Stanley Crouch takes a look at Trent Lott and the media reaction, and bangs his head against the wall. Crouch makes the point--the one hundred percent true, complete, and obvious point--that we have learned nothing about what Trent Lott thinks over the past month. We had long known that he was a racist bigot--or, perhaps, was merely a guy very anxious to make sure that racist bigots who vote were sure that he was a racist bigot. And yet nobody right of center gave voice to the fact that Lott's position as Republican senate leader was disgraceful.
Not we have the right-wing pack baying after Lott. Stanley wants to say--I want to say--"Thank you, Abigail Thernstrom and David Frum and Andrew Sullivan et cetera, better late than never, but where have you been over the past twenty-five years? Why has it taken you so long to call a Dixiecrat a disgrace? Only a month ago--a month ago--you were all diligently working to give Trent Lott another chance to be leader of the U.S. Senate, and he was the same guy then he is now, and you all knew very well what kind of guy he was...
Printer Friendly Version - ... Only a tame media
has let him last so long: ...In late 1998 and early 1999, when I was writing column after column about him and calling for his resignation because of his connection to the Council of Conservative Citizens, there was no response from the media at large, with the noble exceptions of Frank Rich and Bob Herbert, both of The New York Times. That proved to me that all the talk about a liberal media bias was bunk - at least when it comes to race. What better target could there have been?... Here was the council, an organization that described itself as "pro-white," that published articles in its organ, the Citizens Informer, that advocated separation of the races and discouraged interracial marriage. Lott had... his picture on the cover of an issue in 1992. The photograph showed Lott giving a speech to the council at "the exclusive" (guess what that means) Green Country Club in Greenwood, Miss. The accompanying article quoted Lott as saying: "The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy. Let's take it in the right direction, and our children will be the beneficiaries." We can go back further. While addressing the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Biloxi, Miss., in 1984, Lott said: "The spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican platform."...
And remember that the Republican voices calling for Lott's resignation are not that strong: The White House says that President Bush wants Lott to remain as Republican leader in the Senate.
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... Only a tame media has let him last so long Thursday, December 12th, 2002 This time he may have to pack his bags and shuffle on home. He may have to lie on his back at night and think of how perfectly things were run in his down-home state before 1860. We'll see. The "he," of course, is Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). In late 1998 and early 1999, when I was writing column after column about him and calling for his resignation because of his connection to the Council of Conservative Citizens, there was no response from the media at large, with the noble exceptions of Frank Rich and Bob Herbert, both of The New York Times. That proved to me that all the talk about a liberal media bias was bunk - at least when it comes to race. What better target could there have been? Here was a man from Mississippi, a heaven for rednecks. Here was the council, an organization that described itself as "pro-white," that published articles in its organ, the Citizens Informer, that advocated separation of the races and discouraged interracial marriage. Lott had published a column in the Citizens Informer and had his picture on the cover of an issue in 1992. The photograph showed Lott giving a speech to the council at "the exclusive" (guess what that means) Green Country Club in Greenwood, Miss. The accompanying article quoted Lott as saying: "The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy. Let's take it in the right direction, and our children will be the beneficiaries." We can go back further. While addressing the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Biloxi, Miss., in 1984, Lott said: "The spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican platform." Jefferson Davis was a traitor, as you might know, since he was the president of the Confederacy that tried to split the union over slavery after Abraham Lincoln was elected President. Lott, by the way, fought to get Davis' citizenship restored. Here's one more item: In the fall 1984 issue of Southern Partisan, Lott is quoted as referring to the Civil War as "the war of Northern aggression." I do believe the Confederates fired the first shot. Now there is plenty of talk, because Lott went to the microphone last weekend and let his collar slip, revealing the deep crimson in his neck. It was a celebration of the retirement of Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who switched from Democrat to Republican when he concluded that the Democrats had become too liberal. Politics will put unlikely heads on the same pillow. Thurmond went up against his Senate buddy from North Carolina, Jesse Helms, over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday when Strom knew it would be political suicide to vote against it. Given such political smarts, I doubt that Thurmond expected Lott to proudly tell the audience that Mississippi had voted for the old man in 1948 and add that if the country had followed suit we would not have had all of the problems that we had later. Thurmond ran as a segregationist, and I believe I saw some old footage of him on a podium with a klansman. Lott might survive all this. He is not black. If he were, and if he had associated with a racist black organization, the media would have pressed his pants while he was wearing them. In the name of true equality brotherhood, I wish Brother Lott a daily hot iron or two. He would then better understand the Negro. |
Stanley Crouch also added the following in the same article:
"Lott might survive all this. He is not black. If he were, and if he had associated with a racist black organization, the media would have pressed his pants while he was wearing them."
