|
CounterPunch
December
12, 2002
Trent Lott:
Repeat Offender
Too
Many Strikes; He Needs to Be Out
by CHRIS KROMM
Just a week ago, soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader
Trent Lott was undoubtedly counting the days until January-the
moment when he would seize the reigns of Congress' higher chamber
and commence the GOP revolution heralded last November.
What a difference a week makes. At first,
Lott stayed silent after he was caught waxing nostalgic for the
Jim Crow days at a weekend party for retiring fellow Republican
Strom Thurmond. But after African-American leaders forced the
issue -- and TV networks belatedly awoke to the story -- Lott's
office has been transformed into a veritable popcorn machine
of apologies, denials and retractions. Lott's days are now spent
groveling before media cameras, as the once-brash Mississippi
Senator trips over himself to bemoan his "slip" and
express "regret."
The problem is, this isn't the first
time. Lott's claim that he's guilty of nothing more than a temporary
"poor choice of words" would be more convincing if
his political career wasn't riddled with bigotry and intolerance.
Far from being a one-time gaffe, Lott's noxious statements are
in line with a lifetime of associations with racist people and
causes.
Most notable has been Senator Lott's
close ties to the Conservative Citizen' s Council, an openly
racist and anti-semitic group which grew out of the terrorist
White Citizen's Councils, and which today, among other unpalatable
positions, calls interracial marriage "white genocide."
In 1992, Lott was keynote speaker at
the Council's national board meeting, ending his speech by enthusing
that "the people in this room stand for the right principles
and the right philosophy." Throughout the 1990s, Lott maintained
his intimate relations with the CCC, hosting a private meeting
with Council leaders in 1997, writing a column for the CCC magazine
Citizen's Informer for eight years, and attending at least two
CCC banquets in his honor.
In a comical and disturbing move, when
confronted with evidence of these close associations, Lott claimed
he had "no firsthand knowledge" of the CCC. CCC officials
curtly responded that Lott was a "friend" and a "paid-up
member."
It doesn't stop there. There's also Lott's
1984 address to the Convention of the Sons of Confederate Veterans
in Biloxi, Mississippi, in which he claimed "the spirit
of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican Platform."
The statement was covered in the winter 1984 issue of the right-wing
Southern Partisan magazine, in which Lott also explained that
he opposes civil rights legislation, and said that the Martin
Luther King Jr. national holiday is "basically wrong."
The Jefferson Davis reference was telling.
Lott has something of an obsession with the former President
of the breakaway Confederate States of America. In the late 1970s,
Lott spearheaded a successful campaign to have Davis' citizenship
retroactively restored. More recently, Lott fought to gain custody
of the desk Davis used during his Confederate reign, so that
it could furnish Lott's Senate offices in Washington.
As Lott's "racism-gate" gains
steam, more questionable antics will certainly surface. The onset
of the Reagan era, for example, seems to have excited Lott's
bigoted passions. We know, for example, that at a 1980 Republican
campaign rally for Reagan, Lott -- in a statement eerily similar
to his "lighthearted" musings last week --announced
that if the country had elected the segregationist Strom Thurmond
"30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today."
The rally and Lott's statement were covered by the Jackson Clarion-Ledger
on Nov. 3, 1980, and again by the Washington Post this week.
Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle also
highlighted Lott's well-known fight in 1981 to restore the non-profit
tax status of South Carolina's Bob Jones University, which the
IRS had revoked due to the school's prohibition of inter-racial
dating. At the time, Lott issued a "friend of the court"
brief arguing that "racial discrimination does not always
violate public policy."
It will keep coming -- how he voted to
de-fund the Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday commission in 1994
and opposed the King holiday in 1983; how he voted against extending
the Voting Rights Act, designed to ensure ballot access for African-Americans,
in both 1982 and 1990; on and on.
The pattern is clear: Republican Senator
Trent Lott has done more than flirt with racism-it's a long-term
relationship. And such a love affair with bigotry is intolerable
for one of the most powerful political figures in America.
If President George W. Bush and leaders
of Congress and the Republican Party fail to call for the removal
of the unreconstructed racist known as Trent Lott, their silence
and acquiescence will speak volumes.
Chris Kromm
is Executive Director of the Institute for Southern Studies,
which publishes Southern
Exposure magazine. He can be reached at chris@southernstudies.org
Yesterday's
Features
Alexander Cockburn
American
Journal: Berrigan, America's Greatest Arms Inspector
Michael Neumann
Who Hates
Ya, Baby?
The Baffling Patriotism of Daniel Pipes
Kevin Gray
Clinton and Blacks:
Soul Brothers?
Will Youmans
Israel's Demographic Obsession
Ron Jacobs
Berrigan: Blessed are the Peacemakers
Walt Brasch
Jackass: the People
William Cook
World Wide Intifada?
John Stauber / Sheldon
Rampton
Flashback: How PR Sold the Gulf War
Terry Jones
Bombs Away!
Ralph Nader
The Robo-Candidate
Anis Shivani
Information Prozac
Harvey, Engel, Alam
Poets' Basement
CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- CounterPunch Special:
The Persecution of Gershon Legman by Susan Davis: Smut, the Post Office, Commies
and the FBI;
- Reeling Democrats: Is Pelosi the Answer?
- Gandhi v. Hitler: the Secret Race for the Nobel
Prize;
- Sullying Mario Savio's
Memory;
- Lynching Then and Now;
- Earn While You Learn: Chris Whittle and Child Labor;
The Case of the Pompous
Professor;
- The Class Struggle in
Boston: All that
Effort, But What Did They Get?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
December 1,
2002
Alexander
Cockburn
American
Journal
Gabriel Kolko
Another
Century of War?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes & Lies: The Attack on the Liberty Revisited
Steve Perry
Spank
the Democrats
M. Shahid
Alam
A Predatory
Orientalism
Kurt Nimmo
The Murder
of Iain Hook
Ali Abunimah
Death
& Lies in Palestine
Anthony Gancarski
The
Return of Al Gore?
Joanne Mariner
In Defense
of the Filibuster
Ahmad Faruqui
The Apocalyptic
Vision of the Neo----Con Ideologues
Dave Marsh
Eminem's
Body & Soul
David Vest
On the Lam
from Uncle Sam
Julian Samuel
Bowling
for Columbine
Adam Engel
Piss Off,
NSA!
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Grassroots
Challenge to Iran's Theocracy
Wayne Saunders
This
Mad, Limitless War
Dan Brook
Celebrate
Genocide!
Uri Avnery
"Likud
Has Failed"
Philip Farruggio
Turkeys
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|