I’ve had a number of e-mails along the following lines, and I assume every

other NRO staffer has, too. The following quote isn’t one of those e-mails,

it’s a compound I’ve put together by distilling the essence of several. I

don’t say you have to like it; but it’s a strong vein of opinion out there

among NRO readers. Here you go: “I am sick and disgusted with all this

hammering on Lott. What do we have to do to appease these race lobbies?

How long shall we be expected to keep apologizing? We de-segregated–fair

enough. Then we had to swallow Affirmative Action, MLK day, Rodney King,

O.J. Simpson, and all the posturing, hypocrisy, and fake anger about ‘racial

profiling.’ Still it goes on, and we are still supposed to be cringing,

apologizing, beating our breasts and moaning: ‘Guilty! Guilty! We are all

guilty!’ Black politicians can say anything they like about us–the most

hateful, ignorant things–and nobody turns a hair. Yet when some white guy

makes an ambiguous, incidental remark like Lott’s, he’s torn to pieces by a

howling mob of white media liberals–every one of whom, if he had been

living in the South in 1948, would have been a segregationist. Heck, every

white Southerner was.”