Word: trent
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Pascagoula in which Trent Lott grew up was settled by immigrants from France, Spain, Italy, Lebanon and Yugoslavia. But in Lott's youth, as now, blacks numbered only about 18% of the area's population, and whites didn't feel as threatened as they did in the black-majority counties of the Mississippi Delta. While most neighborhoods were segregated, the largest black precinct was smack in the middle of town, and the races mixed easily on the streets and in factories, where jobs were usually available to all. Lott recalls that "race just wasn't that big an issue...
Gerald Blessey, who was among the few integrationists at Ole Miss in 1962, declined to discuss Lott's latest troubles but told Time in 1997 that he considered Lott more of a political opportunist than a George Wallace--style hater. "You could say that Trent was representing the views of his constituents" in supporting segregation. Blessey lost to Lott in a congressional race in 1976 and said that while he and Lott have been "often on opposite sides over the years," he believed that on the issue of race, "Trent has a good heart...
Lott would dearly love to avoid that sort of escalation. He said he was encouraged over the weekend by expressions of support from Senate colleagues and Mississippi constituents. It's hard to know what may have changed in Trent Lott's heart. But what's certain is that he knows how to count votes. And if he calculates that it's safe for a Southern, white Republican to forgo the old racial code words, that's a measure of progress. --With reporting by James Carney, John F. Dickerson and Douglas Waller/Washington and Jackson Baker/Oxford
From the very beginning of Trent Lott's fourth attempt to apologize, the tone was all wrong. The Senate Republican leader seemed forceful, composed, even buoyant--but not at all bowed, contrite or shaken. The words said sorry, but the attitude didn't. By the end of the press conference, Lott was actually grinning. It was as if he wasn't aware that when a major politician in 2002 needs to assure the nation that he repudiates racial segregation, the game has already been lost. It was as if he still didn't grasp the hideousness of what...
...gaffe is when a politician tells the truth (as someone once said), Senate Republican leader Trent Lott's bizarre endorsement of white racism and segregation does not qualify. An authentic gaffe is more like Lawrence Lindsey's comment that a war against Iraq could cost $200 billion, which got him fired as President Bush's top economic-policy adviser. Nobody at the White House disputed the figure--they just didn't want it brought up. This is called being off-message, and in Washington that's much worse than being, say, wrong. Lindsey's replacement, investment banker Stephen Friedman...