A man who thinks too much about his ancestors is like a potato-the best part of him is underground. – Henry S. F. Cooper
The Associated Press (via reporter Glen Johnson from Boston) has chosen to alert us to the fact that two of Mitt Romney’s great-great grandfathers practiced polygamy. Porcupine knows this because today’s Cape Cod Times featured the story prominently, complete with photographs of statues raised in the honor of one of them. Interestingly, while featured on Page 3 of the print version of the newspaper, it is entirely missing from the on-line version, so Porcupine is unable to furnish a link to that story, but includes this one from ABC News This isn’t entirely new information; it has long been reported that Romney’s forebears, who were members of the Mormon church of that era, practiced polygamy, which was outlawed by that church in 1890. What is new is the information that there is a statue of Miles Park Romney – location Salt Lake City – and that his great-great grandmother ‘used to walk the floor and shed tears of sorrow’ according to her diary over the polygamous choice of her husband.
Romney has repudiated polygamy in the best possible way – by being the only Republican top-tier candidate to be married to one woman for 37 years. In fact, since Mitt and Anne Romney went to their high-school prom together, it is unclear if he has ever even dated another woman, much less married one – or two ot three, like McCain and Guiliani.
However, this story raises important questons for the rest of the Presidential field. Every human being has 32 great-great-grandparents. Porcupine assumes that the Associated Press, by commenting on the lives of three of Mitt Romney’s ancestors, is beginning a two year series to bring us the lives and names of the others.
This will be a weighty enterprise for Mr. Johnson and the Associated Press, so Porcupine suggests that they stick with the six so-called ‘top tier’ candidates – McCain, Guiliani and Romney on the Republican side, and Clinton, Obama, and Edwards on the Democratic side. There may be intriguiging stories there as well. Was the great-great grandfather of Southerner John Edwards a slaveholder? Did he possibly own Kenyan slaves, related to Obama’s great-great grandfather? This could be a great teachable moment.
And for all those candidates who claim to not be clear on who ther great-great-grandparents were, or that they thought and did, there can be only one question.
WHAT are they hiding?
Cross Posted At Peter Porcupine
McCain’s first marriage fell apart after he spent 7 years as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton. Still, you are correct, this story was unfair to Romney.
Ever the educator, Mr. Porcupine. Bravo.
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Off to an afternoon showing of Amazing Grace.
Somehow, after the well-funded, not-very-repudiated-by-Republicans Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign ads, or the expensive, multi-year Whitewater investigation complete with numerous leaks into the press, or the manufacture and repetition of Al Gore quotations, it is hard for me to be up in arms about this. Up in eyebrows, maybe. That’s it.
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I wish I lived in a fairer world where everyone played by rational rules. I really wish that. But I don’t.
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If I did, I’d condemn this as pandering to prejudice — which it is. But I’m really tired of seeing Democrats portrayed as weird, as not-normal, as not-tough, or as not-patriotic when, for example, there is nothing particularly normal, tough, or patriotic about the partisan bicyclist occupying the White House currently. I’m not about to ask AP about those other candidates’ 32 great-great-grandparents. They’ve already published enough dubious stories about Senator Reid recently.
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My sympathies to you, Mr. Porcupine, and your family of Erethizontidae.
Atrios just linked to Lawyers, Guns, and Money which takes a high road.
of recent John Edwards fame, had this to say. (Warning, not kid friendly language)
…I wonder where she got the idea that
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And it reinforces the privilege of one specific faith.
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Is she suggesting that Mormons were legally permitted to practice polygamy in the Utah Territory? If so, she is sadly mistaken. The federal government, which had and has plenary powers over the territories (not limited Article 1, Section 8 powers, as in the states) specifically outlawed polygamy in the territories, including the Utah Territory, and that law was upheld by the US Supreme Court in 1878 (Reynolds vs. US–relevant portions available over the Internet).
What she writes immediately following that statement cleared it up for me.
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I think her point was that going after Romney’s faith and history is another example of a media (and perhaps electorate) who seem to demand that their presidential candidates are just the right kind of Christian — as if it were a job requirement. A privilege of one specific faith (mainstream Christianity) is the “right” to run for POTUS. Otherwise, you’re subject to excessive and unreasonable scrutiny, including “stories” as irrelevant as Romney’s grandparents’ decisions.
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It’s religious bigotry, and it’s destructive.
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That’s what I think she’s getting at.
…the purpose of the media is to make money, nothing more, nothing less. A self-described Republican should know that–most Democrats should, too. If Ms. Pumpernickel wants to browbeat the media into doing her bidding, she should feel free. It’s not a particularly interesting topic, although the religious right browbeat the broadcast media into ignoring positive depictions of gay characters forever, while John Avarosis (of americablog.com fame) got the media to shun “Dr.” Laura Shitslinger for a while because of her anti-gay rants.
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Let’s cut to the chase, stomv. The media in the USofA are in the business of selling your eyeballs and eyeballs of others to advertisers’ advertisements. That’s the long, short and middle of it. If it’s anyone who you believe is bigoted, it’s the possessors of the eyeballs whose viewing provides the ratings to support the rates charged to advertisers.
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And I can assure you that the situation isn’t any better with so-called “public” radio and television.
For the following reasons:
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1. Porcupine, not Pumpernickel. And, gender neutral. Be respectful, eh?
