I made this point in the Lott resigns thread, but it was out of the path of the thread (and it didn't get any play ).. Frist apparently was a member of an all white golf club from ~1980 to 1993. He left the club when he prepared to run for the Senate... which highlights the incredible "personal growth" one oftentimes undergoes when it is time for a job interview. This seems to be a huge burden for the republican party. Apparently they have such a wonderful understanding of race problems in the US that a guy that practiced segregation is a step up from someone who reinstated Jefferson Davis' citizenship. Now for the mental midgets on board that like to belittle these concerns by pointing out private/public statutes, let me point out that you can have sex with a donkey in some countries. Just because it may be legal to **** a donkey someplace, that doesn't mean that I shouldn't see donkey ****ers as perverse weirdos. When someone tolerates their golf club's racism, and then cancels his membership when he runs for the Senate... I have to wonder about their morals. But that's just me. I could be wrong.
how long do we want to play this game? neither side is free of guilt on this kind of crap... let me preface the posting of this article by saying i don't agree with its ultimate conclusion...as i said more than a few times here, lott needed to go...i agree wholeheartedly with bush's comments on the situation Lott's offhand remark not worth demand for his head by Joe Fitzgerald Wednesday, December 18, 2002 John Kerry, puffed with righteous indignation, waded into the Trent Lott furor, demanding the Republican's head on a platter. ``There can never be an appearance of racism or bigotry in any high position of leadership,'' he declared. Funny, but that's pretty much what prominent Italian-Americans were saying about Kerry the morning he tried to come off as droll on the Don Imus show, quipping, ``The Iraqi army is in such bad shape, even the Italians could kick their butts.'' State auditor Joe DeNucci led the angry backlash, charging, ``He wouldn't have the guts to say that about Jews or blacks,'' prompting a Kerry spokeswoman to suggest DeNucci cool his jets, that the senator was obviously being facetious. Of course, that's the same thing his office said following another appearance on the Imus show when, attempting to belittle Bill Weld's work ethic, Kerry described the former GOP governor as ``a guy who takes more vacations than people on welfare.'' Is this to suggest our junior senator really has a bias against Italians, or that he looks upon the downtrodden with contempt? Not at all. It's just to suggest that he, as much as anyone in public life, ought to understand how a comment made in jest can make a speaker sound like a jerk. Lott, by the way, did not seek Kerry's resignation. Then there was Mike Wallace, a little harder to dismiss when, during a break in the taping of a ``60 Minutes'' piece on minority borrowers, he suggested they might have difficulty reading complicated contracts ``over watermelon and tacos.'' When Herald TV columnist Monica Collins called him on it, Wallace pleaded, ``It was light-hearted! I ask you to be fair.'' Isn't that what Lott is asking everyone today? There's no recollection here of Kerry racing off to Italian-American lodges to clarify his remarks, or Wallace visiting black churches to explain himself. Nor, for that matter, is there any record of Jesse Jackson showing up at B'nai B'rith breakfasts to convince the ``sons of the Covenant'' that his characterization of New York as ``Hymietown'' was a figure of speech, that's all, a harmless appellation. Does anyone remember Kerry, that self-styled pillar of propriety, questioning Jackson's anti-Semitism? If not, what did Jesse ever do to deserve the benefit of anyone's doubt? Alan Dershowitz once charged Billy Bulger with using ``code words'' like ``manipulative'' and ``crafty'' to communicate a bias against Jews, yet there was no ambiguity whatsoever when Dershowitz claimed English au pair Louise Woodward couldn't expect a fair trial in Cambridge because ``it has a very large Irish population.'' No bias there, right, counselor? Really, it isn't complicated. Anyone who writes for a living understands the truth of a Red Auerbach maxim regarding communications: ``It's not what you tell people that matters; it's what they hear.'' Does Kerry believe Italian soldiers are inferior, or that welfare recipients are slothful? No. The assumption here is that he tried too hard to be what he's not, i.e., witty. Does Wallace view blacks as cartoon caricatures? No. The assumption here is that he engaged in careless idle talk. Does Dershowitz believe the Irish can't be expected to have integrity? No. The assumption here is that he was looking for any angle that might enhance a defense. And the other assumption here is that Trent Lott wasn't speaking from a heart filled with malice when he tried to flatter a man who had just turned 100, assuring him he did indeed have the stuff of national leadership, essentially giving him a eulogy he could hear. An act of hatred? Please. It was an act of kindness. Indeed, Harry Belafonte likening Colin Powell's support of President Bush to ``a slave in the master's house,'' or Ted Kennedy's insistence that Robert Bork's appointment to the Supreme Court ``would take us back to the days of segregated lunch counters,'' were much clearer examples of irresponsible commentary. But it served their purposes and both got away with it. Lott has nothing to apologize for, save a misconception. It's the ones now exploiting his embarrassment who ought to be ashamed, especially the ones who have been down that road themselves.
bravo. MadMax, this is a feeble attempt to detract away from the fact that the leadership grabs one person with a history of being racially insensitive to replace someone else with the same such problem. Do you want to make a comment on that, before you resort to your same four year old's strategy of displacing blame when you have caught him with his hand in the cookie jar? "But... but... Johnnie ummm.. someone else... ummmm..." Besides, can't you dig up better representatives of the Democratic party? Hell, maybe the fact that conservatives reject all race related issues by appealing to the absurdity of Jackson or Sharpton just points out how much further they really have to go on the subject of race. A comment by Kerry on the army of other Europeans such as the Italians? Whoa! Making fun of other countries armies? Inflammatory there. Please. Here, let me give you a tidbit, since you don't have the tools with which to argue this case by yourself. Frist has done really noble things. He has been a medical missionary, I believe to Africa. That's the path you should take.
i'm not trying to win a debate competition, achebe...and i'm not saying you're wrong for pointing out frist's record on this. believe it or not, not every thread has to be a fight. i'm simply saying that if we go back far enough in everyones' past, we're going to find that no one is fit to be an elected representative of our country. thanks for your comment on my "tools" though...i'll file those away. you're a warm man.
