# Trent Lott **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 11, 2002, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127 "2002-12-11T22:56:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Roadfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@Roadfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roadfood)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/101 "2002-12-14T01:36:58Z")
“Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” I don’t understand why anyone – Republican, Democrat, or other – would get so upset over such a silly statement as Lott’s. I mean, one little comment, meant to honor a colleague, using ill-chosen wording, and suddenly everything he’s done is forgotten and his career is over? When did people get so hugely sensitive? It’s just sad. By the way, I’m not a Republican, I’m pretty sure I’ve never voted for a Republican, I have no love for Republicans, I just think this thing is being blown way, way out of proportion. ---
**Author:** ![Tigers2B1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9fc29f/32.png) [@Tigers2B1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tigers2B1)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/102 "2002-12-14T01:41:25Z")
Lott might keep away a lot of conservative pressure to step down from his majority leader position by letting it be known that if the pressure becomes too great, he will resign from the Senate altogether — leaving his Senate seat to be filled by Mississippi’s democratic governor. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/103 "2002-12-14T01:43:23Z")
If that were the case, **Roadfood** – one ill-advised statement – the brouhaha wouldn’t be justified. But Lott has a history of sneaking up to stand next to racist organizations, and then running away when people notice. He’s been doing this his whole career. The remarks he made were obviously “code,” i.e., my extremist followers will recognize what I’m talking about, but there isn’t anything truly damning if you just look at the words on the page. You have to take it in context of the man’s whole career and outlook. (Example, IIRC, when he was in college, he fought to continue the exclusion of blacks from his dormitory.) ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/104 "2002-12-14T01:49:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tigers2B1 \* > \*\*Lott might keep away a lot of conservative pressure to step down from his majority leader position by letting it be known that if the pressure becomes too great, he will resign from the Senate altogether — leaving his Senate seat to be filled by Mississippi’s democratic governor. \*\* This possibility was actually discussed at [www.AndrewSullivan.com](http://www.AndrewSullivan.com) this morning. > [@](#): > > Anything’s possible. But it would turn his disgrace into a calamity for him. What would he do with his life? Lobby? After stabbing his president and party in the chest? It would be an act of spectacular bitterness and narcissism (which is why it’s not entirely impossible). ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/105 "2002-12-14T01:59:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ElJeffe \* > \*\*Yeah, Lott has utterly failed to give anyone any reason to support him. At best, his apology amounts to “I’m not racist, just insensitive and stupid.” Swell. > > Jeff \*\* This brings me back to **elucidator’s** questions about what is really going on. I mean, folks like William Bennett made clear what Lott needed to do and say. Even Koko the talking gorilla could have done better. I only got to see a few minutes, since it was dinner time here. What I saw was stunning: he said that he didn’t support MLK’s birthday as a federal holiday because there are already too many holidays (and he gave a stat regarding costs - stats always help with contrition!), but he did put forth something about Juneteenth as a holiday, and he also worked to get a bust placed somewhere. Wow, if I wasn’t so suspicious, I’d say Christmas came early. I have to admit that it was beautiful to watch the once and future Majority Leader shit himself. Again. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/106 "2002-12-14T02:08:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Revtim \* > \*\*Reading the [CNN.com](http://CNN.com) story, I still didn’t see him explaining exactly what “problems” he was referring to. Of course, they may not have had the whole speech, anybody hear the thing or read a complete text? \*\* I found what I think is the entire text of today’s speech: > **[Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) Remarks](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=877622)** > > Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) held a news conference Friday at the LaFont Inn in Pascagoula, Miss., to address a controversy surrounding his earlier remarks at a birthday party for Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC). Many have interpreted Lott's comment that the... Like I thought, he never offers an explanation to what problems would have been avoided by electing Strom. How does he expect to convince people he’s not a racist without explaining \*\*how \*\*his comments were not racist? Simply saying “they were not racist” is not enough, he has to give a non-racist interpretation to be convincing. ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/107 "2002-12-14T03:31:51Z")
A poster on [www.freerepublic.com](http://www.freerepublic.com) said he saw this on the _Newsnight_ with Aaron Brown: > [@](#): > > Trent Lott, in a conference call with 27 GOP Senate Republicans today, said that he would leave the Senate if forced from the Leader position. > > Jonathan Karl said three or four of the Senators viewed this as “blackmail,” but that the majority still support Lott and want him to continue as Leader. Sure looks like blackmail to me (if it’s true.) Maybe Lott got this idea by reading **Tigers2B1’s** post. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Spavined\_Gelding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/108 "2002-12-14T03:44:20Z")