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2. Thanks for the lesson on capitalism, but don’t forget that people are the ‘demanders’ — and if they’re not happy with the product that media is providing, than media slips. That’s precisely why it’s not just fair game, but it’s important for folks to discuss media coverage and point out when it’s inappropriate.
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3. I didn’t write about my perception of bigotry, but of Shakespeare’s Sister. I was clear about that. RIF.
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On a side note, and not directly linked with my assertion that your post was lame and craptacular, I completely disagree with your assertion about public broadcasting.
…going up a couple of comments, you made reference to a “she.” It escaped my notice that the “she” that you were referring to was Shakespeare’s sis, not Peter Pumpernickel (no, Peter is not “gender neutral”). After reviewing the relevant pages, it became clear that the “she” you were referring to was SS, not PP.
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BTW, I’m not surprised that you would disagree with my assertion about public broadcasting. But having observed them for over two decades, it’s clear that they are not particularly different from commercial broadcasting. What do you believe that “underwriters” are, other than advertisers?
that I was always and only referring to SS. As for PP: regardless of meatspace, PP seems quite content to be referred as Peter Porcupine, and I’ve never seen PP refer to PP’s own gender on this blog. If my (lack of) observation is indeed true, it’s intentional. So, I ask that you be respectful w.r.t. PP’s handle and gender “choice” online.
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As for underwriting, what possible motivation would The Park Foundation, for example, have other than their claim to value “a diverse and transparent media landscape. Its goal is to fund non-commercial broadcasting, investigative journalism, and independent media that is substantive, unbiased, and accurate. It aims to heighten public awareness of critical environmental, political, and social issues to foster a more fully informed electorate.”
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I know a member of their board, and have met a few others. They’re very private, are sitting on gajillions of money, and have no interest except to give it away well. They have no product, no service, and no profit motive. What, exactly, are they advertising?
…worth oodles of money, and that it is so generous to public television without apparent strings attached, but I doubt that public television would bite the ADM, GE, Raytheon, Boeing, and other corporate hands that feed them. I’m not even sure that public television would broadcast much that is particularly critical of the business of the companies in the Park Foundation’s investment portfolio.
it’s about success for Democrats. These tools of smear and fear have been used more against Dems than Repubs and if we can take this garbage journalism out of the equation, Dems will get the upper hand.
So because Kerry was Swift-boated (and failed to respond appropriately) then we’re going to embrace the kind of politics that captizes candidates in a tidal of innuendo and twisted fiction?
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I don’t think so. We don’t need to go there. But we do need to expect if from the opposition and plan accordingly.
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What’s especially disgusting is that the Repubs are willing to devour their own. They did it to McCain in SC, and now they’re willing to go back generations to find “dirt” on Romney when they had plenty to work with in his own gubernatorial record.
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This depends of course on your ethics, but a utilitarian calculation (remember Bentham, greatest good for the greatest number, etc.) would indicate that a Democrat in the White House that didn’t send tens of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of Americans to graves and hospitals needlessly would have been a huge moral achievement worth embracing some political hardball. The fact that Democrats don’t do this gives the jingoists an upper hand.
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It’s convenient to have an absolutist view of morals, but it doesn’t lead to particularly moral outcomes. The people with demolished houses in Falluja may not care about the fine points of how U.S. electoral campaigns are carried out.
Having ethics and/or a moral core is not “convenient” as you so very glibly suggest. How jaded. Try applying that kind of thinking to healthcare or housing and let me know what you come up with? That’s why there’s more than a few references to Bentham’s “slippery slope.”
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The convenience that I do see are the lines you draw from an unwillingness to engage in scorched earth politics and the very real scorched earth in Fallujah – without any empirical evidence to support it. So you’re suggesting if the Dems had engaged in our own version of Swifting, then we would have won…and that’s based on what metrics? And to entertain it at all…John Kerry would have what? A massive troop withdrawal on that day after his inauguration? Or did you want the Swifting to have occurred before there were Swiftboat Vets in 2000? Let me know, k? Man, we can have a ball with this. It’s kind of like “Quantam Leap!” (pun intended)
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The post-September 11th world is complex….as should be our foreign policy. While Bush has squandered every opportunity to rethink and retrofit our collective response…that doesn’t mean that the Dems response should be less than thoughtful, reality based and foward thinking or our politics reflective of Mr. Bush, et al.
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are not the only possible “moral core” nor necessarily the best one. Going back to the Pearl of Great Value parable in the gospels, there is a Christian prejudice that absolute is best when it comes to morals.
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I note with interest that your question “based on what metrics?” is a utilitarian question. I am very happy to engage in that kind of thinking, and I recoil from the simplistic argument “do what Republicans do and we’ll win as much as Republicans.” Perhaps you have encountered people who argue like that and you have mistaken me for one of them. You might think twice about what it is you believe I am “suggesting”.
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Returning to the “what metrics?” question, the Democratic base defines playing fair very differently from the Republicans. There were a number of studies done around 2004 that split up the different ideological groups that support Democrats and Republicans. There is a whole chunk of Democrats that hate partisanship and want everything fair and nice; there is no similar bloc of Republicans. (I need to dig up these references.) That, by the way, is why Republicans can get away with Swift Boating in the first place and we cannot. Did you not notice how tiny was the Republican outrage at this? Did you miss the fetching band-aids at the GOP convention?
