The Finest China in the Cabinet - The Dish.

Strom Thurmond was a vicious, race-baiting, ignorant ass, as were most of his ilk. In the vernacular, let's start calling a spade a spade. (The below is from CNN.com.)

Minding manners

Dick Harpootlian, a former Democratic chairman for South Carolina, said he loathed Thurmond's politics as did many others, but natives of the state would never publicly discuss the rumors and open secret surrounding Thurmond's eldest child.

"You know what we call it down here? We call it ugly," said Harpootlian, a Columbia, South Carolina, attorney. "We call it being ugly -- talking about it. It's manners. You don't publicize the personal weaknesses, or peccadilloes of your neighbors."

In South Carolina culture you can take into consideration being human, Harpootlian said, "and I think the rest of the country ought to also."

The support that Thurmond gave Washington-Williams after her mother introduced them in 1941 was an example of Thurmond's "doing the right thing," Harpootlian said. "He paid for her way through college and maintained a relationship with her."

As for the questions regarding whether it was a consensual conception given the teen's position and Thurmond's power, Harpootlian said that question no longer matters.

"That's something that's three-quarters of a century old, " he said. "What's the relevance of invading something that happened in the 1920s?"

Williamson, a South Carolina native, said there is a limit to following the mores of Southern manners. Being ugly "is bad manners, " he said, "but some men have no manners anyway. And they are the men at the top who have the power to exercise their bad manners."