Jeff Koopersmith

Lott Is Finished
... and it has nothing to do with Strom Thurmond
by Jeff Koopersmith

Dec. 16, 2002 -- WASHINGTON (APJP) -- I've received a lot of mail and phone calls over the past few days urging me to pile on and call for Trent Lott to step down as incoming Majority Leader of the United States Senate.

I haven't answered the mail -- because I frankly wondered where APJ's readers had been.

I've been writing about Lott for years, and not kindly.

You may be surprised to learn that the remarks he made at Strom Thurmond's birthday party certainly did not infuriate me -- nor am I convinced that Lott actually had segregation in mind when he made those statements.

This does not mean, of course, that I think Lott should stay on as the next Majority Leader any more than I believe that Newt Gingrich was a first-class Speaker of the House. There is little about Lott that is first class. There is a lot about him that is pure bottom-of-the-barrel scum.

I believe the fact that Senator Lott was even speaking at Thurmond's birthday in the first place was a far greater insult to the American people than his unthinking words. You see, I don't think for one moment that Thurmond and all the other "ancient times" racists change their spots -- they simply swap them for others more palatable to the electorate.

I think old Strom, who sat there last week next to Lott's podium looking like a rotting corpse moving toward Hell, is and always was a "Nigra-hater" through and through. I think Strom is a bigot. I think the people of his state should have thrown his cracker butt out of office thirty years ago. But they are -- at least in the voting majority -- greedy bigots as well. Even though Thurmond disgraced them, his seniority brought them money and opportunity -- so damn the blacks!

What Thurmond happened to be was a superb political opportunist. Lott is cut from the same bolt of lily-white gingham cloth. One didn't have to be a genius, and Strom certainly isn't and wasn't, to figure out that you couldn't continue filling your own pockets while at the same time helping to burn crosses on your black neighbor's lawns. So Thurmond, like Lott, and like a lot of other Senators -- some from Northern states -- did the old switcheroo. They found God! They found justice! They magically embraced civil rights! Bibbety Bobbety Boo!

But of course they did not! All one need do is check my columns over the past ten years to see my mention of Lott as "the" senior politician from Mississippi -- the senior member who not only ignored but nourished a governmental system in that state that was so corrupt that the illiteracy rate among Blacks was and still is near 70%.

Just that one fact, that single truth, tells the entire story.

But not one media source -- including the New York Times -- ever asked the question, "Where is Trent Lott when the black children of Mississippi are drowning in ignorance? Where is he?"

Well, I will tell you where he has been lately on the topic of Civil Rights: nowhere.

And in the end, it is this that will put Trent Lott in the dumpster of Senate leadership history.

Here, with data taken from Lott's own Web site, is his record on civil rights proudly displayed for all to see:

-- Voted YES on loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping.

-- Motion to table (kill) the amendment that would provide that in order to conduct roving surveillance, the person implementing the order must ascertain that the target of the surveillance is present in the house or is using the phone that has been tapped.

Sure, Lott loved this -- guys like him embrace the government being able to wiretap without court order. It's right up his alley.

-- Bill S1510 ; vote number 2001-300 on Oct. 11, 2001: Voted NO on expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. Vote on an amendment that would expand the definition of hate crimes to include gender, sexual orientation and disability. The previous definition included only racial, religious or ethnic bias.

Lott will tell you that he does not hate gays -- but he does, and I wonder why.

-- Bill S.2549 ; vote number 2000-136 on Jun 20, 2000: Voted NO on setting aside 10% of highway funds for minorities & women. Vote to table, or kill, an amendment to repeal the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise [DBE] Program, which requires no less than 10% of highway construction projects funded by the federal government to be contracted to 'disadvantaged business enterprises'

Gee, what a surprise. Was it the "women" or the "minorities" that pissed him off?

-- Bill S.1173 ; vote number 1998-23 on Mar 6, 1998: Voted YES on ending special funding for minority & women-owned business. This legislation would have abolished a program that helps businesses owned by women or minorities compete for federally funded transportation. Status: Cloture Motion Rejected Y)48; N)52

Yes, let's end the tiny amount of the federal budget for women and minorities. Hey -- why not simply finish them off completely?

-- Reference: Motion to invoke cloture; Bill S.1173 ; vote number 1997-275 on Oct. 23, 1997: Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA): Vote to prohibit marriage between members of the same sex in federal law, and provide that no state is required to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. Define 'marriage' as 'between one man and one woman."

Need I say more?

-- Bill HR 3396 ; vote number 1996-280 on Sept. 10, 1996: Voted NO on prohibiting job discrimination by sexual orientation. Would have prohibited job discrimination based on sexual orientation. Status: Bill Defeated Y)49; N)50; NV)1

Yes, Lott would, of course, discriminate based on sexual orientation. This from a man who irons his shirts himself -- in his Senate office -- AFTER they come back from the laundry -- and uses more AquaNet on his hair than Paula Jones and Susan Carpenter McMillan combined!