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But as progressives, it wouldn’t hurt for us to develop sharper elbows, to jump more quickly to defend the reputation of people on our side, and to insist that what we are advocating isn’t just liberal and progressive but moral and righteous and to act like that, as if our positions and candidates are worth fighting for.
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Whenever I raise a challenge like this, I seem to be met with people who want to oversimplify this challange so that they don’t have to meet it. Could I beg responders to think about how they would state this position in its strongest form before answering?
The best defense is a good offense.
“Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”
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People like Rush and Hannity and the Margolis Brothers and Peter Porcupine treat it like the first commandment.
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Democrats, on the other hand, are more than happy to eat their own.
is that I employ utilitarian questions towards political strategy, where it is perfectly reasonable and acceptable rather than questions of ethics. It’s about “rendering unto Caesar,” KB. Eviscerating the opposition, ruining reputations and lives is no way to win, because at the end of the day – you still have to work with the folks who have lost. A very smart city councilor from Cambridge taught me that.
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As for this little gem –
“Whenever I raise a challenge like this, I seem to be met with people who want to oversimplify this challange so that they don’t have to meet it.” This, is just offensive. I’ve been in the trenches a very long time, so please – don’t preach to me about “not having to meet” the challenge.
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There is no doubt in my mind that you are a very clever person…but that can be very dangerous to a campaign when not tempered with an ethical spine. An moral jellyfish will do us in faster than the Republicans. To wit: the ridiculous piece on Reeves. I hope to God that no one else sees that. It’s bloody embarrassing.
The victory of the Civil Rights movement was accompanied by making certain racist positions unacceptable. Part of that was discrediting certain racists so that their opinions lay outside the margins of what is acceptable.
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Conservatives understand this thoroughly and work hard to marginalize. Many Liberals seem to understand this not at all. As if, for example, Donahue or Dobson might be convinced.
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This discussion would be easier if you would kindly refrain from the snark: “as for this litte gem”, “very clever person”, etc. It smells of condescension — and not pleasantly.
Perhaps what you smell is the whiff of your own snark and condescension. Please reread your own comments!
Let’s see….you’re really going to use the Civil Rights movement to justify engaging in guerilla warfare politics?
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Are ya kidding?
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Did you learn nothing from the movement? MLK and others did NOT engage in a “tit for tat” kind of response. They engaged in a peaceful repudiation of racists through marches and demonstrations of civil disobedience. With abuse raining on their heads….MLK kept to his vision of a movement based not on “revenge” but on changing minds and hearts. They engaged in a public dialogue that disavowed the very kind of scorched earth tactics you suggest we use.
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We may have to “agree to disagree.” I just didn’t want your assertions to go unchallenged, because I disagree profoundly with that course of action.
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Uh no, I’m not “using” the Civil Rights movement which included, by the way, more than Martin Luther King. I don’t think I’m “justifying engaging in guerilla warfare politics” but then I don’t have a clue what you mean, nor have you spelled out this latest view you think I’m advocating, or which you think my views lead to.
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ColorMePurple, did someone in your past piss you off on an issue like this? I just don’t understand where all your vitriol is coming from.
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Ironically, your style is one of hard elbows, repudiation, and dismissal: exactly what you think I’m advocating and exactly what you claim to condemn.
If you debate with me, “it’s all good,” but if I stake out a position and defend it…it’s “vitriol?” “Sharp elbows?”
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Again. Are ya kidding?
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For someone who advocates the kind of politics you do, you are very thin-skinned. I don’t mean to offend you, but merely commenting. I consider this a family squabble. To my point, note that your initial responses to me included :
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“It’s convenient to have an absolutist view of morals, but it doesn’t lead to particularly moral outcomes.,” (convenient?)
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and
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” Whenever I raise a challenge like this, I seem to be met with people who want to oversimplify this challange so that they don’t have to meet it.” (so they don’t have to meet it, or because they don’t agree with you?”)
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Not exactly an invitation to the Sunday School picnic, is it? But I can take it…and I have no problem defending the position that we shouldn’t engage in no holds barred politics that the Bushies and others have engaged in. Would you ever want to be a part of a party that did to Senator Cleland what they did? No thanks. It’s this kind of stuff that is causing people to go unenrolled. I don’t think it’s in the best interests of the people we seek to serve, the Party or for the future of civil discourse.
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One last note….let the record show that my description of the Civil Rights Movement included MLK and “others,” clearly indicating that I understtod the movement was more than MLK.
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Apparently, you regard what I’m saying as so bad, dire, immoral, horrible that, instead of considering anything I say on its merits, you descend to ad hominem. This last response is ad hominem. I hope you don’t equate lobbing personal accusations with disagreeing.
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In fact, your response, oddly, matches some of what I’m saying. When we think something is bad, dire, immoral, and horrible, one tactic is to discredit the advocate. I’m saying since the successes of the civil rights movement, we do this to racists. Democrats (Dean and Pelosi recently) have started doing this with respect to Cheney. The Republicans noise machine has done it to Michael Moore. Democrats need to do this more, e.g., to Dobson.
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You, curiously, in “disputing” me (though none of my content) attempt to do this to me!
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Well, thank you for supporting my position even if you don’t support me. Color me amused!
…the Republican Noise Machine has given Michael Moore a degree of notariety that has him laughing all the way to the bank.
frantically searching for an offense to wag at.
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The question at hand is how much scarce time we should each devote to defending Mitt Romney against a silly article about his ancestry.
