I've tried, really I have, to stay away from the Trent Lott flap. But then along came Ann Coulter with possibly the stupidest article that I've seen on the subject to date. [link] Apparently, we've got this whole thing wrong. The problem with Lott isn't that he has foot-in-mouth disease, or that he said something that offended a large portion of Americans. The problem is the liberal media (again). It seems that the liberal media has been mistakenly laying the problem at the feet of the Republican Party, when any right-thinking person will recall that Strom Thurmond was a Democrat before and after he was a Dixiecrat, until he became a Republican. In the end, Coulter concludes that it's the Democrats who should apologize for being racists, not the pure-as-the-driven (white) snow Republicans.

Excuse me, but, huh? I'm sorry, but Coulter's argument makes no sense-- the Lott flap isn't about the content of Strom's 1948 campaign, or even about Thurmond himself; the jury is out on whether he was a rehabilitated racist or whether he merely gave that appearance. Frankly, whether he was a Democrat, a Dixiecrat or whatever is irrelevant. The flap is that in 2002, a Republican, not a Democrat, endorsed (or at least appeared to endorse) a segregationist agenda.

But somehow, Coulter still sees a vast left-wing conspiracy? Go figure.