Mantis Claw
12-18-2002, 01:36 PM
Guerrilla of the Week
Editor's Pick, December 16, 2002
The 2000 Republican Party convention was one of the most disturbing spectacles I have ever seen. I was there, in the corporate logo-swathed Philadelphia Spectrum as George Bush was anointed boy king. On television screens across the country, happy black and brown Republican faces were seen in the crowd cheering. To the viewing audience, the GOP all of a sudden looked a little like America.
In reality, apart from a small group of token minorities given front row seats, the arena was filled with the white-ist white people I had ever seen.
That’s why this week’s unlikely Guerrilla of the Week honor goes to the senior Senator from Mississippi, Trent Lott. In one quick moment of stupidity, Lott did more to expose the Republican Party’s true racial legacy than decades of liberal griping. For those of you not paying attention, or overseas, last week at a 100th birthday party for segregationist relic Senator Strom Thurmond, Lott gushed, “"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.”
In 1948, Thurmond ran on the segregationist platform for president of the United States, telling crowds there wasn’t an “army big enough” to force “niggers” into white schools, restaurants and “swimming pools.”
In the age of spin, Lott’s comments were refreshing, in a twisted sort of way. At least the man said what he believed, even if he’s now trying to wiggle out of it.
Of course, this is nothing new for Lott. He voted to put a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Capitol, but fought against a national holiday in his honor. In 1998, he was the featured speaker at the dedication of the Jefferson Davis Library, where he said he felt “closer” to the president of the Confederacy “than any other man in America.”
As Time magazine reports, “the Senator from Mississippi appeared as recently as the 1990s before a white-supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens, telling its members that they stand for ‘the right principles and the right philosophy.’”
But this week, Trent Lott did us the small favor of reminding a national audience that the Republican Party has a long, dark history of racial ugliness, from battling “communists” like Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, to fighting “leftist” policies like school desegregation and affirmative action.
Tonight, Lott is going on BET to try to salvage his position as Senate Majority Leader. That’s a spectacle I’ll be watching closely.
Editor's Pick, December 16, 2002
The 2000 Republican Party convention was one of the most disturbing spectacles I have ever seen. I was there, in the corporate logo-swathed Philadelphia Spectrum as George Bush was anointed boy king. On television screens across the country, happy black and brown Republican faces were seen in the crowd cheering. To the viewing audience, the GOP all of a sudden looked a little like America.
In reality, apart from a small group of token minorities given front row seats, the arena was filled with the white-ist white people I had ever seen.
That’s why this week’s unlikely Guerrilla of the Week honor goes to the senior Senator from Mississippi, Trent Lott. In one quick moment of stupidity, Lott did more to expose the Republican Party’s true racial legacy than decades of liberal griping. For those of you not paying attention, or overseas, last week at a 100th birthday party for segregationist relic Senator Strom Thurmond, Lott gushed, “"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.”
In 1948, Thurmond ran on the segregationist platform for president of the United States, telling crowds there wasn’t an “army big enough” to force “niggers” into white schools, restaurants and “swimming pools.”
In the age of spin, Lott’s comments were refreshing, in a twisted sort of way. At least the man said what he believed, even if he’s now trying to wiggle out of it.
Of course, this is nothing new for Lott. He voted to put a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Capitol, but fought against a national holiday in his honor. In 1998, he was the featured speaker at the dedication of the Jefferson Davis Library, where he said he felt “closer” to the president of the Confederacy “than any other man in America.”
As Time magazine reports, “the Senator from Mississippi appeared as recently as the 1990s before a white-supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens, telling its members that they stand for ‘the right principles and the right philosophy.’”
But this week, Trent Lott did us the small favor of reminding a national audience that the Republican Party has a long, dark history of racial ugliness, from battling “communists” like Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, to fighting “leftist” policies like school desegregation and affirmative action.
Tonight, Lott is going on BET to try to salvage his position as Senate Majority Leader. That’s a spectacle I’ll be watching closely.