The end result is that we have many, many towns that at one time had at least one school that provided an excellent education, and now have one big school that can't handle even an acceptable education.

God know somebody had to force the hand on educating little black children properly. They would have NEVER given in on that. It needed to be done.

But the people who say it ruined the schools are right to a large degree.

What would have been a better choice? I have no idea.

[Slipped Mickey]

Yes, Lott has done a tremendous amount for Mississippi. And as he wasn't even old enough to vote on a Dixiecrat ticket, I do think his remarks were taken a bit too literally.

I dunno Slipped. If left to handle it on their own, there are some things the good ole boys would have done better and some things they would have done worse.

In the schools, for example, integration forced consolidations among extremely poor schools and moderately wealthy schools. This included poor white schools as well as poor black schools. The end result is that we have many, many towns that at one time had at least one school that provided an excellent education, and now have one big school that can't handle even an acceptable education.

God know somebody had to force the hand on educating little black children properly. They would have NEVER given in on that. It needed to be done.

But the people who say it ruined the schools are right to a large degree.

What would have been a better choice? I have no idea.


Suth - You cannot legislate cultural change. The social and cultural consequences of decision and the implementation to desegregate were never considered. Certainly it needed to be done but not in the manner it was handled. It was too abrupt, it was not funded, it was ill planned and all of it was FORCED. That insured a cultural resistance. It was the North telling those dumb backward crackers what was wrong. Desegregation in the South today is greater than it is in the North.

As it is resistance still exists because no thought was given to the social and cultural considerations. Neither race was prepared and because of that both races suffer today. It would be analogous to giving a 16 year old the keys to the family car and saying teach yourself to drive. If the objective is learning to drive will the teenager learn to drive, objective achieved? Of course, in time and after much damage and heartache a teenager can teach himself to drive. It that the best way to do it in 2003? Of course not. Desegregation is just and right BUT NOT in the way it was imposed. To this day the nation still has not learned. If we had but gone slower and planned better on the front end we'd have achieved our objective long ago. As it is we are still wrecking the car.

[Persephone]

I remember when my brothers and sisters were in high school, they went to private school for a couple of years to avoid going to the public school that had been the old black high school. This was in the first years of integration, and any white family that could sent their kids to private school for the grades that were supposed to go to "the projects" then back to public school for the grades that were back in white neighborhoods but included black kids in the schools. There are indeed things that cannot be legislated.

I was among the first to go to fully integrated public schools all the way through. But we moved to another town, and I never had a year when I would have been sent to the other side of the tracks for school. I'm not sure what my parents would have done in that case. They were much more relaxed on the issue by the time I got to high school anyway.

It is odd, but I don't remember the kids ever having trouble getting along. It was always the adults with the problem. And then they got along when they were in their comfort zones. You never saw any animosity among the races in public forays, only when issues regarding change came up.

On an individual basis, there has always been love between the black and white people of the South. I think this is what the politicians failed to see.

[Persephone]

My friend David said that when he came back from Vietnam, he rode a bus to Birmingham with a black guy from his unit. He said he had no idea this was culturally significant until much later. He said it never crossed his mind that the guy was black, and he was riding a bus through Alabama with him in the late sixties. It was just a bud.

I guess the point is these things were happening. It was only the violent episodes that got politicized.