Red, White and Liberal

by Alan Colmes

  Lott apologized the next day: "A poor choice of words conveyed to some the impression that I embraced the discarded policies of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by my statement."

  At first I was outraged that Lott could have been so reckless at Thurmond's party, especially when it was revealed by the Jackson Clarion-Ledger that he made a similar, almost word-for-word statement back in 1980 when, as a congressman, he told a crowd at a Strom Thurmond rally, "You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today."

  But, to his credit, Lott went on Hannity's radio show and said he regretted his words, that they were "terrible," and that it was "a mistake of the head, not the heart."

  I said on Hannity & Colmes, on December 11, 2002, that I was actually starting to feel badly for Senator Lott as this story was developing a life of its own:

  COLMES: I think he went as far as one could go. I'm no fan of some of the things he says politically. I'm troubled by a series of statements and events that are like this. But I think on Sean's radio show he said—what more could he possibly say after this?

  I even went on The O'Reilly Factor two days later and defended Senator Lott:

  COLMES: ... I think there's too much piling on on Trent Lott. I've been defending Lott. And I think there's just too much already. Let it go.

  My e-mail reaction to this episode was revealing. The lesson was that if you're denned as "liberal," you will be vilified for taking the liberal position even when you don't take the liberal position. Here I was, defending Senator Lott from a "piling on" effect, and yet I was receiving hate mail from people assuming I said something else:

  From: patriciawomn

  Sent: Thursday, December 12,2002 9:40 PM

  To: Colmes

  Subject: (no subject)

  Mr. Colmes, It's always good to hear the nasty comments like against Sen. Lott especially from a left winger like you. He made a mistake and I am sure he regrets it, but why harp on him so much? Is this the only way liberals make browny points?

  Patriciawomn

  Rochester, NY

  Lott went even further in yet another apology during a news conference on December 13, when he said that segregation was wrong and immoral then, just as it is now, and that he had learned from his own mistakes. The senator asked for forbearance and forgiveness and said he would dedicate himself to undoing the hurt that resulted from his remarks. And I went further in defending Lott that night. After all, what are liberals about if not forbearance and forgiveness? I couldn't stand the blood sport that the Clinton episodes became, and I sensed the thirst for Lott's blood that I found so repugnant during the Clinton-capades. Conservatives didn't accept Clinton's apologies and that riled me. I wanted to accept Lott's. Once a person says they're wrong, shows that they want to learn from their mistakes and take full responsibility for what they said or did, the controversy should end.

  The night of Lott's news conference, during my appearance on The O'Reilly Factor, Bill wanted to know at what point an advocate of a particular political party jumps off that platform and doesn't support it anymore.

  O'REILLY: Let's go over to Colmes. You're a radio guy. You were on the radio before television. You know that most of the radio talk-show hosts, who aren't journalists, by the way, will now basically get up in the morning, get the talking points from whatever party they are in, and just parrot that.

  COLMES: I think that's often the case. I don't—I—look, I get the DNC talking points. They e-mail them to me. . . . But you know what? I don't look at them. And I am less of a cheerleader for the Democratic Party than I am for the ideals I believe it should uphold.

  I tried to emphasize, and I firmly believe, that one must be true to one's beliefs and ideals, even if it means taking an unpopular position with one's own party as, in the case of Senator Lott, saying, "Enough is enough."

  Lott's most effusive apology came during his appearance on Black Entertainment Television with Ed Gordon on December 16. By that time, Lott was coming out in favor of affirmative action. At this rate, he was soon going to be promoting reparations and becoming a replacement singer with the Temptations. The roller coaster had begun its descent and there was no way to climb back to the top of the curve.

  But it wasn't those evil Democrats who threw Lott down the stairs; it was the Bush administration. When 43 spoke in Philadelphia on December 12, he said, "Any suggestion that the segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive and it is wrong!" Bush said what he had to say to put a game face on his party, but he did so without acknowledging that Lott had apologized. That was it for Lott. If that weren't enough, 43's brother, and the man who would be 44, Florida governor Jeb Bush said, "Something's going to have to change. . .. This can't be the topic of conversation over the next week." Bye-bye Lott. Done in, not by the libs, but by the cons.

  So, the Bush administration got what it wanted when Lott stumbled. But if Republicans truly want to cleanse themselves of the kind of taint that Lott highlighted, they need not look much further than the chief law enforcement officer of the land, Attorney General John Ashcroft. During his time as both governor and attorney general in Missouri, a racial storm was brewing. Federal courts decided that students in both St. Louis and Kansas City were not receiving equal education, and desegregation was ordered. In 1991, when Ashcroft testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee after his nomination to become U.S. Attorney General, he defended his opposition to a voluntary desegregation plan for St. Louis. As the Washington Post reported on January 18, 2001, "court documents show that a federal district judge ruled that the state was a 'primary constitutional wrongdoer' in perpetuating segregated schools in St. Louis, both by denying blacks an equal education in the past and doing little to remedy the situation later." A U.S. District Court threatened to hold then Missouri attorney general Ashcroft in contempt of court for "continual delay and failure to comply" with a court-ordered desegregation plan. Even worse, according to Time magazine, were "charges that Ashcroft worked to suppress black voter turnout by twice vetoing laws that would have promoted voter-registration efforts in the city of St. Louis."

