Senator Foghorn Leghorn Returns for a Swipe

Listening to Senator Zell "Foghorn Leghorn" Miller (Democrat-Georgia) work his way through the cageyness of simple conversation with an Op-Ed columnist is like observing your grandparents using their first ATM card.

Yesterday, he attacked New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd on the Imus in the Morning radio show, saying, "The more Maureen Loud [sic] gets on 'Meet the Press' and writes those columns, the redder these states get. I mean, they don't want some high brow hussy from New York City explaining to them that they're idiots and telling them that they're stupid." Miller also suggested "that red-headed woman at the New York Times" should not mock anyone's religion: "You can see horns just sprouting up through that Technicolor hair."

Dowd responded in kind: "I'm not a highbrow hussy from New York. I'm a highbrow hussy from Washington. Senator, pistols or swords?"

Distant echoes of Lester Maddox-style Dixiecrats turned born agains singing to Jesus with words like, "segregation now, segregation forever!" are beginning to startle african-americans with recollections of firehoses and german shepherds. Forty years ago, the mountain man Senator once said that LBJ was "a Southerner who sold his birthright for a mess of dark pottage." Is it any wonder that many considered his keynote speech at this summer's Republican National Convention to be America's first nationally televised Klan rally.

His outrage over seeing the American flag worn as a costume during the Super Bowl halftime entertainment this year was shared by many Americans. Miller's speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, which referred to singer Kid Rock as "that ignoramus," expressed the sentiments of others in seeing the nation's flag treated so disrespectfully.

"This is the same flag that we pledge allegiance to. [Kid Rock] should be tarred and feathered, and ridden out of this country on a rail."

In the mean time, the Miller's staff will be unveiling a new collectible license plate in honor of his retirement, as soon as the candy-flake paint is dry on the propeller beanies.