This is not 1960. But you might think so if you saw the now-viral video posted on Twitter of Mississippi Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, praising a fellow cattle rancher and thanking him for his support.
Facing an audience of people holding her campaign signs in Tupelo, the petite 59-year-old stood under the rancher's arm and said, with a smile:
"If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row."
She smiled again at the laughter and applause from the small white crowd.
Enough.
Stop with the stupid hate talk already. Everybody.
This Mississippi-born woman looks like everyone's little graying aunt, but she's not a novice politician - despite becoming the first woman to represent Mississippi in Congress last April.
That was when Hyde-Smith, the then-state agriculture commissioner, was appointed to replace U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Mississippi, who stepped down due to health reasons. Before being elected agriculture commissioner in 2011 and re-elected in 2015, Hyde-Smith had served in the Mississippi Legislature from 2000 to 2012 - most of that time as a Democrat who frequently voted with the GOP on major issues. She made herself an honest partisan in 2010 when she officially switched to the Republican Party.
Lest you think that she didn't really understand what she was saying - Mississippi led the nation in the most lynchings (561, according to the NAACP) from 1882 to 1968 - consider this history of the man she replaced in Washington:
In June 2005, when the U.S. Senate formally apologized for its failure to enact a federal anti-lynching law in the early 20th century "when it was most needed," only 20 senators did not join as cosponsors of an anti-lynching law that 80 other senators passed on a voice vote. Cochran and fellow Mississippian Trent Lott were among those who did not join as cosponsors. Cochran famously said, "I'm not in the business of apologizing for what someone else did or didn't do. I deplore and regret that lynching occurred and that those committing them weren't punished, but I'm not culpable."
Thus, in this raucous 2018 mid-term election season, Hyde-Smith found it advantageous to drop a mention of her willingness to attend "a public hanging" in front of a very white campaign audience in the state that has America's highest percentage of African-Americans, according to the last census.
Did we mention that Hyde-Smith's Nov. 27 runoff opponent, Democrat Mike Espy, is black?
Espy, who tallied 40.4 percent of votes cast on Nov. 6 to Hyde-Smith's 41.4 percent of the vote, called her comment "reprehensible" on Twitter and wrote that her words "have no place in our political discourse, in Mississippi, or our country. We need leaders, not dividers, and her words show that she lacks the understanding and judgment to represent the people of our state."
Five days after the Nov. 6 vote, the video emerged of Hyde-Smith's campaign comment. The clip was posted on a progressive website in Louisiana called The Bayou Brief. By early Tuesday afternoon, it had been viewed 4.5 million times.
Trying to stop the bleeding, Hyde-Smith - for whom, before the midterm election, President Donald Trump campaigned - released a statement on Sunday:
"In a comment on Nov. 2, I referred to accepting an invitation to a speaking engagement. In referencing the one who invited me, I used an exaggerated expression of regard, and any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous."
"Expression of regard." "Regard." Really? Is White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders writing Hyde-Smith's lines, too?
Later, in a roomful of reporters asking a variety of questions about her "public hanging" comment, Hyde-Smith said, in this order:
1. "I put out a statement yesterday, and we stand by that statement."
2. "We put out the statement yesterday and it's available, and we stand by that statement."
3. "I put out a statement yesterday, and that's all I am going to say about it."
4. "I put out a statement, and we stand by the statement and that's all I'm going to say about it."
5. "We put out a statement yesterday, and I stand by the statement."
Here's our variety of questions.
-If he invited you to a bank robbery, would you say you'd be on the front row?
-If he invited you to mass shooting, would you say you'd be on the front row?
-If he invited you to a cyanide shower, would you say you'd be on the front row?
-If he invited you to a witch burning, would you say you'd be on the front row?
-If he invited you to a public crucifixion, would you say you'd be on the front row?