I’m hearing some talk about censure and backing off the hue and cry for removal. There is little that would make the Democrats happier than seeing Ol’ Trent continue in office with that albatross hung around his neck. Maybe Democrat political manipulators see keeping Trent in the spot light where every body can see him as a great way to stimulate Black, Latino and Asian voters by beating them over the head and shoulders with Senator Lott of Mississippi as the secret face of the Republican Party. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/109 "2002-12-14T04:00:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by elucidator \* > \*\*There something cooking in the background, you can smell it but you can’t see it. The remarks in question were ill considered, no doubt. But even as lefty as I am, I can’t see it as that big a deal. Stuff Trent Lott actually does eclipses anything he might have said. > > \*\* I know. It’s an interesting world we live in. You can do whatever you want. You can do terrible and indefensive things, but God help you if you **say** the wrong thing. I mean the dinner was honoring Strom Thurmond. The guy ran for President on a platform of segregation WTF? If he’s so bad and terrible why were they honoring him in the first place? What was Lott supposed to say: “Well he’s a hundred years old, so I guess we better honor him just for that fact, and I’d like to add that he’s not half the horrible bigot he used to be!” ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/110 "2002-12-14T04:11:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Libertarian \* > \*\*He got into trouble for exposing the big Republican leadership “secret”. Though they woo minorities, they are at heart segregationists and bigots. \*\* This doesn’t upset me. Christians are at heart hateful and narrow minded ignoramuses who derive self-worth from putting other people down. There’s a long history of it, and we can’t really expect better from them. ---
**Author:** ![Tejota](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@Tejota](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tejota)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/111 "2002-12-14T04:25:55Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Scylla \* > \*\*I know. It’s an interesting world we live in. You can do whatever you want. You can do terrible and indefensive things, but God help you if you **say** the wrong thing. > > I mean the dinner was honoring Strom Thurmond. > > The guy ran for President on a platform of segregation > > WTF? But Thurmond has since **repudiated** his past segregationist positions. _in public_. And his record of the last few years makes it pretty clear that his repudiation was honest. Lott, on the other hand, was praising something that Thurmond did **that Thurmond himself has said was wrong**. Big difference. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/112 "2002-12-14T04:36:15Z")
Tejota: Actually Lott wasn’t specific. He said if the rest of the Country had followed Mississippi’s lead (and voted for Strom) then the country wouldn’t have had a lot of the problems that it had. He doesn’t specifically refer to what problems. It seems to me that people are assuming that Lott is endorsing Strom’s prerepudiation stance, but that really wasn’t what he said. I guess the rule seems to be you can honor Thurmond as long as you are only referring to the post-repudiation Strom, but if you express amicable sentiments for pre-repudiation Strom you’re in deep shit. He should have just called him a “turdburgler.” That’s always safe. ---
**Author:** ![Longhorn49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/50afbb/32.png) [@Longhorn49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Longhorn49)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/113 "2002-12-14T04:56:29Z")
Good argument, JDM. Finally somebody pointed out that the Lincoln/GOP argument is absolute trash. Lincoln may have been a Republican, but he sure would not approve of segregation. After all, he was the guy who made the freedom of slaves possible. The Republicans of the 1800s were not Trent Lott Republicans. This guy is so backwards. The Senate majority leader of the United States of America favors segregation? I think we still have a long way to go before we can really brag about being diverse or the “melting pot.” I do think that the media is exploiting this situation for ratings, though. They have nothing else better to sensationalize. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/114 "2002-12-14T05:15:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Longhorn49 \* > **Lincoln may have been a Republican, but he sure would not approve of segregation.** “What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races.” Abraham Lincoln, “Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas 1897”, page 118 [http://www.bartleby.com/251/pages/page118.html](http://www.bartleby.com/251/pages/page118.html) ---
