TODAY'S SUPERPATHETIC SENATE | 2001-04-28
Conservatives who are not declared "respectable" by the media are banned from having their say not only in those media but in conservative outlets too.
Respectable conservatives are given or denied that precious "respectable" title by the liberal media. So all respectable conservatives have done some really serious groveling before liberals.
In bowing down before the left, no group of conservatives does a more professional job than those in today's United States Senate. I discussed Orrin Hatch's dubiously heterosexual worship of and sellouts to Teddy Kennedy on July 1, 2000 in ORRIN STILL LOVES TEDDY.
Outside today's Senate, Orrin would be special. But in the Senate, he is only middling. Orrin's worship of Kennedy cannot put him in the same category with the behavior of John McCain. I described that on March 31, 2001 in FIFTH COLUMN CONSERVATISM.
But even in the Senate sinkhole of wimpishness, Trent Lott deserves special mention because he is a SOUTHERN perversion. The old Southern senator combined gentility with a steel-hard devotion to principle.
Lott has perverted gentlemanliness into pure squishiness.
In his landmark book on the Senate, "The Citadel," published in 1951, William White discussed the Senate as the World's Most Exclusive Club.
White discussed the fact that there was the whole Senate as a club and then an even more exclusive Inner Club that was closed to most of the Senate itself. He said that every one of those old Southerners was an automatic member of the Inner Club.
Old style Southerners fulfilled two requirements to be members of the Inner Club. First, they fought like lions for the South and for their own constituents. Secondly, they remained gentlemen while doing it.
Lott and his followers have totally dropped the first characteristic. When Teddy Kennedy and his buddies are handing out that "respectable" label, nobody is more ready to sell his people out than the Modern Southern Conservative. And they do it while perverting the concept of a Southern Gentleman.
A real Southern senator was first of all a MAN. He was known for his willingness to fight ferociously for what he believed in. Trent Lott has twisted that into a pure perversion, where "gentleman" means a simpering, grinning, absolutely wimpish weak grin as a substitute for principle.
Lott loudly denounces liberal media bias when he's talking to conservative groups. But when he faces them, he simpers about how fair they are.
The Old Southerner had his feet rooted in Senate Tradition, and he used it as a weapon. Lott's idea of Tradition is described on March 31, 2001 in REAL HISTORY IS STILL NEWS TO SENATE WIMPS.