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The original Republican poster adopted an appropriately hurt and appealing tone, though I can’t imagine how he forgot to link his doubtless numerous posts decrying Kerry’s CommunionWatch and the New York Times’s curious obsession with the Clintons’ marriage.
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It’s true, few of us have volunteered to clear our calendars to man the barricades at AP headquarters. But I recall no one suggesting we now rush to exhume Mormon graves, plant hidden cameras to photograph Aaronic underwear, or ambush Romney with a surprise TV reunion of his embarassingly-connected relations.
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We simply don’t care.
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Yet, you seem to have seized the occasion to launch into a great manifesto on liberal purity in politics, without offering much more than stern yet vague pieties about “not stooping to their level.”
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Well, some of the nation’s leading centrist legal, military, diplomatic and scientific authorities believe the next presidential election is America’s last chance avert disaster. If replaying the video of Rudy Giuliani in drag in every church in South Carolina can help save the Republic, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to avert your delicate eyes a little.
And with this kind of “screw you” attitude – there are people that will see another type of finger. We have this kind of arrogance and this kind of attitude, and why? As former Democrats vote with their feet and leave the party…and new voters don’t pull for the “D”. I’ve seen the stats…even in the bluest of blue states, the unenrolled are taking over.
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So there’s no need or room for a broader appeal, no need for common decency? We’re okay with “Clelanding” the next victim because….they did it to us? Talk about inspiring Ralph or someother third party to “reform” us.
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So understand this; people don’t have to just avert their eyes. They can choose “something else” – which is why the Dems happen to be in power now and the Republicans are not. Today. There are no guarantees for tomorrow. I had hoped we learned something in the last 12 years or so….but not if your thinking is representative of the party. We went out because of institutional arrogance – and so did the Republicans in 2006.
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S0 – really – go there, and run the Rudy videos and be left at the altar in 2008. This is what happens when idealogues run the train….right off the cliff.
I have never written about either subject. Feel free to search my blog.
my point.
The real Peter Porcupine (aka William Cobbett) was a racist and apologist for slavery. I’d wondered if the person using PP’s name knew this, and tended towards giving her the benefit of the doubt, but she brought the issue up in her blog this week.
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It makes you wonder, especially given her stance on gay rights.
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Plus c’est la meme chose, plus ça change.
For a quick sample, let’s start with your use of the word “sodomite,” move on to your description of homosexuality as the “love that won’t shut up about itself,” take a moment to wonder what you meant by “I await my invitation to the heterosexual debate,” and finish with your declared opposition to “special rights.”
The New York Times editorial page reports that Republican recruiting on campuses includes all sorts of “fun”:
Note the response of Republican leaders. Distance. It is unimaginable that Democrats anywhere could recruit using a game like Fun with Guns.
…in pre-9/11 days, GOAL (Gun Owners Action League) would hold an annual advocacy day.
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In addition to displays, Eddie Eagle stuff, etc., one feature was a chance for legislators to shoot a real pistol (loaded with a target blank). A choice was given between Donkey and Elephant targets.
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At the end of the day, there wre ALWAYS a lot more Elephants than Donkeys shot up – but that’s because they were easier to hit, right?
Man, Monsieur Porcepic, you do not choose your best material. I was waiting for lurid descriptions of the indignities to which cardboard likenesses of the former governor of Texas is subjected, but no, you give me a gun league. A gun league! And a Massachusetts one, no less.
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The point I’m making is that it is very hard to imagine a Democratic Party organization — as opposed to a gun owners league — sponsoring Guns for Fun for recruiting. One might imagine the Democratic Fanatics Club lobbing grenades at Cheney statuary, but as a recruitment tool, Guns for Fun would be a Democratic non-starter.
my last joke was tasteless and I apologize for it.
It’s the deliberate schliemels like Steverino and Huh, who lie with impunity, that ought to apologize, not you for an unintentional snark.
I used your words, for your posts.
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Is there ever appropriate context for calling gay people “sodomites?”
Please read the post from which the words were extracted in its entirety:
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http://capecodporcup…
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Call it the ‘Huck Finn’ exception.
Yes, I’ve read the whole article. Here’s another quote:
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Now, from the Vice-President’s daughter to the barkeep at the Provincetown Ferry, everyone is aggressively
out', and mad for their rights. The right not to listen, or be unconcerned with the sexuality of your dentist, has been lost, as have many facets of the Right to Be Let Alone. Resignedly, we may as well accept it as payback for fifty-odd years of lithe young women draped over automobiles as Madison Avenue chanted the zombie mantra ofSex Sells’. By destroying decorum in public conversation, they have made appropriate the once unmentionable.<
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And then there’s this:
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http://capecodporcup…
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Porcupine thinks that we should declare a moratorium on all social and sexual issues for a while. The estimated 10% of the population who are gay have cannibalized 90% of the legislative agenda for the last few years. They and their supporters are entitled to their views, but enough is enough. No more sex for a while -let’s talk about GOVERNMENT.
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You’re a real friend to gay people, all right.
sociologically, it would be an interesting execise. but of course the reason for looking at the heritage of candidates is not “teachable moments” but smear, as you imply, PP. it’s easy enough to find holes in candidates’ present-day logic on various issues, and [sarcasm alert] just slightly more pertinent than the lifestyles on mythological beliefs of dead ancestors who never directly infulenced the candidate. but it must be irresitable to timid journalists to dig up bones, because them bones can’t fight back or bring libel suits. the only legitimacy i can see to doing this with romney is that he subscribes to a religion that “saves” other peoples dead ancestors, unasked. and again, the dead can;t fight back. corpse-meddling, whether by religious institutions or news/political orgs, is a pretty lowly form of activism. i wonder who it actually resonates with.
