Goose is cooked - The cartoonists have barely started to weigh in on C. Trent Lott, and already the handicappers are saying he's gone. Over the weekend, Lott lost the backing of his Senate second-in-command, and the White House is not coming to his aid. It seems the Mayberry Machiavellis are incensed that Lott is upsetting their plans for outreach to the black community. In a clumsy move, Lott asked Colin Powell and Condi Rice for statements defending him, and they have dissed him. The NYTimes also had a long retrospective on Lott's life "in the shadows of segregation." In a highlight, the story recounts how the pro-integration editor of the local newspaper in Lott's home town once received

a letter from a woman who told him that if he did not publish her letter it would prove "you are truly an integrationist and I hope you not only get a hole through your office door but through your stupid head." It was signed Iona W. Lott — Mr. Lott's mother. "I called her, asked if she'd sent it to me, and she said she certainly had sent it to me and she meant every word," said [the editor], now 84.

Think that's what Lott meant when he asserted:

I could never support — or seek support from — a group that disdained or demeaned people because of their race. I grew up in a home where you didn't treat people that way, and you didn't stand with anyone foolish or cruel enough to do so.

Meanwhile, down in the Delta, local coverage has highlighted the feeling by some Mississippians that the Yankees are picking on them again. Maybe they aren't being paranoid -- but then again, maybe electing someone like Lott is a good reason to get picked on.