Perhaps I’m stating the obvious, here, but Trent Lott is a frustrating man. Not just because he’s smug and pious and wants to marry Strom Thurmond’s corpse and have, like, 10,000 of his white, white babies. Not just because, like many Republicans, he’s got a cavalier, bullyish attitude on foreign policy. Not just because of that alleged “hairdo.” But also because he’s kinda–dare I say it?–reasonable and likeable at times.
Case in point: a brief interview with him currently running in the NY Times, in which he lauds the military’s work in killing Iraqi “terrorists”:
Reporter: We can’t kill everyone who hates America!
Trent Lott: We can kill a lot of them, particularly when they try to kill us.
Okay, I don’t need to explain what’s wrong with that, do I? (If I do, perhaps you’d be better served by some different reading material.)
Then, just a few inches down the page, Lott shows signs of tolerance and reason:
Reporter: How do you feel about gay men adopting and raising children?
Trent Lott: It’s so important that children have parents or family that love them. There are a lot of adopted children who have loving parents, and it comes in different ways with different people in different states.
Now, part of me–the skeptical, political part–is wary of such talk. I mean, I think we’ve all heard stronger statements in support of gay adoption. And frankly, he sounds like he saying it’s fine for homos to have children–just not in Mississippi. And then I start to wonder if maybe I’m becoming an old, queer Uncle Tom, happy with any bone of compassion thrown to me. (I said “bone.” Hee hee.)
Another part of me–the part that’s very familiar with white men of the Deep South of my father’s generation–knows that given this particular man and his milieu, those words constitute a pretty ringing endorsement.
Like I said: frustrating.
