With Mississippi senator Trent Lott resigning five years early to maximize his lobbying potential, it seems like a good time for a look back on his illustrious career.
1) Complete the quote that required Trent Lott to go on a week-long apology spree: "I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president [as the segregationist Dixiecrat candidate in 1948], we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, _________________________"
a) we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years either.
b) instead of DEWEY BEATS TRUMAN, the headlines would have been THURMOND BEATS TRUMAN.
c) a certain Mr. Martin Luther King wouldn't have a holiday named after him.
2) What did Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane write after Trent Lott, who had repeatedly voted against making Martin Luther King's birthday a holiday, announced - as part of his groveling penance for his ill-conceived gush about Thurmond - that he now supports the holiday?
a) "Well, if he's for it now, then I'm against it."
b) "Sometimes it takes a while for a white man to come to his senses."
c) "Heck, we don't need you now! We already have the King holiday, fool!"
3) What absurd claim did Trent Lott make to Black Entertainment Television newsman Ed Gordon as part of his ultimately failed effort to keep his job as Senate majority leader in the wake of his idiotic praise of Thurmond's half-century-old racist campaign?
a) When the subject of affirmative action came up, he said, "I'm for that." Gordon asked, "Across the board?" Lott said, "Absolutely."
b) Not only did he deny feeling superior to blacks, but he added, "Frankly, I think most blacks are superior to me."
c) He claimed to have had dinner a week earlier with Mike Tyson, about whom he said, "I just love that guy."
4) Of which warring factions did Trent Lott say, "How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me?"
a) Israelis and Palestinians.
b) Sunnis and Shiites.
c) Bloods and Crips.
5) False or true? Trent Lott has said that race really wasn't that big a factor growing up in Mississippi.
a) False. He has called the segregation he witnessed as a youth "the defining experience of my life."
b) True. He said that when integration came, "It wasn't a big happening. It just happened one day, and we moved on," though in fact the efforts to desegregate Ole Miss, where Lott was a campus leader, triggered a riot that killed two and injured dozens more.
6) What is the name of the white preservationist group - whose web site warned that the nation is becoming a "slimy brown mass of glop" - that Trent Lott hobnobbed and posed for photos with the leaders of, addressed a convention of (saying, "The people in this room stand for the right principles and the right philosophy"), and then claimed to have had no idea of the group's virulently racist agenda?
a) The Council of Conservative Citizens.
b) The National Association for Keeping Blacks Down.
c) White Man Group.
Answers: 1) a, 2) c, 3) a, 4) b, 5) True, 6) a
This post originally appeared on 23/6 (236.com), the new comedy news site. Click here for more satiric, of-the-moment takes on the day's top stories.