Speaking of ancestors, I frequently wonder whether it wouldn’t be useful to ask the South to forcefully repudiate the Confederacy. Republican state capitols throughout that region are festooned with Confederate military heroes, stars-and-bars, and post-reconstruction goons like Ben Tillman who were elected as Senator but deserve no such recognition. Why would anyone keep statues up for the founders of Jim Crow Laws?
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From a partisan angle, there’s much to be said for this.
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First it is likely to wedge Republicans. Southern Republicans are very enamored of their “special traditions”, but conservative Christians, particularly, the anti-abortionist crowd try to trace their lineage to the abolitionists. I doubt that nostalgia for defending the slave way of life extends to Utah Republicans. Would Christopher Shays supporters in western Connecticut be interested to know what the bulk of his party supports? How about Susan Collins’?
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Second, it is a way to get the country to look at the firmest Republican stronghold in the country and ask whether this is what we really want. All the arguments for keeping a Wade Hamptom statue prominent in South Carolina are bad arguments and the people making them will twist themselves into revealing knots as the make them.
consists of 4 years “coming up” in so. illinois, so i can’t really comment on your suggestion. i like the idea socially, but i have no sense of it’s possible political outfall. but you may be on to something – the simple question of removing the confederate flag from the SC state house dome to the grounds caused a big to-do. my initial question would be, wouldn;t this call to repudiate the past split the white dems just as it would the repubs?
Let’s not forget that there are “heroes” in the Democrat party that are/were racists who proudly flew the stars and bars. Robert Bird was even a member of the KKK and used the “n-word” as recently as six years ago on a national broadcast. Southern Democrats were the ones that lead the filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Byrd and James Esterland of Mississippi. Ben Tillman, whom you pointed out, was a Dem.
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This is a problem with all of our common ancestry as Americans; even if your ancestors didn’t come here until after much of this, you are still an American.
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There is no partisan win for either side on this issue. Unfortunately there are morons on all sides that continue to fly the stars and bars proudly.
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Go to any union job site in Boston and you will see no less then 5 stickers on the work trucks. All we can do is point out to these idiots that the stars and bars do not stand for trying to go back to the “good ole days” but stands for withdrawal from the US of A and is in direct conflict with the “these colors don’t run” sticker on the other window of their pickup.
The South was solidly Democratic since Reconstruction. The New Deal coalition included Southern Democrats in a big way. I’m not at all saying that Republicans have bad people, Democrats don’t, neener-neener.
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I’m saying keeping up statues in honor of the founder of the Red Shirts is repugnant. It might be a good time to remind people that there are some excellent artists out there and numerous people whose likenesses are more worthy of gracing a capitol building.
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It might further be a good time to emphasize this to the party that is always claiming that liberals are somehow morally lacking.
The South was solidly Democratic since Reconstruction. The New Deal coalition included Southern Democrats in a big way.
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In point of fact there have been three political parties in the US: the northern Republicans, the northern Democrats and the Dixiecrats, with some mixing particularly in the South. The Dixiecrats caucused with the northern Democrats from Reconstruction through, oh, about 1928, largely because of the northern Republican-led Reconstruction. The northern Democrat/Dixiecrat coalition began to fall apart in about 1928, when the northern Democrats nominated Roman Catholic Al Smith for president, and became really evident in the 1948 presidential election. Nixon’s Southern Strategy of the early 1970s to get the Dixiecrats to move to the Dixicrats to the Republican party proved remarkably successful, although Dixiecrats had largely voted with the northern Republicans for years before then, even though they didn’t caucus with them in Congress.
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Now, the southern Dixiecrats are still the tail that’s trying to wag the northern parties’ dog. And they have played it for all it’s worth. The South is probably one of the biggest welfare recipients this side of wherever.
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with tons of articles about guys like Heath Schuler — implying or claiming outright that the Dem majority is due to Blue Dog and other so-called moderate Dems… completely ignoring that you can’t really find 30 of them (the size of the majority) and completely ignoring the far more progressive Dems who also won in 2006.
There are some people who think he was not such a great guy, expecially to Native Americans. Yet there is a park in Boston named after him.
Although, there is a voyeristic thrill in knowing the sorted details of Mitt’s Mormon past.
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What I do find interesting is that Peter insinuates being married more than once is a character flaw.
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Speaking of politicans’ whose families owned slaves, how about the Strom Thurmond – Al Sharpton revelation? Ha!
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…which just goes to show there is NOTHING too outrageous to make up as a parallel example. FTR, I do NOT actually think Edward’s family owned any of Obama’s – but now, who knows?
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I rad today that Sharpton called the one time they met ‘awkward’ – imagine if he had known then!
I had just read it before I wrote my reply. What a interesting time we live where genealogy and genetics can make some of the most outrageous family connections imagined.
