A Strange Way To Spend Your Time

by hilzoy

John McCain can't seem to catch a break. First, he had to cancel a fundraiser with someone who had said that rape was like bad weather: "As long as it's inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it." (Except that -- oops! -- McCain kept the money from the fundraiser, and the people who gave it will still get to meet him at an event. But that event will be held in "a different venue.")

And now this:

"A key organizer of John McCain's meeting Saturday with former supporters of Hillary Clinton is best known for her role in another bitter American fight: The effort by some white descendants of Thomas Jefferson to keep his possible African-American descendants out of family gatherings.

Paula Abeles emailed Politico yesterday to complain that her group had gotten short shrift in a blog item, writing, "I initiated the teleconference with McCain on Saturday and was solely responsible for the guest list." Another Clinton backer at the event, Will Bower, confirmed that she was "integral" to assembling the group.

But Abeles first made the news in 2003, when she and her husband, then-Monticello Association President Nat Abeles, led the fight to keep members of the Hemings family -- descendants of Jefferson slave and, some historians believe, mistress Sally Hemmings -- out of a gathering of the Monticello Association, which is made up of lineal descendants of the third president."

Ben Smith cites an AP article, which is kind of incredible: apparently, Ms. Abeles spent a considerable amount of time pretending to be a 67 year old black woman on an internet chat group in order to find out how members of the Hemings family might be planning to get into the event:

"Lucian Truscott IV, a Jefferson descendant who believes the Hemings family should be recognized, (...) said that when the Hemings family started discussing the reunion on the Yahoo! site about three months ago, Nat Abeles promptly told the Jefferson family they were only allowed to bring two guests each.

When Truscott tried to accommodate the few dozen Hemingses by getting invitations from other Jefferson family members, Abeles countered by telling association members they had to be present to bring guests.

Then Truscott thought of using junior members - teenagers attending the event with their parents - to sponsor the Hemings family. Nat Abeles said only full members were allowed to bring guests.

"Every time we'd think of a way to get the Hemings there, he'd come up with a new rule," Works said."

Why did she do this?

"It might have been childish, but I really think I was working in the best interest of the majority of the family members to make the reunion a calm and civilized gathering," she said.

I have to wonder: with all the things in the world that one might choose to spend time on -- being kind to a child, helping the sick, the halt, and the blind, even correcting Someone who is (genuinely) Wrong on the Internets -- what kind of person would decide that the thing she really had to do was keep actual descendants of Thomas Jefferson out of a meeting of descendants of Thomas Jefferson? Couldn't she think of a single non-repulsive, non-spiteful, non-racist thing to do?

I also wonder: hasn't the McCain campaign figured out about Google yet?

Comments

[aimai]

She doesn't watch Bill O'Reilly or she would have realized that probably those Hemmings/Jefferson descendants wouldn't have shown up shouting "give me my mother *&^% ice tea."

aimai

[rob!]

McCain hasn't figured out yet that when he is taped for TV, it isn't shot with a Kinescope and then immediately erased to make room for Texaco Star Theater.

Sen. McCain--it's called digital. DIGITAL. every utterance, every aversion, every lie, every weird, uncomfortable smile at the wrong place is out there SOMEWHERE.

But please keep forgetting this until, say, mid-November.

[PhoenixRising]

Free Advice from Past Editions of 'Savage Love' for the GOP:

'In your case, 'GFE' stands for 'Google F'ing Exists'.

[trilobite]

If we didn't like guilt by association as to Senator Obama, we should avoid invoking it as to Senator McCain. He is not responsible for the shady past of every person who organizes a meeting with him, any more than Obama was responsible for Bill Ayers or Rasheed Khalidi.

[Bernard Yomtov]

The effort by some white descendants of Thomas Jefferson to keep his possible African-American descendants out of family gatherings.

I think the word "possible" should be deleted.

[Randy Paul]

His campaign didn't know about Claytie Williams? Christ I knew about him and I've never even lived in Texas. Forget Google, just check him out on Wikipedia:

His sense of humor was again demonstrated when he urged Hispanic Americans to support his candidacy because he met Modesta [his wife] in a Mexican restaurant.

[aimai]

No, but since Obama was and is held responsible for bill ayers and any black person who ever existed at any time in history I think turnabout is fair play.

aimai

[Bernard Yomtov]

aimai,

If Obama is really responsible for Thomas Sowell I don't see how i can support him.

[mierardi]

Actually, BY, the DNA tests have not proved (and given the limits of current technology, cannot prove) that THOMAS Jefferson had a child with Sally Hemings. It can only prove that SOME MALE Jefferson did. One can certainly argue on grounds of historical probability that the alternative candidates, such as the president's brother Randolph Jefferson, are unpersuasive, but that is a historical argument, not a scientific one. The paternity issue generates a lot of vehemence on both sides, but it is a distraction: the outrage is that Jefferson OWNED a fellow human being, not that he might have had sex with her. Whether the descendants of slaves at Monticello ought to be able to picnic with the descendants of their former oppressors is a simple matter of moral equity, and to support them does not require us to claim that the scientific evidence proves what it does not at present prove.

[hilzoy]

For what it's worth: I didn't try to do much guilt by association in this post. I did say that I thought the McCain campaign needed to learn to google, but I did not mean to imply e.g. that McCain shares Ms. Abeles' views. I don't believe that he does.

Mostly, I was thinking: why would anyone decide to do this with her life?

[Model 62]

Turnabout is a terrible way to play, aimai, when the game one is trying play is called "no more politics as usual."

Less bludgeon, more jujitsu.

[Marcus]

No, of COURSE they haven't figured out how to Google yet - their candidate professes to be computer illiterate.

Cindy, on the other hand, knows how to Google cookie recipes like mad (another purloined epicurean "favorite recipe" from Madame McCain has just found its way into print, apparently...)

[John]

It's worth noting that a fair percentage of Sally Hemings' descendants aren't actually Black in any more than a highly theoretical sense. Eston Hemings passed as white, and his descendants (see here) are basically as white as anybody else in this country.

One assumes that while racism is certainly involved here, the main issue is that these people don't want to admit that Jefferson had children by a slave, since that makes Jefferson look bad, and these sorts are serious Jeffersonolators. One assumes that they would not try to deny membership to partially Black descendants of Jefferson's legitimate children, even if these looked distinctly more like Black people than Eston Hemings' descendants.

[Jake]

He's probably vetting his people at thegoogle.com

[bago]

Politicians have gotten used to lying with without impunity because our press is lazy. Now that they are up against an army of googlers they have no idea how to react. Remember John McCain is older than Buddy Holly and the American Express card.