THE US: The warm tributes paid to former segregationist Strom Thurmond at his 100th birthday party in Washington have resulted in a cold reaction to Senator Trent Lott from Mississippi, writes Conor O'Clery
The incoming Senate Republican leader told the assembly: "I want to say this about my state. When Storm 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."
It took a few days for the significance of this remark to sink in. When it did, there was outrage in both parties as Thurmond ran for president in 1948 on one issue - maintaining racial segregation in the Deep South.
Trent Lott's record on race was looked at more closely, especially his ties to the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a far-right body that grew out of the segregationist White Citizens' Councils of the 1950s.
The newspaper of the CCC, which Lott addressed several times in the 1990s, appeals to those who feel "menaced by black militants, third-world immigrants, homosexuals, feminists and geeky, boneless conservatoids".
Lott's columns appear on the organisation's website, which warns: "Any effort to destroy the race by a mixture of black blood is an effort to destroy Western civilisation itself." The archives show that Lott, who began his political career as an aide to racist Mississippi Congressman William Colmer, successfully led a fight to keep his University of Mississippi fraternity "Sigma Nu" all white, while other college fraternities were integrating.
He also once before praised Thurmond as a worthy US presidential candidate, during an 1980 rally in Jackson, Mississippi, when he said: "You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today." Lott, who today protests that he is against segregation, also cast the only negative vote in the nomination of the first black judge to the US Court of Appeals of the Fourth Circuit in 2001.
His worldview was shaped by a staunchly segregationist mother, Iona, who once wrote an angry letter to the editor of a local newspaper stating: "You are truly an integrationist and I hope you not only get a hole through your office door but through your stupid head." That may have simply been a "poor choice of words", as Lott characterised his birthday party comment when apologising for last week's comment.
As more damaging disclosures about his segregationist past emerged, President Bush distanced himself from the Mississippi senator, whom he apparently does not like very much.
Calls for Lott's resignation grew louder as the week passed. Even the Mississippi press called for him to resign as Senate majority leader.
Ted Kennedy said yesterday that to reference the violent anti-civil rights era in a positive way was unworthy of a political leader.
But many Democrats hoped Lott would not resign, as he would present an image of Republicanism at future elections that would alienate the black vote - which helps explain Bush's cold reaction.
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THE traditional way for racists to tell African-Americans they are not wanted is to dress up in white robes and burn a fiery cross near where they lived.
It still happens. In 1998, two white neighbours in Virginia Beach, Virginia, burned a cross in the garden of African-American neighbour James Jubilee, who got the message and moved his family away.
On Wednesday the US Supreme Court debated whether this was illegal intimidation or constitutionally-protected free speech. The cross was a sign of a "reign of terror", declared Justice Clarence Thomas, the court's only black member. It was a "symbol of white supremacy and a tool for the intimidation and harassment" of racial minorities. The outcome could affect cross-burning laws in more than a dozen states.
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THE remarks of Trent Lott may have helped Democrat Mary Landrieu win a run-off Senate election in Louisiana this week by energising blacks to vote.
Landrieu's Republican opponent launched "attack ads" on taxes and abortion, and President Bush came to rally the vote against her in the final days. But the formula that worked so well in mid- term elections did not do the trick in Louisiana. The more the Republicans cried "liberal" the more it energised black support for the Democrat.
Republican zealots may have overplayed their hand by showing contempt for the intelligence of African-American voters: they distributed leaflets in black districts saying (falsely): "Bad Weather? No problem!!! If the weather is uncomfortable on election day (December 7th) Remember you can wait and cast your ballot on Tuesday, December 10th."
Democrats played dirty, too. They distributed a pamphlet comparing Republican candidate Lee Fletcher with Louisiana racist politician David Duke.
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CARDINAL Law was not the only prominent citizen in Boston accused this week of protecting criminals. William Bulger, the president of the University of Massachusetts, has been avoiding questions about contacts with his gangster brother, Whitey, who is on the run on charges of murdering 22 people.
Billy Bulger, a former Massachusetts Senate president, is a very entertaining politician. For years he conducted a hilarious St Patrick's Day "roast" of political opponents in a South Boston pub. When I went to interview him once, he walked me through the Massachusetts House chamber, pausing when he saw a representative perusing a document to say in a stage whisper: "That's so-and-so, he can't read but he's trying to impress his relatives up in the gallery."
But at a congressional hearing on the relationship between the brother and the FBI, Billy Bulger took the Fifth. Nobody is amused.
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PHILIP Berrigan was not Trent Lott's kind of person, nor Cardinal Law's kind of cleric. The former priest spent a lifetime fighting racism, poverty and war. He staged anti-war protests in the 1960s and was arrested at least 100 times. Because of his aggressive civil rights agitation, he was moved around as a priest. Berrigan led the "Catonsville 9" in burning draft records with homemade napalm in Baltimore in 1968. In prison he fell in love with a nun, Elizabeth McAlister of the Religious Order of the Sacred Heart, and the two secretly declared themselves husband and wife. The marriage was legalised in 1973 but they were both excommunicated. Father Berrigan (79) died of cancer last Friday, and was buried in Baltimore.