Posted by: David Thomson on December 15, 2002 08:01 AMNBC News took us to Mississippi yesterday to show us the support Trent Lott has garnered. All the money the Senator has brought from Washington to Mississippi was highlighted. No mention was made of the fact that Mississippi is the poorest state in America. No mention of the comedy of a Senator who despises living off the dole making Mississippi lives on the dole at the expense of dread California-New York liberals. Whites among Whites went first to say their Trent was grand. Blacks among Blacks said that Trent was showing us Trent.
Racism and those who trade explicitly or implicitly on it have hurt Mississippi for decades. Time for an end, and time to understand that Roosevelt and Johnson and Washington are Mississippi's friends though Trent Lott has made a career fighting such symbols along with all civil rights advances.
Posted by: on December 15, 2002 08:47 AM"Racism and those who trade explicitly or implicitly on it have hurt Mississippi for decades."
I have to admit my overall ignorance about Mississippi. It is an area of the country that I've never visited, and seems a million miles from Houston, Texas. Is racism the only reason for the state's poverty? The silly right-wing nut balls who authored "I'll Take My Stand" were also contemptuous of capitalism. They possessed an exaggerated love of the land similar to “Gone With the Wind’s” Scarlet O’Hara. Let’s be blunt: Philosophical agrarianism is a sure fire recipe for financial disaster! The Old South was never a bastion of free market policies. What impact did that have on Mississippi’s current economy?
The political system of the Jim Crow southern states played off poor white against blacks in a way that harmed both for decades. Any instutition such as unization that might have helped to balance economic power and so add to market competition was stifled in the Jim Crow south by playing to and building on racial fears about the implications of such institutions.
Posted by: on December 15, 2002 11:23 AMI don't think this is quite fair to Thernstrom, Frum, etc. I doubt they were fans of Lott before, either. But without the smoking gun provided by the b-day comments, there was no point in calling for his head...it wouldn't have worked, so they spent their energies talking about other things. Also, while I believe Lott is somewhat of a racist, I don't think his attitude is typical of Republicans in general.
Posted by: zed on December 15, 2002 05:05 PM"Is racism the only reason for [Mississippi's] poverty?"
Well, it's a big one. Pick 40% or so of a state's (or country's, for that matter) population at random. Limit their education, refuse to employ them at any level much above unskilled labor, deny them access to capital, and impose all sorts of other disabilities.
That's going to be a drag on your economy.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov on December 15, 2002 08:28 PMI can not imagine ever saying thank you to Andrew Sullivan and the like. These are people who are destructive of humane American values, mere propaganists who have had no use for civil rights progress, finding Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson and the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court of no value.
Posted by: on December 16, 2002 11:06 AM""Is racism the only reason for [Mississippi's] poverty?"
Well, it's a big one. Pick 40% or so of a state's (or country's, for that matter) population at random. Limit their education, refuse to employ them at any level much above unskilled labor, deny them access to capital, and impose all sorts of other disabilities.
That's going to be a drag on your economy."
We should never forget that the North was far wealthier than the South at the time of the Civil War. I have long argued that slavery weakened the economy of the South. The business people of the North did not have the luxury of slave labor---and therefore had to make more practical long run economic decisions. Slavery essentially made the Southern employers lazier and more nonchalant about seeking higher employee productivity levels. After all, an old style agrarian society can rely on a lot of illiterate field hands. This is less true for an industrial based economy. Indeed, a local economy always suffers when a sizable number of its population is prevented from obtaining an education. What was the black population percentage during this era? Is it safe to estimate at least 30%? If so, it is an economic tragedy when the skill level of such a large number of people is limited to mere physical labor.
PS: I don’t want to go off on a tangent, but I will quickly add that the South should have never even had a slight chance of winning the Civil War. Unfortunately, Lincoln had to go through many mentally defective generals before he found U.S. Grant.
Posted by: David Thomson on December 16, 2002 12:55 PMI wasn't referring to the era of slavery, but that of segregation, and even later, depending on how you pick the dates.
For the record, though, slaves constituted almost 40% of the population of the Confederacy. They were a substantial majority in Mississippi and SC, and made up 44-48% in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana.
Kind of makes you wonder about the claim that the Confederacy had something to do with self-determination for "southerners."
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov on December 17, 2002 02:02 PM