Trent Lott, Call Your Doctor

If celebrity deaths come in threes, then it's time to ask: Who will round out the trio started by the deaths of former uber-segregationists Lester Maddox and Strom Thurmond (who may well have been killed by the Supreme Court's sodomy ruling)?

800 yr. old former Klan member Sen. Robert Byrd should be an even-money favorite in this particular dead pool, though it seems unlikely that he'll allow himself to die before achieving his lifetime goal of moving the federal government to West Virginia.

Comments

[Anonymous]

I thought he was the third after Gregory Peck and David Brinkley. I dunno, Boris Yeltsin? Bob Hope? The Pope?

[Anonymous]

C-A-S-T-R-0

[Anonymous]

G-I-P-P-E-R

[Brian]

It depends on how you want to split the three's up...

Even before Thurmond died, it was really strange that GA's last segregationist governor (Maddox) and Atlanta's first black mayor (Maynard Jackson) died within 36 hours of each other.

[Croesus]

Brian,

Good pick up on Maynard Jackson; you stole my thunder. When MLK jr. died his the three mile procession passed both the Mayor's office, where the flag was at half-staff, and the Capitol Bldg., which did not have its flag at half-staff. On the steps of the latter building, according to Mark Shields, stood Maddox, the Georgia National Guard beside them. Maddox was one of the last gasps of the Dixie my parents and grand-parents knew.

[Mycroft]

How about symmetry along the ideological axis?

That would require one more paleoconservative passing on to glory (Tom DeLay?); then since Moynihan has already gone to the other side, that only leaves Robert Byrd and Teddy Kennedy.

[martin]

As a resident of the State of West Virginia, I gotta say: Go for it Bob!! May you live to be a hundred and ten! Go for the money, but leave the Govt out of here. Scary thought, having Ashcroft and Rumsfeld even closer.

[Brian]

Fortunately, they'll all die eventually.

Unfortunately, so will we.

[ray]

Everyone admit it, even the Reagan hater; if Robert "Sheets" Byrd dies tomorrow it will be down right spooky.

[ray]

The only difference between Byrd and Strom was that Byrd had enough sense to know when to take off the hood. You know, you can take a southern Democrat out of the Klan but you can't really take the Klan out the Dem.

[Anonymous]

Katherine Hepburn it is.

[M]

What about Jesse Helms? He's overdue for deceasement.

[Anonymous]

But the Reagan hater is also a Castro hater, so ? And women don't count.

[StooksLady]

Ok...I didn't know about Maddox and forgot about Jackson. I was counting Brinkley, Peck and Cronin...then, Thurmond, Hepburn and finally, Hackett. Any more I missed?

[joe]

And after all that, it was Buddy Hackett.