Of course Bill Frist is as bad as any other republican. His lack of morals causes him to work with HIV/AIDS groups to polish his political image, and I know for sure that the whole travelling to Sudan every year to care for the poor is to mask a his closet racism.
Sorry for that snide remark MadMax. I thought better of it, but wasn't able to make a comment (or edit obviously) since I had to take the Mrs to the airport. Tinky, it's true that Frist has done some noble things (things that I respect, perhaps, more than the conservative wing of the Republican party (ie Aids research/stem cell research stuff). My concern remains, however, that the South perpetually elects people w/ poor records re: race. I would simply like to ask Frist why he was a member of an all white golf club. If he said, "because I'm an idiot", I'd pat him on the back. Nevertheless, the South has to do something to break the image that we're all a bunch of bigots. Honestly, there have to be people in the South that Republicans or Democrats can put forward that do not have huge skeletons in the closet. ps, part of my intuition is that the Republican party will change the South (as they come to grips with their own PC-terminology in order to get elected, paradoxically) and the South's history of racism. Over the past decade, Clinton's run to the middle has destroyed the power of the fanatics in the Right Wing of the Republican party. In order for the Republicans to remain in office, they can no longer appease that base.
I like Frist. While I obviously do not agree at all with anyone being a member of an all-white club (especially as recent as the 80s), he really seems like a genuinely great guy. What I can't believe is that he's the first physician in 75 years to be elected to the Senate.
LMAO. Despite the fact that 99% of upscale clubs were not inclusive in 1980, the notion that Frist wanted to play golf at a nice club made him a SEGREGATIONIST??? I have heard it all now.
t2343423423, You seem to have a serious difficulty in calling a spade a spade, btw. You are so defensive of the racist problems in our past. You echo back the sentiment "they did it too"... "personal growth is everywhere", blah blah blah... but you always fail to capture the subtlety of common sense. He was a member of an all white club until he ran for Senate. I am led to believe that in your world, job interviews are comparable to taking confession. I was 8 years old in 1980. I was 21 in 1993. Throughout that entire time, I knew that segregation was wrong. Frist is considerably older than I am (me? grammarians?). He should have known the relevance of his actions. You seem to set a really low bar for politicians.
TF - It's true that in the barrage of goodbyes to the Mrs., I'm somewhat cross-eyed right now. Are there a 100 grammatical errors in that sentence or something?
You totally missed the point. At that time, if you wanted to play golf at a private club...chances were that the club was going to be discriminatory in some way, shape or form. The thread title may as well have said "Bill Frist Liked to Play Golf at a Private Course in the Early 1980s." THAT would have been more accurate. I don't think it's right...and most clubs have changed it...but that doesn't change the fact that the only crime Frist committed was playing golf.
Maybe I don't understand the politics of playing golf (I certainly don't understand the appeal), but I cannot understand why you don't hold consumers accountable for their decisions. If Frist's money was being used to fund terrorism against Israel, you wouldn't say "dude just played golf", you'd call for his head. If he was a member of a bridge club in which the proceeds went to the decapitation of developmentally disabled orphans by an elite squad of Uruk-hai you wouldn't say "dude just played bridge". In fact, your entire intuition belies the common sense appeal of the republican platform: take a bit of friggin' responsibility for your actions. Frist was a member of an all white golf club (I thought Frist was a great person before I found out about this); that's pathetic. I expect someone to have a bit of decency, regardless of the "wonderfulness of golf". I snowboard every chance I get. I would never go to resorts that discriminated against African Americans. To suggest that I would even look past a discriminatory policy suggests to me... that you aren't too terribly moved by the horrors of segregation.
Achebe, your youth prohibits you from putting Frist's Country Club experience into perspective. Some of the most open minded, caring, and wonderful older people I know belonged to segregated country clubs. In fact, all of the upscale CCs in Houston were segregated until our lifetimes. Times are changing, as are attitudes. You have to forgive people for participating passively in an inferior, segregated American culture, and focus on the fact that CHANGE OCCURRED. Look forward, and concentrate on doing what is right today. People who continually harp on the injustices of the past are a roadblock to the color blind society that Dr. King addressed in so many of his speeches.
As <b>rimrocker</b> confessed, virtually all of us grow up with some degree of racism that is practically unavoidable. I think it is high hypocrisy to lable a man a racist because of a club membership. How racially diverse is your department at the UofU? Maybe you should leave? Why did you enroll?
t writes something compelling and then giddyup writes a bunch of gibberish. all of us grow up w/ some degree of anger giddyup, is it high hypocrisy to label a man a murderer b/c he actually murdered someone? Qu'est-ce que ****? On the point of the diversity of my department(s), I think that either I miss your analogy or you miss the boat on the critique of segregation. Do you somehow think that the golf club that Frist was a member of already knew that the best golfers were only white and thus only solicited their membership? That's nonsense. No geology/biology department in the US eliminates qualified applicants based on cutaneous pigmentation.
The man joined a club; he didn't personally discriminate against anyone. You want to hang him high for that and dare call it "compelling?" How do you know what the admissions policies are for The U. Maybe you, maybe Frist, backed into a situation that 20 years later looks akward. Give it up.
Will somebody please check on all the golf memberships of every Democrat in the US Congress over the last 20 years? I bet that would be interesting. You think it's clean?
