Will he stay or will he go? - The Trent-Lott-racism story continues to have traction, and since blog comments are out, I'll post here instead. Howard Kurtz covers the media frenzy in today's Post, his fourth consecutive daily column on the subject. (No one can resist the puns on Trent's last name, can they? Speaking of -- anyone else think Trent is an oddly late-twentieth-century name for a child of the Forties?)

The WP's big story is an analysis of what Lott really thinks about blacks, based on past voting records and personal history. In some respects, it validates my hypothesis that Lott is a "philosophical conservative opposed to federal intrusion on state and local prerogatives." There really are people in the South who hold the good faith belief that the Civil War was fought over states' rights. On the other hand, the Post also cites an abundance of evidence that Lott is a product of his generation of white Mississippians, a group which "waxes nostalgic from time to time" about a different era, when the black people kept to their own. No doubt Lott held different views about desegregation in the past, as did Thurmond, but the Post points out that Lott is in some ways less reconstructed than Strom. In a striking reversal, the latter voted for the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1982, but the former did not.

By the way, check out the slur from liberal critic Prof. Jan Humber Robertson, who describes former college cheerleader Lott as "prancing and cheering" at a segregationist political rally. Hey, cheerleading is a little bit gay, huh? Nice. (And let's not forget the percentage of fraternity presidents who are a little bit funny as well.)