Thank God. I’m immensely relieved. The statement clearly shows that Bush doesn’t believe Lott’s attempt to explain away his words. Lott must now resign. He has no other choice.
SOWELL ON LOTT: I think Lott now has to resign. Bush has a day to make the move:
Let me recall a personal experience from that era. Although I lived in New York, during the Korean war I was a young Marine who was stationed in the South. On a long bus ride down to North Carolina, the bus stopped very briefly in Winston-Salem so that the passengers could go to the restrooms. And in those days there were separate “white” and “colored” restrooms.
The bus stopped next to the white restrooms and I had no idea where the restrooms for blacks might be located — or whether I could find it in time to get back to the bus before it left. So I went to the men’s room for whites, leaving it to others to decide what they wanted to do about it.
I figured that if I were going to die fighting for democracy, I might as well do it in Winston-Salem and save myself a long trip across the Pacific. It so happened that nobody said or did anything. But I should not have had to face such a choice while wearing the uniform of my country and traveling in the South only because I was ordered to.
This was just one of thousands of such galling experiences — many others were far worse — that blacks went through all the time during the era of racial segregation that Senator Thurmond was fighting to preserve as a candidate for the Dixiecrats in 1948.
The Dish 