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We do know that Edwards’s familiy probably didn’t own any of Obama’s direct ancestors because Obama’s dad was a Kenyan. But you bring up a good point by saying “who knows?” I know a great deal of my family’s history, and I can say that I find nno evidence of any of my known ancestors owning slaves. But, as you point out above, the number of our ancestors increase at an exponential rate with each generation that we trace back. And since the mothers’ lines drop off, it is nearly impossible to know all of our ancestors. It is hard for anyone whose heritage runs more than 200 years to say unequivocally no ancestor of theirs owned slaves – because, “who knows”. Even African Americans would have a hard time denying that their forefathers were slave owners; new work in genetics is suggesting a many more African Americans with roots in slavery have European ancestry that was previously thought.
We may have KILLED a lot of people 500-600 years ago, but we didn’t own slaves. Or at least, not AFRICAN ones; some Irish, maybe.
I know with almost certainty that some of my ancestors owned slaves. They were wealthy southerners, so they just about had to own slaves. Nobody in my family talks about it though, so I’ve never gotten any actual confirmation that they owned slaves.
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I really think it is irrelevant though. Within another 200 years it will be hard to find any American of any race that doesn’t have ancestors who owned slaves (except for recent immigrants that haven’t intermarried into the American ppulation yet). It will also be hard to find anyone who doesn’t have ancestors who were slaves. Fortunately, most people don’t actually track things well enough to find out that some of their ancestors treated some of their other ancestors with brutal cruelty. Given the history of humanity, you can be pretty sure that some of your ancestors killed some of your other ancestors while they were members of rival nation-groups, some of your ancestors are the result of tribal rape attacks, some of your ancestors owned slaves (slavery has been very common throughout history), and some of your ancestors were slaves.
given mankind’s propensity to marry people similar to themselves — geographic, race, religion, and ethnicity.
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It isn’t required, and it isn’t an absolute. Some cultures maintain this more than others. But, I’d be shocked if America fully “melts” in this pot in 6 or 7 generations, even if one doesn’t take into consideration any immigration.
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But yes, if you don’t limit slavery to be white owners of black slaves in what is now the American South, sure. We’ve all owned slaves at one time or another, with almost certainty.
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P.S. I’d bet that very few Northerners have slave-owning heritage (in America). After all, there’s tons of European and Southeast Asians, and other nationalities who came over between 1880 and 1940, lived in the Northeast, and haven’t left. There’s also a massive non-slave-owning Hispanic population’s heritage.
It doesn’t have to fully melt. It just has to mix enough. It only takes one person marrying outside of the group and raising their children within it to allow any ancestry to spread throughout the entirety of a group fairly quickly. Most people don’t track their ancestors well enough to even know where they lived past 3 or 4 generations. In 200 years, it will be about 10 generations since the civil war. At which point, people will have had about 1000 ancestors alive during the civil war. Slavery was common in America for at least 200 years before that, which gives another 5-9 generations of ancestors alive during American slavery.
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Statistical studies based on models of how often people move around suggest that everyone in the world, including people in isolated groups that lived on Pacific islands or in America, has a common ancestor if you go back just a few thousand years. The estimate for all of Western Europe is less than a thousand years. Suggesting that all of America will have an ancestor from a fairly large group of Americans in less than 300 years is a very conservative estimate of population mixing.
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Slavery was common in all the colonies, not just the South. Boston used to have a slave market. Most the old New England families owned slaves at some point. Unless you’re going to restrict this to people who owned slaves between 1800 and the civil war, most New Englanders have ancestors that owned slaves (unless they can still trace all their ancestors to when they were immigrants and they immigrated since slavery was outlawed).
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In both Rhode Island and Massachusetts, only about 12% of the population trace their ancestry to England. So, no.
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Not that I can even follow what this digression has to do with the original point, but we’ve left facts and data far behind.
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In my case, I can go back three generations and of the eight ancestors, all eight were born in Italy, Ireland, Portugal, or in America to two parents who immigrated to America from one of those three countries.
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So, I can say definitively* that none of my ancestors are American slave owners. I’d bet that there are lots of people with my virtually identical circumstance — that all 8 of their great grandparents are either immigrants or the children of two immigrants.
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Add to all of this the fact that, percentage wise, few people owned slaves anywhere in America at any time, and that marriages were more correlated then than they are now (rich marries rich, etc.). So, I’d be really surprised if the majority of southerners** have slave owning heritage.
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But, this is a tangent to a tangent. Interesting to us, but probably in the wrong place at the wrong time.
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** for compactness I wrote southerners, but I’m specifically referring to white southerners who’ve got a parent born in the south — the group seemingly most likely to have a slave owner in his tree.
The Vikings really got around, as did the Portuguese. Naturally, the Italians were the Romans who had slaves from all over the world.
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I am willing to cop to a slave owner in my history – but I know it wasn’t here in America, as we arrived far too late, and very likely not African at all.
…Sorry couldn’t resist j/k
I’m not married. And I support divorce as a necessary and important option for those in “bad” marriages. However, I am in a committed monogamous long-term relationship.
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Divorce is morally neutral, in my opinion. However, I do think adultery is moral issue.
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Adulterers, in my opinion, do have a character flaw. If a candidate is otherwise much better than the alternative (i.e. Clinton), I will hold my noise but it’s still a negative point for their candidacy in my opinion.
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Giuliani is an admitted adulterer. He met Judith Nathan in Spring 1999 and she was his quite public girlfriend and mistress even before separation from his wife in May 2000.
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McCain is an admitted adulterer. A month after his divorce, McCain married girlfriend and mistress Cindy Lou Hensley.
