Diane McWhorter of Slate Magazine writes a nasty article today about a dead man that dredges up everything circumspect the man ever did. She doesn't have the courage to kick someone when they are alive and aged. She is the type of mean-spirited writer that carefully waits until someone they do not like is dead before aiming some wild kicks at the person's lifeless body. Such is the state of liberal journalism in our country today.

Ms. McWhorter is upset it seems because no one has prominently mentioned in the media that Senator Thurmond, (according to her - she gives no proof), may have fathered a daughter, Essie Mae Williams, with a black woman way way back in 1925, just 78 years ago. This child, she writes, was "almost certainly" fathered by Senator Thurmond. Just like Juantia Broaddrick may have been but was almost certainly raped by Bill Clinton. McWhorter unsuccessfully tried to contact the 78 year old child to get her "comments" about Senator Thurmond. Fortunately, Ms Williams was not available. McWhorter is, by golly, not going to let Senator Thurmond off the hook on this massive display of hypocrisy even if he is dead and the child he supposedly fathered is a mere 78 years old. Is this hard hitting investigative reporting or what?

Ms. McWhorter bad mouths not only the deceased Senator Thurmond but also his "almost certain" daughter by calling her a racist name - a "high yaller" sorority girl. "High Yaller" is a slang term that refers to the color of skin. She doesn't stop there. She throws a couple of feminist low blows at Senator Thurmond's wives as well. She calls them "conspicuously virginal choices" of Senator Thurmond. How can someone conspicously virginal? Are all attractive 20 year old women participants in beauty contests conspicously virginal to McWhorter or just those that marry senators?

McWhorter called the senator's second wife a "proverbial 'flower of southern womanhood,' the ideal that justified segregation's direst form of social control, the ritual castration of lynching." Note the snotty quotes around 'flower of southern womanhood'. Why use this old stereotypical term to describe a senator's wife? Ritual castration of lynching? Senator Thurmond married a beautiful woman to justify the ritual castration of lynching? And, of course, what is an article about an old line segregationist without including a passing learned reference to lynching or castration? No evidence is forthcoming from McWhorter about whether Senator Thurmond ever was involved in these activities. I guess Whorter wants the reader to assume that if someone was a segregationist they must lynched a couple of blacks at one time or another.

And, of course, to complete the circle of hate, Ms McWhorter brings up the death of the senator's 22 year old daughter in 1993 in a traffic accident as if the "all-merciful Christian deity", as Ms McWhorter delicately refers to God, was punishing Senator Thurmond for being an old line segregationist politician. McWhorter even hurls a shovel full of vindictive at the senator's dead daughter and his wives by happily italicizing the word 'she' in the sentence containing "22-year-old white daughter he did acknowledge, just before she was to enter the Miss South Carolina contest".

This is a new journalistic low: gleefully and hatefully dancing on a dead senator's grave and trashing the women in his life before the flowers on his grave have wilted . The all-merciful Christian deity knows McWhorter won't get another Pulitzer for this piece of garbage.