Trent Lott, the Senate Majority Leader with fantastic hair, made a dumb comment last weekend about how if Strom Thurmond had won the presidency in 1948, we wouldn't have had any problems. It's the kind of innocuous thing that people say at formal occasions that no one is expected to believe. Well, people did some checking, and they found out that Strom was a segregationist a half-century ago (as was practically every other Southern politician). Now, the Hymietown Rhymer has called on Lott to resign, and former Vice President Algore (D-Sequoia National Forest) wants Lott censured by the Senate.
Leaving aside the Rhymer...no, wait, I won't leave him aside. Lott should, according to Jesse Jackson, leave public life because he made a dumb comment, the implications of which he certainly did not mean. Jesse himself shouldn't leave public life for cheating on his wife, fathering an illegitimate child, and using money from one of his "charities" to hush things up. Calling New York "Hymietown" in an unguarded moment when he didn't know he was being taped wasn't enough to shame him from public life, either.
My real reason for posting is Algore, though. He says Lott's statement "is divisive and it is divisive along racial lines." He ought to know about senators sending strange signals on race: his daddy did the same thing. Though he was known as a "progressive" senator, the elder Sen. Algore voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His defenders say that this was one blemish on an otherwise impressive record, but that happened to be the most important piece of civil rights legislation since Reconstruction, and he opposed it to get himself re-elected.
P.S. Everybody knows about Algore the Younger and his record of moving from pro-life to pro-abortion and all the other issues, but has anyone read or seen the new book from the Gores? The one about how "family" is anything you want it to be? I saw it at Border's the other day, but I didn't pick it up because my wife hates it when I get mad during a nice evening together.