-- Reference: Employment Non-Discrimination Act; Bill S. 2056 ; vote number 1996-281 on Sept. 10, 1996: Voted YES on Amendment to prohibit flag burning.
Approval of a constitutional amendment which would prohibit desecration or burning of the U.S. flag. Status: Joint Res. Defeated Y)63; N)36

Yes. This is really important -- a denial, again, of free speech.

-- Reference: Flag Desecration Bill; Bill S. J. Res. 31 ; vote number 1995-600 on Dec. 12, 1995. Voted YES on banning affirmative action hiring with federal funds. Vote to disallow any funds in the Legislative Appropriations bill from being used to award, require, or encourage any Federal contract, if the contract is being awarded on the basis of the race, color, national origin, or gender of the contractor.

Of course. If it mentions affirmative action -- ban it.

-- Bill HR 1854 ; vote number 1995-317 on July 20, 1995: Supports anti-flag desecration amendment. Lott sponsored a Constitutional Amendment: Supports granting Congress power to prohibit the physical desecration of the U.S. Flag Proposes an amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorizing the Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.

But he never voted for special aid to black kids in Mississippi schools who led the nation in illiteracy. Why? Because that's the way he wanted it.

Trent Lott also led the fight to restore Jefferson Davis' US citizenship and once suggested the Confederate leader would support the Republican Party if alive today

You betcha Trent, you betcha!

He did this because he chose to pander to bigotry in his home state -- not to lead the people of Mississippi into post civil war erudition. One need only look at Mississippi to see the most backward, in all ways, state in the Union.

Lott had a big hand in guaranteeing this.

Lott voted against expanding the Civil Rights Act, and opposed the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, saying there were other heroes "more deserving."

Like who, I ask? Nathan Bedford Forrest -- founder and first Grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan? Or maybe Prescott Bush -- who lined his pockets with Nazi money?

Lott has never been ashamed of past indiscretions that included outspoken anger against integration at the "University" of Mississippi and fierce opposition to admission of blacks to his fraternity. The fact that Lott was in a fraternity at all -- during the turbulent times of its membership -- speaks volumes on his ill-preparedness to lead.

What is important to Lott are the poll numbers from a state where the average IQ seems well below one hundred. He is devoted to "Southern" revisionist history, the traitorous Confederate States, and the "Stars and Bars" -- the anti-American flag of the Confederacy which stands as a symbol of abuse to black Americans and the rallying banner of an ideology that condemns black Americans who call for rectification of past wrongs.

The fact that Lott's buddies say he is not a racist is not worthy of even a single passing remark. Obviously, Lott wouldn't openly advocate racism as the senior Senator from a state with such a large black population, and so his friends wouldn't tell Wolf Blitzer that he was a racist even if every other word out of his mouth at the weekly poker game was "n!gger."

But nearly every pundit and network news reader has wasted our valuable time, asking Democrats and Republicans alike, "Do you think Trent Lott is a racist?"

How harebrained can they be?

Of course he's a racist -- and a stupid one at that.

Lott has spoken openly, lovingly and encouragingly to groups who advanced and still try to push segregation -- as late as a couple years ago! 89% of black voters reject Lott on the ballot, yet Howard Fineman -- a jackass journalist who made his name lynching Bill Clinton -- in a poor attempt to foist a "cup-half-full" story, said that Lott "consistently" captures Black votes, 11 percent in the 2000 elections.

And Fineman wonders why Americans who follow the news consider him a pathetic laughingstock, a sorry joke of a "reporter."

Lott will not survive the upcoming challenge to his leadership -- from Don "Senator In A Drum" Nickels, another intellectual lightweight and and a well-documented legislative gay-basher, and other Senators who choose to fill his empty shoes.

Why Lott refused to resign his leadership post today is the real question. Is he waiting for George W. Bush to simply TELL him to get out?

Lott is finished.

But Senator Lott should have been finished a long time ago. And if the media had actually done their job, he'd be long gone. Where were the reporters? Where were all the pundits when Lott was goobering it up with his CCC friends and ogling the racist chicks at Bob Jones University?

They were nowhere to be found, because the media is controlled by the right -- and has been for nigh on 12 years.

The creeps always jump on when a guy is "downest."

Me -- I jump on right away -- the moment I smell vermin.

Trent Lott is a rat opportunist. He always was, and he probably always will be.

Lott shouldn't be simply thrust out of the Majority Leader post. He should be removed from the Senate -- along with every other Southern poseur who pretends to love his fellow man while golfing in all-white, all-male country clubs.

I nearly retched this morning when I watched him stroll into his all-white church and act holier-than-thou while his wife scooted along the wall and into the holy doors like a French poodle caught peeing on the Oriental rug.

It was a sight. The good news is that it is one we won't have to bear any longer.

So, my friends in the Democratic Party and progressive and liberal organizations around town: stop lynching Lott over l'affaire Thurmond. Both of them are compost. One survived a century on pure guile, and the other died by his own stupid hand.

Pray for them, as they'll tell you they pray for you.