Ah, the good old days

Every once in a while, the mask slips and you get to see the reptiles for who they really are. Story here. Snip below. (use salon/tabletalk to log in, if you have to)

Saying that he had used "a poor choice of words," Trent Lott, the Senate Republican leader, apologized tonight for his speech at the 100th birthday party of Senator Strom Thurmond, which critics had said was an implicit endorsement of segregation.

"A poor choice of words conveyed to some that I embraced the discarded policies of the past," Mr. Lott said in a statement. "Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended."

Earlier in the day, Mr. Lott had issued a statement that stopped short of an apology, saying his comments were made in the spirit of "a lighthearted celebration." His later expression of contrition came after a reporter pointed out to his office that former Vice President Al Gore had called on him to apologize. Mr. Lott's spokesman said the apology was not in response to Mr. Gore but came solely "out of personal concern for this misunderstanding."

At issue are three sentences in Mr. Lott's tribute last Thursday to Mr. Thurmond, a South Carolina Republican who ran for president in 1948 on a Dixiecrat platform opposing "social intermingling of the races." With Mr. Thurmond by his side, Mr. Lott, Republican of Mississippi, said:

"I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years, either."

Know your rights

In karmic polar opposite news, today is Human Rights Day. On this date in 1948, The United Nations adopted a set of rights for every man, woman and child across the globe. And although we made a splendid job of violating those rights on a clockwork basis, reading the words still gives me some hope. When we try to imagine the perfect world, we often have general ideas, but not specifics written on paper...no compass with which to find north. Here, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is the blueprint for a better tomorrow, even though we appear to be a billion miles from it.

And yet, we took the time to draft up such a document once. Maybe, if we don't lose our souls to the TV or choke to death on fallout, we can actually follow through on it one day. Here's hoping.