**Author:** ![Tejota](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@Tejota](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tejota)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/115 "2002-12-14T05:27:37Z")
> [@](#): > > I guess the rule seems to be you can honor Thurmond as long as you are only referring to the post-repudiation Strom, but if you express amicable sentiments for pre-repudiation Strom you’re in deep shit. **Bingo!** We have a winner! > [@](#): > > Actually Lott wasn’t specific. He said if the rest of the Country had followed Mississippi’s lead (and voted for Strom) then the country wouldn’t have had a lot of the problems that it had. > > He doesn’t specifically refer to what problems. Well, of course he doesn’t. Even he’s not stupid enough to make _explicitly_ racist statements. Hell, Politicians rarely talk about _any_ position that they hold explicitly. That’s the whole beauty of the “Southern Strategy”: You use code words that convey to the racists that you are one of them, but can be plausibly denied if non-racists question you. The mainstream tolerance of overt racism is pretty minimal these days. So most racists have of necessisity learned to either not speak of it or to speak in code. The don’t fault their politicians for not being overt _so long as they deliver the goods_ The southern strategy only works for the Reps if they give actual racists power within the party, if it were _only_ lip service, then it wouldn’t work. This time, the coded message was a bit too unsubtle, and now we know that Lott is one of the token racists in the Republican party. (We being you, I’ve known for some time) Lott’s problem here is that he left himself without _plausible_ deniabily in this case. There’s no reasonable interpretation of his statement that doesn’t amount to praise of segregation. And it clearly isn’t a misstatement because a) it was part of a prepared statement, and b) he used the exact same words 20 years ago at a Reagan rally. (probably why he though it was safe code) It’s been an open secret that the republican party was the one that the racists could call home for decades now, but if they are _too_ open about it, then they loose the support of non-racist white swing voters. Bush, who is (i believe) genuinely **not** a racist did pretty well with them, but he will do less well if it becomes clear to the soccer moms that a vote for a republican is an _objectively pro-racist_ vote. The whole point of trotting out all of the people of color in the 2000 Republican convention wasn’t to convince blacks to vote for him as it was to convince non-racist whites that the tolerance for racism of the republican party wasn’t going to be allowed under Bush. This why Bush **had** do criticise Lott once the public outcry became loud enough. But, when push comes to shove, it turns out that Bush will tolerate a racist being the number 2 man in the party. _so long as he gives lip service to the non-racist mainstream_. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. So long as the racists in the republican party could be recognised only by their supporters and not by the general population, it made sense to keep them. They help bring in votes more than they hurt. But Lott has been unmasked, if he gets kicked out, then the Republicans get some serious cred on the racism issue, but could loose control of the Senate. (Lott has threatened to resign if he looses the leadership position, and a democratic governer would choose his replacement). ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/116 "2002-12-14T14:01:14Z")
Tejota: You know you were dong so well, until we get to the “code words.” > [@](#): > > It’s been an open secret that the republican party was the one that the racists could call home for decades now, but if they are too open about it, then they loose the support of non-racist white swing voters. No. It’s been a bald-faced lie. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Zagna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d2c977/32.png) [@El\_Zagna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Zagna)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/117 "2002-12-14T14:36:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Scylla \* > \*\*Actually Lott wasn’t specific. He said if the rest of the Country had followed Mississippi’s lead (and voted for Strom) then the country wouldn’t have had a lot of the problems that it had. > > He doesn’t specifically refer to what problems. > \*\* But what else could he _possibly_ have meant? I’d really like to know. In fact I think we’d all like to hear him say “I didn’t mean to suggest that I endorse segregation. What I meant was\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_.” Can you fill in the blank for us? ---
**Author:** ![december](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/838e76/32.png) [@december](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/december)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/118 "2002-12-14T15:51:19Z")
I think Lott may be in the habit of using coded messages when speaking to racist audiences in Mississippi. That doesn’t necessarily imply that he means it. It’s what certain audiences liked to hear. He’s on record as having used this phrase once before. My guess is that he’s used it other times as well, but there happens to be no record. So, he was praising Strom Thurmond, and the phrase slipped out in front of the wrong audience and on videotape. Serves him right. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/119 "2002-12-14T16:06:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by bnorton \* > \*\*But what else could he _possibly_ have meant? I’d really like to know. In fact I think we’d all like to hear him say “I didn’t mean to suggest that I endorse segregation. What I meant was\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_.” Can you fill in the blank for us? \*\* No. I can’t. Neither can anybody else, but Lott. ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2002, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127/120 "2002-12-14T16:16:09Z")
And since Lott refuses to fill in that blank, he must live with the fact that a lot of people will and have assumed the worst. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trent-lott/142127.md?page=7)