  And what are we to make of Ashcroft's comments to Southern Partisan magazine, a publication that has referred to Abraham Lincoln as a "consummate conniver, manipulator and a liar," and to John Wilkes Booth as someone whose behavior was "not only sane, but sensible." Was ending slavery some "perverted agenda"? As we like to say at Fox: You decide. Ashcroft told Southern Partisan: "Your magazine also helps set the record straight. You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and [Confederate President Jefferson] Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."

  Ashcroft also campaigned against the nomination of Ronnie White to serve as a federal district judge. Ashcroft convinced the Senate that White, the first black to sit on the Missouri Supreme Court, had a history of overturning death sentences, and even called him "procriminal." This was ostensibly because of one case in which White did not want the death penalty for a convict because he didn't think the man had adequate counsel. But in forty-one of fifty-nine cases, White affirmed the death penalty. When Ashcroft, as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had the chance to question White as a nominee for a judgeship, this didn't even come up. But during a Senate campaign against Mel Carnahan, who appointed White, Ashcroft used that one anti-death-penalty decision as a club on Carnahan. Even though Carnahan won this ugly campaign posthumously, Ashcroft was rewarded with a cabinet post.

  Lott's comments on race seem mild compared with those of another senator from Mississippi, the late James Eastland. In Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro recounts a speech Eastland gave to the White Citizens' Council in 1
956: "In every stage of the bus boycott we have been oppressed and degraded because of black, slimy, juicy, unbearably stinking niggers. . . . African flesh-eaters. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, slingshots and knives. . . . All whites are created equal with certain rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers." But rather than get demoted, as Lott did, Eastland was appointed head of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee and served in the Senate until 1978. Lott worked to get what had been the Federal Post Office and Court House in Jackson, Mississippi, renamed the James O. Eastland Federal Building where, I presume, the black granite and the white granite do not touch. Given Lott's mea culpas, though, Eastland makes him look like a one-man Rainbow Coalition.

  It's one thing to look at the history of America's political parties and argue over which has the most embarrassing history of racial insensitivity, if not downright bigotry. It's more depressing to realize there are still incidents that reflect poorly on where we are in America in the twenty-first century. In Louisiana's runoff election that put Democrat Mary Landrieu back in the Senate, it was imperative that Landrieu get out the African American vote. Some in Louisiana didn't think that was a good idea. An unsigned pamphlet was distributed in housing projects that it was okay to vote on December 10 if they didn't feel like voting on December 7. "Bad weather? No problem!!! If the weather is uncomfortable on Election Day, remember you can wait and cast your ballot on Tuesday, December 10." I'm sure the defenders of such racism would claim they were urging those folks to vote even though they were giving them the impression they could do so three days after the actual election.

  On the day Louisiana residents went to the polls, December 7, 2002, the Republican Party hired black youths to hold signs in black neighborhoods urging their neighbors not to vote for Landrieu, with placards saying, "Mary, if you don't respect us, don't expect us." And so as recently as 2002 some Republicans were trying to suppress the black vote. There is no other way to interpret this.

  In more than one state, the Confederate flag was still an issue in the elections of 2002. In Georgia, Republican challenger Sonny Purdue ousted Governor Roy Barnes by, among other things, promising to hold a referendum on whether the state flag should once again feature a large Confederate battle emblem, as it did before Barnes's efforts to make it smaller. During the campaign Purdue put out fliers that asked voters to "remember who changed your flag."

  Just before the 2002 election, the Associated Press reported that South Carolina's incumbent governor Jim Hodges "has been dogged by his failure to deliver an auto plant and the decision to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse dome." Hodges, a Democrat, lost his seat to former three-term Republican congressman Mark Sanford.

  Each political party is busy claiming its heritage as the true progenitor of civil rights. Republicans love to rail against Ernest Hollings because, as governor of South Carolina, he raised the Confederate flag over the statehouse; against Al Gore's father because of his vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964; against Harry Truman because of allegations of KKK membership; against Robert Byrd because of his KKK roots and his "white niggers" comment.

  Ernest Hollings, it turns out, helped integrate Clemson University as governor. He also provided funding for law enforcement to go after the Klan. As a legislator, he was the only southern senator to vote against weakening the 1982 Voting Rights Act. Senator Gore Sr. said his vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the biggest mistake of his career. Al Gore Jr. argued vehemently with his father about that vote. But Gore Sr. was one of only three southern senators who refused to sign Strom Thurmond's "Southern Manifesto" that repudiated the Supreme Court decision that integrated schools.

