Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Whole Lotta Fun
In the fall of 2002, I was hanging out mostly at Salon's "Table Talk" message boards. Then a mysterious Table Talker named "Kurt Foster" showed up and started linking to his website, Eschaton, that he called a "weblog", or "blog" for short. Which meant that I was around in time to see Atrios spending the better part of two weeks forcing the US corporate media to cover Trent Lott's saying that the unreconstructed racist Strom Thurmond should have won the 1948 election, and thus prevented the civil rights movement from getting off the ground. (Remember, these are the same folks who didn't wait for Rick Kahn to finish his speech six weeks earlier at the Wellstone Memorial before they were launching their 24/7 attacks and outright lies -- such as the infamous "applause signs" lie -- against him and the memorial's organizers. And Kahn's remarks weren't even actually offensive!) Just as with Lieberman's call for a Department of Homeland Security, the Bush White House (meaning Rove) ignored the clamor until they figured out a way to profit from it. When they realized that they could use this as an excuse to install the yes-man Frist as Senate Majority Leader, they jumped on that chance with both feet. Which is why it's interesting to see Trent Lott, nearly three years later, gleefully twisting the knife in his replacement's back. Lott wouldn't be doing this if he were worried about retaliation from Rove. That should tell us all something.
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