After a flurry of Internet criticism, GOP Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott is forced to apologize for his paean to segregation at Strom Thurmond’s birthday party, a paean which echoed his prior support for such racialist organizations as the Council of Conservative Citizens. So, were Lott’s remarks really a “poor choice of words” or a brief glimpse of something more sinister in the Majority Leader’s character? You be the judge.
Category: The Sixties
Pulling back the Curtain.
Meant to blog this a few days ago but didn’t. Boston University historian Robert Dallek discusses new information on JFK’s health in the Atlantic. As with FDR, one wonders if Kennedy would have gotten anywhere near the White House with this medical record in our present age.
Apocalypse Then.
The NYT watches John Kerry’s old Vietnam footage with the Senator and contemplates the relevance of military service to political life.
Larger than life.
Also in TNR (it seems the links are coming in pairs today), Nicholas Lemann critiques Robert Caro and Master of the Senate, the third volume in his LBJ series.
Second-Class Citizens, First-Class Surveillance.
Sketching an eerie parallel to Ashcroft’s current war on libraries, Derrick Jackson surveys the FBI’s long and ignoble history concerning Black America.
A Tale of Two Ranches.
The NYT contrasts the LBJ and Dubya ranches. “While Lyndon B. Johnson used his 2,700 acres as a political tool and power base to both stroke and dominate guests at his barbecues along the Pedernales River, Mr. Bush, the gregarious former fraternity president, has used his 1,600 acres as an isolated retreat to entertain family and a few old Texas friends.” Hmmm…perhaps it’s because the channels of power usually flow around rather than through our Dauphin, eh?