  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 defined Lyndon Johnson's Democratic Party and pushed southern anti-civil-rights Democrats like Strom Thurmond out of the party. The party of Lincoln underwent realignment as those who just couldn't brook the toleration of nonwhite Americans found a friendlier place with the Republicans. The so-called southern strategies of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan of appealing to white Democrats who were uncomfortable in an increasingly nonwhite America helped them win their respective presidencies. Their ability to simultaneously appeal to Eisenhower Republicans and Thurmond Democrats provided them with broad bases of support.

  Harry Truman paid $10 to join the Ku Klux Klan in 1922 when he needed its support in his run for judge in Jackson Country, Missouri. When he was asked not to hire Catholics shortly thereafter, he quit the group and got his money back. As president, Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces. So, do we judge him by a brief, but misguided foray into a group he immediately quit upon learning of its views, or by his overall accomplishments?

  Playing a game of word association with Senator Byrd on the March 4, 2001, edition of Fox News Sunday, my Fox News colleague Tony Snow threw out the term "race relations" and got this response: "There are white niggers. I've seen a lot of white niggers in my time. I'm going to use that word. We just need to work together to make our country a better country, and I'd just as soon quit talking about it so much."

  Robert Byrd has renounced his racist past, but that doesn't excuse his "white niggers" comment. On that show with Tony Snow, Byrd said, "We all make mistakes. I made a mistake when I was a young man—it's always been an albatross around my neck in joining the Ku Klux Klan."

  We don't know what is in another's heart, so how do we judge except by one's words and actions?

  Republican senator Conrad Burns of Montana has a long way to go if he's to catch up to Lott in the mea culpa department. An editor from The Hotline interviewed Burns in 1994, when the senator regaled him with a story of a rancher who said to him, "Conrad, how can you live back there [in Washington] with all those niggers?" Burns's reply: "It's a hell of a challenge."

  Once, during a speech to the Montana Equipment Dealers Association, Burns decried the dependence of America on Mideast oil and referred to the Arabs as "ragheads." He later offered a feeble apology by claiming he got too "emotionally involved" in the issue. In 1991, right after a Senate vote on a civil rights bill, Burns invited a group of civil rights lobbyists who were there to an auction. The Washington Post reported that when he was asked what was being auctioned off, Burns's answer was "Slaves." None of this has stopped the Senator from winning multiple reelections.

  It's surprising that Louisiana governor Mike Foster got little national attention when he bought a list of supporters from David Duke for $100,000 in 1995. I'm guessing the names on that list were not exactly veterans of marches in Selma, Alabama, or people who know the words to "We Shall Overcome." But Foster has had a good long run in Louisiana thanks to some of those supporters. Now, I'm not calling Foster a racist, but this is a manifestation of the "southern strategy" that Republicans have used when they needed certain votes to get elected.

  Ward Connerly is an interesting case: he's a black man who has spent his public career fighting affirmative action. Maybe Trent Lott can call him and convince him to think otherwise. As a member of California's Board of Regents, he promoted an initiative that resulted in ending affirmative action in the state's university system, and he went on to work to end affirmative action in California's state government.

  But William F. Jasper wrote in The New American, a publication of the right-wing John Birch Society, "[Connerly] concedes that in a few cases new laws and regulations have forced him to certify his company as a minority-owned enterprise in order to keep previous contracts with public agencies." That's the JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY! They were trying to argue FOR Connerly and against affirmative action. In the New York Times, Bob Herbert quotes Ward Connerly as saying, "Supporting segregation need not be racist. One can believe in segregation and believe in equality of the races." Okay, Ward, let's go back to how equal the black schools were before Brown v. the Board of Education. Let's talk about how equal blac
k bathrooms and water fountains were. I can understand arguing for solutions that are not race-based, and Connerly was an eloquent spokesman for the idea of ending affirmative action. But why then try to say something that sounds like a defense of segregation?

  Bush 43 had a program in Texas called "Affirmative Access." Affirmative Access guaranteed a spot in state colleges for everyone who finished in die top 10 percent of their high school graduating class. It promotes diversity in places like Texas, where the Latino population is spread out around the state, and minorities from many areas get to continue their education. In most states, however, minority populations are not as widespread, so not as many would get the benefit. This, however, is a very clever way of being against affirmative action. Pick something that sounds like what you're against, make it seem like it accomplishes the same thing, and that way you seem sympathetic to the other side's cause. Conservatives did this with welfare by christening it "workfare." It reminds me of the wonderful character created by Gilda Radner, "Roseanne Rosannadanna," who would talk about something until she actually found out what it meant, like the time she waxed poetic on the issue of "Soviet Jewelry," only to be forced, upon being set straight, to conclude, "Oh, never mind!" By using this technique folks on the right can appear to be supporting minorities reaching higher goals by advocating the "civil heights" movement. They don't want you to spit out objects you're chewing, which enables them to claim they favor "gum control." And, of course, the rich should get their fair share of tax cuts, making them "proapportion."