Tuesday, December 10, 2002

Senator Lott is more concerned about not offending hard-core racists, than he is about offending those of us who are not hard-core racists. How else to explain the terms on which he "apologized" ("A poor choice of words conveyed to some that I embraced the discarded policies of the past," Mr. Lott said in a statement. "Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended.")? His words -- obviously, quite carefully chosen words -- do not contain any recognition of what seems obvious to all but the hard-core racists: that segregation and the rest of the Dixiecrat race platform is not only a "discarded" policy but was WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. To call it "discarded" and say he doesn't support it -- which is all that Senator Lott did -- could just as easily have been said of hundreds of other failed legislative initiatives on mundane topics. Maybe it's just that he has a complete personal inability to admit fault -- after all, a google search for the phrase "Lott apologized" yesterday morning turned up only two entries in the whole universe, and one of them wasn't about him. But it seems more likely that he is carefully ensuring that the hard-core racists don't think he's caving in too completely to that darn political correctness.

posted by sam 7:11 AM 0 comments

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