I am asking for your interpretation of his remarks. I’m perfectly well acquainted with what he said, which is why I’m asking for your version of this quote:
“I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.”
“In 1980, Lott, then a House member from Mississippi, told a home state political gathering that if the country had elected segregationist candidate Strom Thurmond to the presidency “30 years ago, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are today.””
How do you parse that except to read it as that if the country had elected Strom Thurmond, we wouldn’t have had all these problems? Or do you not consider Strom Thurmond (in 1948, at least) a segregationist? Here’s his party’s platform. Sure, you can claim that it wasn’t actually his intent to say that electing a segregationist as President would have left us free of “all these problems”, and you could make a good case, but it’s right there in the plain meaning of the words he spoke.
Meanwhile, Harry Reid, speaking privately, used archaic terminology that some would take offense to while supporting the candidacy of the man who would be the first black President of the US. This is when those “I’m sorry if people took offense” type apologies are actually called for. This is the sort of complaint that many of us, conservatives especially, used to mock the whole concept of “political correctness” for. That was me, back in my late teenage years in the mid-to-late nineties, when I was a right-leaning libertarian or something, mocking the absurdity of leftists who would conflate using the wrong words with actual expressions of prejudice.
Wasn’t that really the major failing of the whole PC craze, that terminology was elevated to such an extent that it didn’t allow consideration of the actual meanings of whatever was said?
Even if Obama were to employ this tactic (which I’m not sure he does, except in the most carefully modulated nuance – such as throwing an “ain’t” in now and then), it wouldn’t be any different from the time honored tradition of Southern politicians who can move from educated, Ivy League English to a good ol’ boy, country twang in the blink of an eye. Practically all Southern pols do it. Even Oxford educated Bubba could pour on the cornpone when he wanted to. Hell Bubba was a master of it. Pretty much any Southern pol in either House can speak “without a redneck dialect except when he wants to.”
I agree with this. Context matters. As I mentioned much earlier in the thread, I think this latest flap is much ado about nothing. The whining that any mention of anything racial is racist. But that IS the world that the democrats have created. It’s nonsense. I also think that fair treatment of Lott would take into account context—that he said that at a birthday party for a ninety-year old guy. Anyone who took it to mean that Thurmond’s election would have avoided all “these problems” due specifically to the segregationist stance, and that Lott was actually of that opinion AND would voice it publicly is either a kneejerk partisan or an idiot. Or both.
And of course, Reid was right. Here’s Obama “speaking like a Negro when he wants to.” He’s giving a 2007 speech to a conference of black clergy, where he has a much different accent and body language: languid, cocky, florid, and Southern. Here, Obama sounds and looks like the preacher who has the biggest church and the biggest Cadillac in Tupelo, Mississippi. (He does a shout-out to Rev. Wright between 1:00 and 2:00 of the 36:00 video).
More fundamentally, Reid’s in trouble because he’s getting a little too close to the fact that is too embarrassing to say publicly: we elected this lightweight President because people got (briefly) enthused by the idea that he’s black by nature but white by nurture.
Look, we make up stupid nature-nurture fantasies about politicians all the time. We elected another lightweight President in 2000 because by nature he comes from the New England Puritan/WASP leadership caste that been more or less running things since the 1630s but by nurture he’s a regular guy. George W. Bush: the best of both!
Just for the record, Lott was forced about by the Republicans, not by the Democrats. I agree (and agreed at the time) that he almost certainly didn’t intend to endorse segregation – that he was giving a meaningless, insincere compliment to an old man at his birhday party without really thinking about any literal connotations – However, his words, at face value, id amount to a literal statement that the country would not have “all these problems” if a segregationist candidate had been elected President.
Very, very good point, and George W. Bush is said to have done the same thing. I’ve heard people say that back when he was the governor of Texas, he didn’t sound remotely as Texan as when he was running for president. He played up the accent to try to seem more “folksy,” even (some say) dumbing himself down.
Reid is guilty of Being a White Man Talking About Black People. A very serious P.C. crime.
I agree. But the Republicans forced him out because they had to. The left made it near impossible to not do so. That’s the power of hurling “racist”. It’s as nuclear as “pedophile”. But you make the important point: Lott was run out of office unfairly. It should never have been anything but a joke that might have fallen flat.
The 1980 quote was at a Reagan rally and Thurmond was talking about fiscal conservancy which was the hallmark of Reagan’s campaign.
Lott was a little boy when Democrat Thurmond tried to run as a Dixiecrat with a segregationist platform. It’s not altogether illogical to link Dixiecrat Thurmond’s segregationist platform to Lott’s remarks but he was at Republican Thurmond’s 100’th birthday praising one of the longest standing Senators in history.
Lott stepped down over the mere inferences made to what he said.
While most of us in the US pretty much use the one dialect of the one language we are conversant with fairly minimal changes depending on context, code-switching and style-switching and similar phenomena are commonplace features among others, including, notably, users of what Harry Reid referred to as “negro dialect”. I recall being in the car with my college roommate, who was from Taiwan, listening to him on speaker phone with his brother switching from Mandarin to English and back in the middle of sentences and being kind of amazed. The link I posted back on page 1 gets more into the linguistic details involved for African-Americans generally and Obama specifically.
It’s the bit of truth behind the term before it is hurled that gives it its power. Those calling for Reid’s reservation over this don’t seem to understand that nuance.
It wasn’t “inferences”, it was quite plainly what he actually said. There are many things one could say if one wanted to praise Strom Thurmond (OK, I can’t think of any offhand, but I’m sure they’re out there), so choosing his blatantly pro-segregation run for President back in ‘48 seems like an odd choice. But that’s what Lott chose to highlight. He had to own that. And I think it’s a huge gaffe on his part if he didn’t intend to praise segregation indirectly (wink, wink, among us good ol’ boys) to have said what he said. But probably survivable politically, at least in isolation.
But the Republicans were all too content to let him go. I figure it’s because they knew that if he tried to deny that he meant what it sounded like he meant, people would bring up things like addressing the CCC multiple times, which wasn’t exactly a secret. That’s how George Allen would later implode. The “macaca” comment was a minor issue, but when he defended himself and claimed he never used the n-word, former acquaintances were all too willing to tell the press stories of him having done so.
Could Trent Lott have withstood that scrutiny had the issue not been settled quickly? Would it have just made the Republican look bad if it had dragged on, and the CCC showed up in the news? And whatever else might come to light?
I predict that Harry Reid will come out fine, because the Democrats know that a close look into his background isn’t going to find anything truly offensive to create any sort of pattern that his transgression (as incredibly minor as it was) was part of.
Lyndon Johnson is quoted as saying that one of the big reasons he pushed so hard for the Civil Rights Act was so he could get in a Cadillac, drive south, and watch Strom Thurmond kiss every black ass in South Carolina. Given that, who knows how long civil rights might have been delayed if it were not for his inspiration! Credit where credit is due, people!
I don’t see or hear any of that at all. You have a vivid imagination.
Even so, as I said upthread, any change in cadence is no different that southern white politicians who turn into Deputy Dawg when they’re scmoozing their constituents.
This is absolutely your imagination and nothing else. The people who actually voted for Obama were nowhere near as obsessed with his race as the righties were.
Whoah. That is weird - it almost sounds like Eddie Murphy doing Bill Cosby doing Obama.
Rubbish. He’s saying white America would only vote for a black man who doesn’t sound like a black man - which is sad, but true, and certainly embarrassing to say publicly, though not to Obama or Reid.