{"id":2641,"date":"2002-12-08T22:22:17","date_gmt":"2002-12-09T05:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2002\/12\/gotcha-politics-at-its-finest\/"},"modified":"2002-12-08T22:22:17","modified_gmt":"2002-12-09T05:22:17","slug":"gotcha-politics-at-its-finest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2002\/12\/08\/gotcha-politics-at-its-finest\/","title":{"rendered":"Gotcha politics at its finest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tIf you ever find yourself wondering what “Gotcha Politics” is, what it looks like, and why it’s repugnant, go to the Instapundit website<\/a> for this day, Dec. 8, 2002, and look at the pile of twisted remarks about Trent Lott. Professor Reynolds, the Tennessee law professor who’s normally obsessed only with Europeans and the Second Amendment, has launched a one-man crusade to run Lott out of the Senate over a remark the Senator made at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. <\/p>\n

The remark itself isn’t important – it was a birthday party, and like everybody else, Lott was laying it on thick, grinning while he praised the old fool. And like many Southerners of a certain age, Thurmond was once a segregationist and a Democrat, and like most of them, he is now neither. In fact, Thurmond has a remarkable record of hiring and promoting African Americans on his staff (Armstrong Williams, for example). And the segregationist franchise has stayed with the Democrats, who now support separate housing and classes for African Americans on college campuses, and all manner of quotas, reparations, and other programs designed to ensure ongoing conflict between the races.<\/p>\n

Whatever he may once have been, Strom Thurmond is not a racist — he’d just as soon sleep with a black woman as a white — and neither is Trent Lott. Lott is a bit of a boob, and the Republicans would be better off with a more intelligent, cleverer, and more libertarian leader in the Senate, but he wasn’t endorsing segregation, he was just patting Strom on the back in what should be<\/b> an acceptably hyperbolic way. Anyone who says he’s a racist is idiotic.<\/p>\n

The advantage of blogs over traditional media is that the absence of editors means that news can get out quicker; the disadvantage is that judgment-fogging obsessions, like this one over Lott, Andrew Sullivan’s<\/a> over Krugman, and Josh Marshall’s<\/a> over Enron sometimes make them unreadable, unreliable, and offensive. <\/p>\n

Here’s to a speedy recovery and a prompt return to Eurobashing Second Amendment activism for Professor Reynolds.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: If you’re fed up with all the pissy, politically correct whining about Lott, read Mark Steyn’s column<\/a> on ole Strom and have yourself a laugh.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Will Vehrs is right on target<\/a> vis a vis “piling on” and “Gotcha”.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you ever find yourself wondering what “Gotcha Politics” is, what it looks like, and why it’s repugnant, go to the Instapundit website for this day, Dec. 8, 2002, and look at the pile of twisted remarks about Trent Lott. Professor Reynolds, the Tennessee law professor who’s normally obsessed only with Europeans and the Second … Continue reading “Gotcha politics at its finest”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-GB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}