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I’m not one to get truly upset about this type of thing but I don’t think being an adulterer is irrelevant in assessing the character of politicians.
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Am I wrong?
…someone who remarries after a divorce is an adulterer.
even to an agnostic like myself. You don’t have to agree with the faith of people who do believe in the Bible, or the Koran, or the Torah, the Sruti, or any other Scripture, but comments like that are inflammatory and intolerant. Denigrating their Holy Books adds nothing to the discussion.
to be a “morality, family values” candidate sucking up to the alleged “moral, family values” right wing of your party, while your personal life is completely different.
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I have a major problem with that kind of hypocrisy. If a presidential hopeful is trying to come off as a “morality” candidate, (s)he should be held to a higher, not lower, standard in personal conduct. “Do as I say, not as I do” rubs me the wrong way. So does cherry-picking moral absolutes from the Bible you find politically helpful and ignoring others you find politically inconvenient (helping the poor & sick, showing kindness to strangers, beating swords into ploughshares, thou shalt not bear false witness …)
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I’m talking here about the candidates themselves, not their great-great grandparents. I agree with the original post that the Romneys marriage is answer enough to the issue of polygamy. There is enough to examine in the governor’s own public record without dredging up his ancestors.
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I would add, however, that especially if Gov. Romney is seeking major financial and political support from key leaders of the Mormon Church for his candidacy, which it appears he is, the current status of that church’s beliefs and doctrines (as opposed to a hundred years ago) appears to be a legitimate subject of public discourse. Many of us, myself included, have limited knowledge of Mormonism. I don’t need to know what his great-grandparents believed. But it’s fair to ask what its doctines are, and how the candidate would deal with issues of separation of church and state when the laws of this nation and the doctrines of his church collide. It’s especially fair in light of Gov. Romney’s continual policy “evolutions” and the “different places” he seems to find himself depending on the constituency he’s trying to win over.
Sometimes a marriage is over before it is legally ended through state sanctioned divorce. Why should people wait for a legal ruling that affirms what is already known? It is much healthier for people to just get on with their lives.
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Adultery is a loaded term open to interpertation. Raj points out that Jesus proclaims any relationship after a first marriage is adultery. Adultery isn’t black and white. People who routinely have extra marital one-night stands or have a series of meaningles extra-marital relationships should not be lumped in with people who start their next committed monogomous relationship while still legally bound to their previous relationship.
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Also implicit in our argument is that the men are the “bad guys” in the break ups that you cited. This maybe true, but none of us were there. Perhaps these women equally responsible or perhpas more responsible for the disolved marriages? In which case the question againa arises: how long should someone wait before they get on with their lives. If instead of pretending to be chaste and plutonic with the new love interest people want to live like adults and carry on adult relationships, it’s fine by me and is a personal matter. I see no point on self-imposed celibacy if in reality a marriage is over.
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I see a direct parellel with the way “adulterous” public figures are judged and the opposition to Same-Sex Marriage. Your template for the marriage ideal/monogomous relationship ideal need not be mine, and my ideal need not be yours.
Where? Do you have a scriptural citation?
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Jewish rabbinical courts allowed divorce.
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This sound like something PAUL might have come up with.
From the Sermon on the Mount:
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KJV Mathew 5:32
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“But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.”
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It says getting married after a divorce is comitting adultery, to me anyway. Last time I really studied the Bible was in Sunday School and confirmation class, but Sermon on the Mount was a biggie for us.
I love when people attribute to people words that are written down 200 to 400 years after the people involved died.
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In today’s society you have to question things written down 5 minutes after if there is not a recording of it.
…concur.
First, scholars date The Gospel of Matthew as being written 70-100 years AD, not 200-400 years as you claim.
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Second, this is the statement made by Jesus in The Bible. Even if it is to believed that the The Gospel of Matthew is fiction, would that change how the quote is attributted? How does one attribute a quote from Hamlet? The standard is something like, “As Hamlet said, ‘Frailty, thy name is woman!'”.
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The point of the comment is to illustrate how widely interperted the term adultery is, not the veracity of the Bible.
it was a statement against the taking of books like the Bible as, excuse the pun, gospel.
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You may be correct about the date range, I may have been thinking of a different gospel. The difference between my time frame and yours is not the point. The point is that there was a considerable time gap between when the quote was supposedly said and when it was written down. What are the chances that those quotes are correct?
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I understand the context you were using it in, but what would that context matter if it was not attributed to Jesus? The whole wait of the quote is because it supposedly come from Jesus. The difference between quoting Jesus and quoting from Hamlet is that Hamlet is a fictional character and you are actually quoting the words of the author who wrote them down himself.
As far as this thread is concerned, who cares if this quote was actually spoken by Jesus? Even if Jesus never existed, His words are a represention of moral thought 2,000 years ago; that is fact. I did not suggest with this quote that anyone who remarries after divorce actually is an adulteror; the quote was merely used to demonstrate how open to interpertation the term adultery is.
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My main issue is that if someone is going to make a pot shot at religion or religious figures, put it in a context that makes it relavant to the converstion. It seemed to me you just wanted to criticize religion and not discuss the topics at hand.
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There are plenty of ways to introduce relavant crticisms of religion into the BMG discourse.
I was taking a little hit and run shot at religion.
…there are whole passages in the Wholly Babble that do not correlate to the earliest texts. I ran across that when I was dishing on the Internet on–get this–a gay-dominated Republican web site.
