Trent Lott has suffered such a verbal beating that left his ego bruised and sore and it is time to put it to rest.

I am certainly not a fan of former President Clinton but I had to grin and clap my hands when he made the statement that it is "pretty hypocritical" of Republicans to criticize incoming Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott for stating publicly what he said the GOP does "on the back roads every day."

Republican National Committee Chairman Marc Racicot responded by saying "This is another tired example of Bill Clinton misrepresenting the facts and misleading the American people to gain political advantage".

Excuse me Marc - but who is using the Lott issue to gain political advantage? I would take a deep look inside your own party.

One only has to look at Florida to see just how accurate Clinton was.

I did my own mini survey regarding the Lott incident and once I got past the people who simply looked at me and asked "who is Trent Lott" or "who is Strom Thurmond" and even one "where is Mississippi", the general consensus was pretty clear.

Not many felt offended by what Lott said once they heard the entire story, although a few felt that the media was making sure everyone was offended.

Ah yes, the media. The all-knowing saviors of our moral souls.

What the media doesn't report about the Trent Lott boo-boo is the response to what he said immediately before the soon-to-be-historic blunder …

"Let me tell you something about my state - when Strom Thurmond ran for President, we voted for him and we were proud of him" *Laughter and Applause*

Then Lott interjected the "and if the rest of the country followed our lead, we would not be in the mess we are in today". *Silence*

Now - why was there silence? It could not have been because of a "racial statement" if they just cheered the Presidential run in 1948 based on an anti-civil rights platform - could the silence merely mean that they were not sure exactly what Lott said?

Most likely but that certainly did not matter once Trent Lott's head started rolling. It has all been laid out for us and whenever Lott tried to explain what he meant it was for naught once the race card was played. (Just for the record, Lott explained he meant Thurmond's stance on National Defense and yes, what a fine mess we are in now)

Why doesn't the media tell the whole story while they are crucifying the man. The whole story includes the fact that all those in attendance laughed and applauded when Lott praised Thurmond's Presidential run. Therefore, I guess that makes every one of those people racists and bigots.

I have no tolerance for racism but I also have no tolerance for political rapes.

Now Trent Lott is forced to apologize one hundred trillion times for a comment he made that was interpreted another way and played right into the political agenda.

The Strom Thurmond tribute can be seen here. Trent Lott speaks about thirty minutes into it.

http://www.c-span.org/congress

Time to move on.

There is a real war we need to be concerned about.