I'm still as happy as a schoolgirl over Strom Thurmond's death, but this article in Slate about Thurmond's hypocrisy gets my goat anyway. It dredges up an old -- and probably accurate -- rumor that Thurmond fathered a daughter with a black servant in the mid-1920s.

I don't have an issue with the rumor-mongering, or the schadenfreude. But by calling Thurmond out for misegenation, Slate is playing by the enemy's rules, and agreeing that there is indeed something wrong with it. Thurmond held loathsome public positions; isn't it a good thing that his private behavior contravened them? Would Thurmond have somehow been a better man had he scrupilously avoided sexual contact with "Nigra" people? Thurmond's evil record is enough to condemn him, without validating his nasty beliefs by parsing them.

My problem with the article doesn't end there. It ends by snickering, "As for God, I can't help but wonder if Thurmond felt he had been forsaken by the all-merciful Christian deity and stumbled into the tragic realm of Greek fate when, in 1993, a drunk driver hit and killed the 22-year-old white daughter he did acknowledge, just before she was to enter the Miss South Carolina contest." Thurmond was a loathsome reptile for a century, so his daughter deserved to die? By that logic, AIDS is God's punishment on homosexuals and hemophiliacs after all.

Way to join the other side, Slate.