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CounterPunch
December
23, 2002
Fristed:
All is Well and America is a Christian Nation Once Again
by DAVID VEST
Lessons, anyone? Now that Trent Lott has "withdrawn,"
sending his wife out to deliver a handwritten message ("please
go home"), what have we all "learned," apart from
the obvious fact that Lott's announcement conspicuously neglected
to repeat any of his recent pledges to work for affirmative action
and civil rights for all?
"One of the obvious lessons of the
Lott firestorm," declared the New York Times in a weekend
editorial, "is that the Republicans must give much more
than a passing glance to the record of the person they choose
to lead them."
Even as that sentence was being type-set,
Republicans were preparing to elect Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist
by acclamation in a hastily-arranged conference call on Monday.
To heck with debate, screw deliberation. Kentucky Sen. Mitch
McConnell had already gone before cameras to hope aloud that
no one would challenge Frist, given that Christmas is hard upon
us. Competition under these circumstances would be practically
un-American. Heaven forbid the Republican Senate should have
to worry about leadership over Christmas. The unemployed, unlike
Sen. Frist, will have to wait until January to find out whether
they'll have their meager benefits extended.
There were two clear reasons for the
rush to rubber stamp the president's hand-cloned man.
First, the GOP (like the registered-sex-offender-NBA-basketball-player
recently arrested for choking his wife) was anxious to "get
this behind us" and "move on" and talk about something,
anything, else. They needed desperately to get the story off
the front page, where it has squatted for two weeks like what
Henry James, Sr. used to call a "vastation" -- a hideous
figure understood to represent a projection of one's innermost
self onto the external world.
Closure (escape from the grip of the
hideous projection of the Republican inner reality) would involve
getting the media to relax its focus on the party's suddenly
inconvenient history of code words and race baiting. Bluntly
put, if GOP senators could vote over the phone, by electronic
secret ballot, no one could interview them coming down the Capitol
steps.
The other motive could be described as
"remember Bob Livingston," the Louisiana family values
advocate and serial philanderer who had to withdraw before he
could be installed as Newt Gingrich's successor in the House.
It seemed urgent to install Frist, a man so civic-minded he never
bothered to vote until 1989, before any effort at scrutiny could
gain momentum. In other words, the Republicans had no interest
in scrutinizing him themselves. They just wanted to make damn
sure no one else had time to do it.
How incredibly bracing it must feel to
solve a big problem just in time to relax and enjoy Christmas.
The president was so relieved he forgot all about Separation
of Church and State and issued a Christmas Message in which he
declared that "we" all celebrate the birth of "our"
savior, Jesus Christ. In last year's message he was more restrained
and politic, content to acknowledge Christmas as a time when
Christians celebrate the birth, etc. In this year's giddiness,
last year's respect for multiculturalism disappeared. In the
twinkling of an eye, with the resignation of Trent Lott, everything
is back to normal, all is well with the world and American is
a "Christian nation" again.
There was more than one thing that happened
in the twinkling of an eye. You had to blink really fast or you'd
miss some of them.
Lott's silence, for example. Senator
Snopes disappeared from public view for all of 24 hours before
sniveling back to the microphone, just when even George McGovern
was beginning to feel sorry for him, to snatch the last vestige
of good will away by blaming his downfall on "people in
Washington" who don1t like it "when you1re from Mississippi
and you1re a conservative and you1re a Christian." And you
thought he had hit bottom on BET.
Last week Ari "watch what you say"
Fleischer was asked to specify what the Bush administration has
done for black Americans. The main accomplishment he was able
to cite was that "the president looks forward to going to
Africa." Naturally, the minute Lott had resigned and the
White House determined the firestorm to be over, the president
announced that he was "postponing" his trip to Africa
to attend to more pressing matters.
David Vest
writes the Rebel Angel column for CounterPunch.
He can be reached at: davidvest@springmail.com
Visit his website at http://www.rebelangel.com
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December 10,
2002
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