This is beginning to remind me of the internal strife of the British Conservative Party. Trent Lott’s voiced nostalgia for segregation is not even close to a forgivable mistake. It was morally wrong and politically suicidal. But if he refuses to leave, the damage could get even worse. Now there are signs that the paleo wing of the Republicans, characters who deep down believe that even a Republican with ties to the racist right is preferable to a Democrat, might rally to his defense. The Novaks and Buchanans and Weyrichs see an ally under threat. They will not accept Lott’s departure easily. Nor will some Senators who view themselves as members of a club that rarely turns on its own. And the way in which some Democrats are gleefully using this to advance the notion that the GOP is synonymous with bigotry will only provoke the Republican Party’s instinctual self-defense. And so the paleos could acquire partisan support and the split could deepen. Maybe this is all part of Sid Blumenthal’s master-plan. If so, then Ann Coulter is dancing to Sid’s tune perfectly.
THE REAL ISSUE: But Lott’s baldly racist past and his bitter and unworldly intransigence are the main culprits. In pursuit of his own narrow ambition, he seems willing to inflict even more damage on his party, president and country. In this climate, Republicans need above all to refuse the Democratic bait, not circle the wagons, and keep insisting on Lott’s departure. In retrospect, the president should have clearly said last week that Lott should step aside as SML, which would have sped events up. I can see why he didn’t. He doesn’t want to interfere with the Senate’s business, he said the right thing about the underlying issue, and anything more might have seemed over-kill. But with a vain and self-deluded man like Lott, there’s a real danger of wounding him politically but not finishing the job off. And if the party tears itself apart while Bush stays aloof, he risks becoming the John Major of the Republicans, appearing unable to prevent his own party from tearing itself apart. Waiting till January 6 will only perpetuate the damage. The Republican Senators need to act swiftly to demote Lott before this incident becomes a real crisis. And if they fail, the president has to step in and end this. Lott must go. And the way in which he has behaved – without principles, without intellectual coherence, without regard for his party or country and without even the slightest political grace – only reinforces why.
RACISM AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: Here’s a telling email taking me to task for describing affirmative action as the “new racism”:
You wrote, “The equation of opposition to affirmative action or hate-crime laws or any other number of leftist policies with racism strikes me as a massively cheap shot.” As a moderate liberal who supports affirmative action but sympathizes with the argument against it, I completely agree with you. But in another post, you claim that affirmative action is the “new racism.” Now, let’s assume that liberals and conservatives both want a society in which blacks and whites are judged equally. “Color-blindness,” after all, is the rationale that affirmative action opponents use to defend their stance. But if that is true, the real difference is that supporters believe equal opportunity is impossible given the nation’s racial history and level of current prejudice, while opponents believe that color-blindness is a realistic ideal. Thus the question is more empirical than ideological. We may be wrong about our approach, but we’re not bigots.
I take that point. But it seems to me that the writer is essentially saying that because his heart is in the right place, his support for public racial discrimination is not racist. My position is that we should assume that everyone’s heart is in the right place but still see racial discrimination for what it is. Jim Crow was a disgusting attempt to segregate and define people by race. It was unquestionably worse than affirmative action. But affirmative action is also an attempt by government to define people by race. In practice it often means denying someone a job or a place at a college solely because of their race. I think that’s an almost text-book definition of racism. Just because the racism is directed at a majority doesn’t make it any less discriminatory on an individual basis. And just because it’s aimed at eventually creating a color-blind society doesn’t make it color-blind. My view is that we should try and get beyond these racial categories altogether, and I don’t think enforcing them even more rigorously is a good way of doing that. Yes, my words were provocative, and deliberately so. But racial discrimination is racial discrimination is racial discrimination. And the person who is subjected to it couldn’t care less if the perpetrator is an old bigot or an well-meaning liberal.
EMINEM A REPUBLICAN? Not so big a stretch in some ways. Gerry Marzorati makes the case well:
So, does Eminem get to do the Super Bowl halftime show? I mean, what’s left besides a White House drop-by? Which might not be all that far-fetched, given the warmth of the mainstream’s embrace of Mr. Mathers. There are precedents: Gun-toting Elvis’ visit with Nixon, Michael Jackson’s photo op with Reagan. And the Eminem story – or the movie version that unfolded in 8 Mile – is an echt Republican story, one about pulling yourself up and overcoming your circumstances while your pathetic single mom waits around for a handout.
I too was struck by the ferocious individualism of the movie, “8 Mile.” Yes, his friends were crucial. But the message of the story was that you have to escape from hell by yourself. Any other way is somehow inauthentic. And that rough independence is another reason why I find Eminem so appealing and intoxicating: post-racial Americanism, if you will. You only have to see the movie to see why someone like Trent Lott is just hopelessly lost in contemporary culture. Jesse Jackson too.
SHAFER ON NPR: Loved this paragraph from Jack Shafer’s excellent adventure:
Why visit the cloud forest the day before our Galápagos foray? In part, I’m avoiding the recommended day trip to one of the local Indian markets. Every time I visit an ethnic market, the unwanted noise of an old NPR All Things Considered segment unspools in my head. “At the mercado, the campesinos bring their maize to sell”-cue the ticky-ticky ethnic music and crowd noises – “but drought has withered the crops and buyers turn away.” I can’t stand it.
Perfectly caught, don’t you think?
THE DUTCH GOVT VERSUS FORTUYN? Did his political rivals in the Dutch government refuse to give him adequate protection? That’s the implication from the damning official report into Pim Fortuyn’s assassination at the hands of a far left fanatic.
GIVE US A LITTLE MORE TIME: To calculate the final tally from last week. With thousands of payments and hundreds of checks and only one person with a calculator (the saintly Robert), this isn’t an easy task. But each day this week, we’ve had to increase our guesstimate.
The Dish 