McCain, the Slaveholder

[WildCat]

If you thought real life doesn't get as stupid as the internet... Whoopie thinks McCain will make her a slave:

 

[Pardalis]

Ehm, there actually were McCain's holding slaves. So "McCain, the slaveholder" is a completely valid thread title - unless you for some reason think I meant: "John McCain himself is a slaveholder". Nobody said that.

Of course when one starts a thread titled "McCain, the Slaveowner" in the politics section instead of the history section, the first thought that pops into people's mind is: "Of course he must be referring to [FONT=times, times new roman, serif]William Alexander McCain".

This must be the lamest backpedaling, ever.

You may be right that you technically weren't "lying", but you are guilty of something even worse: you were dishonest and misleading.
[/FONT]

 

[UserGoogol]

what, just looking at Obama's mother? No slavery in Kenya, eh?

Perhaps, but I'm not familiar with such things on the Obama side of the family, and if you go back far enough, I have to imagine that most people have slavery of some sort in their ancestry. (Because as you indirectly note, slavery has been a comparatively common institution historically.) Also, I felt that "American owner of black slaves" was implied and not worth clarifying.

Also, I have to imagine that the Dunham family history is somewhat easier to research than the Obama family history.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

No. It's simply a coincidence.




P.S. This is a joke.

One more crack like that and I'll shoot you down like a Pinkerton man

 

[Oliver]

Oliver, were your grandparents Nazis?

No. You people still didn't get it. It isn't about Slavery or "Slavemastery":
it is about John's denial - and therefore character. Plain and simple.

 

[marksman]

Oliver, were your grandparents Nazis?

No.

Well, given that you make this about McCain's denial, I think your clear denial above is pretty pertinent.

It isn't about Slavery or "Slavemastery":
it is about John's denial - and therefore character. Plain and simple.

And yet your thread wasn't titled "John McCain's Denial" or "John McCain's Character". It references slavery and John McCain's slave-holding ancestor.

Which makes your tortured rationalizations -- while humorous in a "oh My goodness, that dude doesn't even realize his arms have been hacked off in the car crash he caused" sort of way -- all the more bizarre.

In the future, if you want your threads to be about the topic and not about you, you should write them in something approaching a logical fashion, as opposed to the inflammatory and misleading fashion you appear to prefer.

 

[applecorped]

And my grandfather stole a horse. So?

Apologize to all horses everywhere, now!

 

[dudalb]

In the future, if you want your threads to be about the topic and not about you, you should write them in something approaching a logical fashion, as opposed to the inflammatory and misleading fashion you appear to prefer.

Don't hold your freaking breath waiting for Oliver to do that.

 

[dudalb]

McCain's ancestry is relevent...how?

I have none other than Jesse James lurking in my family tree, a train robber, thief and murderer. Does that mean I am a scumbag too?

Now we need to dig up somebody here who has Bob and Charlie Ford in their family tree and we can really have some fun....

 

[Cleon]

When I saw this thread, I immediately thought "this is going to be silly."

Odd, how unsurprised I was.

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Now we need to dig up somebody here who has Bob and Charlie Ford in their family tree and we can really have some fun....

Ironically, I used to work with a Robert Ford.

 

[gdnp]

Huh. My last post was defending BAC. Now I am defending Oliver. Go figure.

As Oliver has pointed out, McCain having slaveholders in his ancestry is not a big deal to me. Assuming it is true, McCain should have acknowledged it, noted that the same could be said for Obama, and dismissed it.

His denial raises a question on his attitudes towards race. Does he see race entirely as a non-issue: all past grievances have been redressed, we are now ready for a color-blind society? Or does he think there are still inequities that should be addressed through programs such as affirmative action?

I know this is going to sound like a stretch, but to some degree I see McCain's denial of his families connection to slavery the same way I would see a German's denial of his families connection to Nazism. It does not imply that he is a racist any more than the German's denial implies that he is an antisemite, but it may imply a desire to avoid the issue, and thus a certain lack of sensitivity to the role that racism still plays in society.

 

[Donal]

No it doesn't. When John McCain actually makes a statement about race relations in this country, then we can gauge his attitude regarding.

He probably got this wacky idea that bringing up the slavery issue from a distant past would cause an irrelevant stir and further hurt his campaign.

Isn't that just nutty?

 

[gtc]

His denial raises a question on his attitudes towards race.

Did he actually know about the slaveholders in his past when he made his denial?

The issue strikes me as being similar to Hillary's story about how she was named after Edmund Hillary. She was wrong but there is no evidence to suggest that she knew it at the time.

 

[gdnp]

Did he actually know about the slaveholders in his past when he made his denial?

That I do not know. Then again, if someone told me that my ancestors were slaveholders, slaves, or anything else, my response would be "really? I didn't know that. Could you show me the evidence?" It would not be denial, unless I had a pretty certain knowledge of my genealogy. Denial without examination of the evidence would once again raise questions of motivation.

ETA: I do not think that it is too much of a stretch to assume that a person that does not wish to examine his own family's involvement with slavery because he finds it uncomfortable or embarrassing might also be unwilling to examine the lingering effects that slavery and Jim Crow continue to have on our society today.