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things are happening.
Trent Lott is suddenly in favor of affirmative action. And despite his well-known reverence for Jefferson Davis and his close ties to the rancid Council of Conservative Citizens, the junior senator from Mississippi insists he is now a fervent follower of the teachings of Martin Luther King.
Very strange.
And then there's Ward Connerly, a black man who spends his days dancing passionately to the tune of the anti-affirmative-action zealots. Some of the folks in that crowd are less than progressive when it comes to race relations, and it looks as if Mr. Connerly, who heads the ironically named American Civil Rights Coalition, has decided to shimmy with the worst of their beliefs. In a television interview last week he argued that segregation of the races was not necessarily racist.
That is extremely strange.
"Supporting segregation need not be racist," said Mr. Connerly. "One can believe in segregation and believe in equality of the races."
That is the exact argument that the rabidly racist segregationists made in the era that Trent Lott has looked back upon so fondly. It was destroyed by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling.
Meanwhile, among the many weird episodes put in motion by the Trent Lott furor, few were stranger than the exhibition of extreme chutzpah by one Conrad Burns. In a statement posted on his Web site, Mr. Burns said, "Senator Lott's comments were inappropriate and do not reflect the party of `compassionate conservatism.' "
You may never have heard of Conrad Burns. Let me tell you a little about him.
Mr. Burns is a Republican senator from Montana. If a vote comes up in the Senate on whether to keep Mr. Lott as majority leader, Mr. Burns will be one of the 51 Republicans who get to decide.
Back in 1994, while campaigning for a second term, Mr. Burns dropped by a local newspaper, The Bozeman Daily Chronicle, and told an editor an anecdote about one of his constituents, a rancher who wanted to know what life was like in Washington, D.C.
The senator said the rancher asked him, "Conrad, how can you live back there with all those niggers?"
Senator Burns said he told the rancher it was "a hell of a challenge."
The anecdote was published and Senator Burns apologized. When he was asked why he hadn't expressed to the rancher any disapproval of the use of the word nigger, Senator Burns said, "I don't know. I never give it much thought."
You would think that a public official who had already been burned by a racially insensitive comment would have given it some thought. Back in 1991, immediately after a civil rights bill had been passed, Senator Burns invited a group of lobbyists, some of them white and some of them black, to accompany him to an auction.
When asked what was being auctioned, he replied, "Slaves."
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He was re-elected at the end of his 1994 campaign and in the ensuing years maintained a deservedly low profile. He also maintained his penchant for offending people. In 1999 he gave a speech in Billings in which he referred to Arabs as "ragheads."
He had to apologize again. "I regret the use of such an inappropriate term," he said. "I hope I did not overshadow the serious substance of my remarks."
A year later, while visiting an office in Billings, the senator spotted a woman named Angela Warren, who happened to be wearing a nose ring. He asked, "What is that thing in your nose? What tribe are you from?"
Ms. Warren said she was upset by the remark, and told Senator Burns, "It's a nose ring. And I am obviously not from a tribe."
I called the senator's office yesterday to ask about these incidents. He responded with a written statement:
"I regret the things I've said in the past. Those remarks were wrong and repugnant, and I apologize for them once again."
Apologies are in vogue this season. But like Senator Lott, Senator Burns is a serial offender. It's fair to ask: When does the apologizing end and the better behavior begin?