The trials and tribulations of Lott and Law take on biblical dimensions and inspire righteous indignation.
Boston's Archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law resigns and asks for forgiveness. Sen. Trent Lott asks for forgiveness but won't resign.
First, the elected politician, the once and future Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. The Mississippi Republican caused a furor when he winged a tribute to Sen. Strom Thurmond on the occasion of his 100th birthday. Lott sang the praises of Thurmond's failed bid for the presidency when, as governor of South Carolina, he was the standard-bearer for the segregationist, racist Dixiecrat party.
They were Southerners who bolted the Democrats in 1948 in a dispute over the civil rights plank in the party's convention platform. The measure championed by Hubert Humphrey, then the young mayor of Minneapolis, contained radical notions of justice, equality and an end to the racial caste system embodied in Jim Crow laws, which made racial separation the government-sanctioned rule in most Southern states.
With mindless ebullience, probably gin-induced (that swill causes pretzel-choking, too), Lott reminded those gathered to praise the centenarian Thurmond of Mississippi's devotion to the Dixiecrat cause: "I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."
The remark was beyond stupid and, at first, Lott tried to brush it off as a "poor choice of words." What would be the "good" choice of words in longing for the glorious days of segregation and white supremacy?
Sen. Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader of the Senate, showing again how out of touch he is with good sense, initially pooh-poohed Lott's remarks as minor "oopsies" and suggested his Senate club pal simply misspoke.
That was before the Congressional Black Caucus began mauling Lott for the racist substance of his words.
Lott, feeling the heat, sought refuge in friendly territory. He made an appearance on that bombastic blowhard Sean Hannity's radio show. Lott used the public air waves to try to extricate himself from the mess he'd created by using a convoluted rationale for his defense of Thurmond. Lott wasn't really thinking of race when he praised Old Strom's presidential campaign, he was dwelling on other issues.
That was quite a stretch, since the only issue Strom used in the campaign was race. The sample ballot the Thurmond-supporting Mississippi Democratic Party prepared for the 1948 elections tells all.
"We must show our full strength to our enemies," Lott's political forebears wrote. "A vote for Truman electors is a direct order to our Congressmen and Senators from Mississippi to vote for passage of Truman's so-called civil rights program in the next Congress."
Many in Mississippi despised Truman for integrating the armed forces, and for his insistence that the defense industry end discriminatory hiring practices. Mississippi, like many areas in the South, had and still has an inordinate number of military bases and defense contractors. (What would those folks ever do without government spending?)
Truman's vision of integration enraged Mississippi. The voters were warned that "anti-lynching and anti-segregation proposals will become the law of the land and our way of life in the South will be gone forever." Golly, Miss Scarlett, whatever will we do?
Lott told Hannity's listeners that his admiration for Thurmond stemmed from Strom's stand on defense and their shared commitment to balanced budgets. That's pure Mississippi malarkey. Harry Truman created the defense department, NATO and the Marshall Plan to save post-World War II Western Europe from Soviet Communism. Truman forced Soviet troops out of Iran, saved Berlin with an airlift and fought the Chinese commies in Korea. If anything, Thurmond and his segregationist pals were isolationists in 1948, far more concerned that blacks might vote, ride buses and use drinking fountains than they were over any menace in the world and the nation's defense needs.
As for balanced budgets, Lott and Thurmond were blind supporters of the Reagan-Bush the Elder budgets, which produced the largest deficits in American history. These sons of the South now support George W. Bush's borrow-and-spend budgets, which bleed red ink.
Lott went on to another friendly den and made an appearance on "Larry King Live." Larry asked Lott if he thought a President Thurmond would have been better than President Truman. Lott responded, "You know, I'd have to go back and look at the election that year. Harry Truman obviously did a lot of great things for our country and, you know, I was trying to remember who the Republican nominee was."
I guess they're not big on American history at Ole Miss, and Lott was too busy waving the Confederate flag at football games and hanging out at his "Whites Only" frat house to do any reading on his own.
The Republican nominee was New York Governor Thomas Dewey. He was a bit bland and looked like that figurine in the tux on top of a wedding cake, but he was an honorable, capable man, vastly superior to Thurmond.
The Progressive Party candidate in 1948 was Henry Wallace, a former Vice President and Secretary of Agriculture, also leaps and bounds better than Thurmond.
Lott's also been a champion of Bob Jones University, a peculiar Southern institution that clings to the Dixiecrat tradition with policies of discrimination and banning interracial dating. Bob Jones is also a base for shameless, vitriolic anti-Catholicism. But that, like racism, fits in very well with the nostalgic Ku Klux Klan view of the world Lott finds so romantic. Lott tried to help Bob Jones get tax exemptions and argued that "racial discrimination does not always violate public policy." The moved failed, but Lott has never distanced himself from such causes.
Looking back on the days when Attorney General Robert Kennedy enforced a court order and opened the campus of the University of Mississippi to black student James Meredith, Lott, who was a student there at the time, when riots broke out in opposition to integration, told "Time" magazine his views of the events.
"Yes, you could say I favored segregation then. I don't now. ... The main thing was, I felt the federal government had no business sending troops to tell the state what to do."
Lott is now desperately trying to apologize his way out of trouble. He's become a serious embarrassment for conservative Republicans, who are by no means racist. Lott should step down as Republican leader, doing the party and the nation a big favor.
His views may still represent the sentiments of some backwater locales in Mississippi, but they are repugnant to a broader nation and have no place in the mind of a man who would lead on the stage of our Senate.
Two of my favorite publications, the conservative "National Review" and the liberal "'Nation," want Lott gone.
"It will no doubt be difficult for Lott's colleagues, who are his friends, to force him out of his job. That's why Lott should realize the damage he has done to his party, and step aside," the "National Review" editorialized. The editors at the "Nation" called Lott's views "disgusting" and "obscenities," and pointed to his regressive views when he delighted in an era of racial separation and oppression. "Resign, Senator, resign. The President should take you aside and ask for it. The sickness in your mind and heart is a private burden, but does not belong in American public life."
Cardinal Law finally resigned at least a year after he should have. New documents a judge ordered the Boston Archdiocese to release show the shepherd Law was worse than we thought.
The Attorney General of Massachusetts, Thomas F. Reilly, who's investigating the clergy sex abuse scandal, said, "This could have been stopped a long time ago but it wasn't. There was a cover-up, an elaborate scheme to keep it away from law enforcement, to keep it quiet. The church and the leadership of the church felt it was more important to protect the church than any children, and, as a result of that, needless numbers, countless numbers of children were harmed."
For starters, the American bishops must radically change the way decisions are made. They must lead with collegiality, joining with parish priests -- not the careerist cockroaches who infest chancelleries -- religious women and, most of all, the laity, to usher in a new model for governance. The bishops should immediately fire those worthless law firms who directed the stonewalling while collecting huge fees.
There was another welcome resignation, as Henry Kissinger abruptly quit as chairman of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. Dictators and oil company executives breathed a sigh of relief when Dr. K. said he couldn't serve if it meant naming the clients of his consulting firm.
Let's see. Law resigned. Kissinger resigned. Lott's on the ropes. "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas."
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 17 2002 |