Sunday, January 10, 2010

Reid and those comments--Hypocrisy on view

On the occasion of the 100th birthday of Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC), then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) said this about the one-time rabid segregationist:

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, either.

Thurmond, who died a few months later, ran on a "states rights" platform that favored Jim Crow laws, among other odious things.

Pretty stupid of Trott to say that, although he was just trying to butter-up the frail centenarian, who was living in a hospital room at the time--while serving in the Senate. The firestorm that followed, brought on by the angry left, forced Lott to resign his leadership post, although he remained in the Senate until three years ago.

After the Republicans were thumped in 2006, Harry Reid (D-NV) became majority leader. And now Reid faces his own race storm--in the book Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime, the authors revealed that Reid said of Barack Obama that he was "light skinned" who spoke "with no Negro dialect--unless he wanted to have one."

"Negro" hasn't been a polite way to refer to African Americans for thirty years--the word is generally accepted to be a pejorative.

Republican National Chairman Michael Steele, who is black, is calling for Reid to resign his leadership post.

As for the liberals? Unlike the Lott episode, they're pretty quiet.

No surprise.

hypocrisy on view

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