Knock if off, Fenris. If you have a personal issue with Diogenes the Cynic, start a BBQ Pit thread. This kind of thing isn’t allowed here.
Diogenes the Cynic, there is clearly no way to know if this is going to affect Reid or if it isn’t. You’re provoking people by acting like the matter is settled. Please dial it back a notch.
I’m guessing that when Reid runs for reelection, this comment will pop back up, but used to imply that he’s “out of touch”, not to imply that he’s racist.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the GOP tries to package this as “racially insensitive comments” come the election. How that will play in NV, I don’t know. Or, they could just say that “Some had called for his resignation over racially insensitive comments”. The Pubbies are going to play dirtier than usual, IMO, as they have everything to gain and almost nothing to lose.
Dirtier than usual? The mind reels…
He did? I’ll have ask you for a cite for that.
Cite from the second page (thanks, Elvis1Lives).
December 5, 2002, on Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday.
I genuinely don’t see how there’s a double standard here, let alone how what Reid said was racist in nature.
Well, that’s not what he claimed he said. But here’s the problem with that: Thurmond ran for President in 1948. Lott was born in 1941. He was seven years old during the election. So, no he didn’t vote for Thurmond. He was offering a hyprbolic compliment to a man at his birthday party. The guy was turning 100 and Lott heaped the praise on too thick. Context, context, context. and just a touch of perspective, please.
I think going after Lott for that was cheap and childish. As is this attack on Reid.
He didn’t say he voted for Thurmond. He said “we,” which in context meant the people of Mississippi.
(friggin’** Marley**)
Where does Lott deny saying it? This transcript of his interview on BET has him admitting not only that he said it in 2002, but also admitting to similar statements back in 1980.
That was on BET?
According to the Wikipedia footnote it was, but I don’t see anything in that transcript to actually indicate what networks it was carried on. He does mention that Bob Johnson, founder of BET, offered him a spot to explain himself, and a reasonable reader could infer from his wording that the transcript was from that spot itself:
I was unclear. Sorry. I didn’t mean that Lott didn’t utter the quote you provided. I meant that Lott didn’t say what Boyo Jim claimed.
Yes, he did. I guess the tongue planted in cheek didn’t come through. The point, though, is that Thurmond was basically being showered with compliments. What Lott said was not well thought out and I can see him getting some flak for it, but what transpired was unfair and ridiculous. I say the same about this attack on Reid.
Negro was never an inflammatory term. It was very mainstream and safe. After a while the black people became unhappy with it. But a 70year old, Reid, had no insult or slur in mind when he used it. It is just dated. It was also accurate to say if he were blacker and spoke street vernacular ,he could not have been elected. I don’t think anybody can argue with that viewpoint either. So what is the noise about.
If Lott had said something like, “If Strom had been elected president, then I’m sure he would have been a fine, courageous leader.” That would have been one thing. Innocuous praise for an old man on his birthday. His statement that we would have avoided all these problems over the years, when talking about a segregationist candidate is troublesome. What “problems” could he have possibly been referring to?
I think you’re exactly right. He should have said something like you suggest. But I think he just didn’t put that much thought into it, just wanting to deliver a flowery compliment to a man on his 100th birthday. I think he probably meant that if Thurmond had been elected we wouldn’t have had ANY problems today. It was just an over-the-top compliment. I can’t believe that Lott’s point was that if Thurmond had been elected we wouldn’t have any problems, due specifically to his segregationist platform.
While I might quibble with the “blacker” point, I agree. Well put.
At the time, I did give him the benefit of the doubt and felt the same way. It’s just that the more I read it and considering his history of not supporting pro-civil rights legislation and his the MLK Holiday (taken all together-opposition to the holiday wasn’t necessarily racist), it ever-so-slightly crosses the line from generic praise into something more. I think he knew what he was saying (He had said it before and it’s just too specific. It’s the kind of thing one might say amongst like-minded people) but experienced a brain-fart that he was actually saying what he was saying where he was saying it.