As it happened, Strom Thurmond died just hours after Lester Maddox, another of the most infamous racist Southerners of the Jim Crow era. I'm sure Satan had, as Marcellus Wallace would say, "a couple of hard, pipe-hitting niggers ready to go to work" on them when they arrived.

Thinking about it, though, Lester Maddox maybe wasn't quite as bad as Thurmond. Maddox was evil enough, but he seemed to have some honesty and integrity. He just didn't like black folk, didn't want anything to do with them.

Strom Thurmond, on the other hand, was a career politician- unlike Maddox- and used the race issue purely as a vote getter. When the societal wind started blowing the other way, why he was all in favor of black folks. He hired them for his campaign staff. Turns out he didn't care that much about black folk one way or the other. How much more evil is it to be that hateful with people just to get some votes?

Worst of all, however, was that punk-ass George Wallace. His whining apologies really, really didn't impress me. He didn't really mean all those mean things he said. Well why'd you say them, then?

I'd guess that Maddox is roasting somewhere a couple of rungs higher in hell than these other two, or at least he would be if I were playing Dante. Maddox went to his grave unapologetic for his views. He was a hateful racist, but perhaps he would escape exacerbating charges of demagoguery.