Reid's remarks were racially insensitive and Lott's were simply racist

This morning on Meet the Press, while interviewing GOP Chairman Michael Steele and DNC Chairman Tim Kaine, David Gregory, most likely reading straight from a script provided to him by The Weekly Standard, asked why President Barack Obama has forgiven Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for racially insensitive remarks, but demanded that then Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) resign in 2002, for his praise of late Senator Strom Thurmond's (R-SC) campaign for president on a segregationist platform.

Steele, who recently used the phrase "honest Injun," didn't hesitate to call for Reid's resignation as majority leader.

There is a BIG difference between praising a segregationist in public like Lott did, and Reid's making, in private, a racially insensitive comment while praising and welcoming the candidacy of the man who would go on to become the first African American President of the United States.

Reid's choice of words shows that when it comes to race and discussing African Americans he is very unenlighted. THIS DOES NOT MEAN HE IS RACIST, it just means this guy, who it should be pointed out enthusiastically campaigned for Obama, has a long way to go when it comes to learning how to discuss race. His heart is most likely in the right place, his mouth and vocabulary? Not so much.

Lott on the other hand made a point say that if Thurmond had been elected president in 1948 "we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years."

As pointed out earlier Thurmond ran on a segrationist platform and on the campaign plan remarked "all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, our schools, our churches."

When Gregory, The Weekly Standard, Steele or anyone else advances the notion that there is any comparision between what Reid's and Lott's comments they show themselves either to be ignorant or worse, they show themselves as folks who will seek to exploit discussions of race as a launching pad to provoke racial division.