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BTW, I’ll merely cite this: Kissing Hank’s Ass, a totally funny web page. I ran across that a few years ago.
…but rude, crude and degrading to know.
…a number of years ago, a poster on a conservative website message board (intellectualcapital.com) that doesn’t exist any more (Pete DuPont, of the DuPont family, then proprietor of the board, decided to dump it) suggested that I go back to India. It was funny as heck.
Jerusalem wasn’t Reno, ya know.
I’m no biblical scholar, but:
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NIV: “But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.”
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NAB: “But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.“
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The second version cited here is unequivocal.
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I think this is relevant because, although I am not Catholic, it’s easy to see the possible connection and the requirement of an annulment in the Catholic Church, no? Meaning, for the sake of this discussion, that there are some pople walking around who take the idea that Jesus said that remarrying after a divorce is adultery seriously.
…connection between this passage and the annulment requirement…
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…people walking around who take seriously the idea that Jesus said that remarrying after divorce is adultery.
Raj points out that Jesus proclaims any relationship after a first marriage is adultery. (emphasis added)
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What I wrote was
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From a strict interpretation of the Wholly Babble…someone who remarries after a divorce is an adulterer (emphasis added)
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There’s a bit of a difference, although I recognize that some social conservatives believe that marriage is the government’s imprimature to have sexual relationships, and that any sexual relationships outside of marriage should be illegal. (I recognize that you did not write “sexual” in your post, but I’ll presume that that is what you meant.)
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As to the citations, a quick google search returned the following:
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http://www.jeremiahp…
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There is no doubt that the Wholly Babble permits divorce. What Jesus was saying was that remarriage after a divorce is adultery. There’s a bit of a difference there, too.
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Having long ago cast off the yoke of my childhood Baptist training, I don’t usually pay attention to the Wholly Babble but I was surprised when I saw someone make reference to that a few years ago.
You’ve honestly changed my mind about what a fluid concept “adultery” really is and how it should be judged only in context.
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I still condemn (for what’s that’s worth) those whose character is shown to be lacking in that they do not honor at least the spirit of their wedding vows. I also still believe that lack of true honesty within a relationship is indicative of a character flaw that makes me wonder about a candidate’s honesty in general.
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But you truly made me change my mind on my basic point.
It’s one thing to start a new relationship while waiting for the legal technicalities to pronounce a moribund marriage officially dead.
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It’s quite another to pork your brains out like a lab rat on pheromones in a series of seamy trysts with younger women while you serve divorce papers on a sick wife in the hospital receiving cancer treatment.
Locquacious,
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People who said to me what you say above before, but it is usually in a taunting, sarcastic manner. I had to re-read your comment to make sure you weren’t doing the same. Ha!
Romney’s ancestors are not news to me, and I’m surprised that the national media is just picking up on that. It was never a serious issue here, and nor should it be.
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I will say, however, that I’ve always thought it was silly for Romney to claim that marraige has been the same for thousands of years, when it was different in his own family just a few generations ago.
…how many wives and concubines does the Wholly Babble say that King David have? Something like 700 of one and 300 of the other (don’t recall which order).
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One of the problems with polygamy is that the number of wives that a man can acquire–and, as far as one can teill, it was always men–was reflective of his wealth and political power. And it would lock poorer men out from access to women. That is one reason why the West forbade polygamy–it would increase the likelihood of social unrest, and keep women in subjugation.
you’d know that King David was forsaken by God for such behavior among other things.
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You may have cast off your Baptist roots, but may haps you would do yourself better to cast of your bitterness instead. And you sir, REEK of bitterness.
…I can recognize hypocrisy when I see it, note its existence and laugh at it.
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All of which I have done.
without offending 1/3 of the world’s population as Christians, and however many others of us there are that respect their right to believe in whatever Holy Book they choose.
…but that doesn’t mean that they are’t hypocritical for calling a certain form of marriage to be “traditional” based on their holy scriptures when their holy scriptures show otherwise.
based on science or history, thats one thing. For instance, I think the Mormon tenet that the first century Jews sailed across the Atlantic and became the Aztecs is completely disproved by archeology. However, I respect their right to hold whatever belief they want and would never think of referring to their Scriptures as the Book of Moron. You can point out what you perceive to be the hypocrisies of conservative Christians without calling it the Wholly Babble.
The fact that the doctrine of a particular establishment of religion exists? Well, establishments of religion have had doctrines, tenets and dogmas and so forth for centuries, it is up to each of them to determine whether its particular doctrine/tenet/dogma exists and what it it contains.
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Or the facts on which the particular doctrine/tenet/dogma of the respective establishment of religion are based? It strikes me that it is up to the particular establishment of religion to provide evidence that those facts have any resemblence with observable reality. It is not up to me to disprove those facts. Any of them. Of course, anyone is entitled to believe whatever facts he or she wants to believe. But that’s just my opinion.
that your referring to it as the Wholly Babble does nothing to further the discussion of issues and lowers the level of discourse.
…even Christians have interpreted the various passage of the Wholly Babble in numerous ways, which is why there are so many Christian sects, cults, whatever you want to call them. And, that is ignoring the fact that there are so many internal inconsistencies to the various passages of the Wholly Babble. Even the Creation myths (in Genesis I and II) are inconsistent.
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Hence, Wholly Babble. A nice set of myths and fairy tales, perhaps. But, if their god were really all-seeing and all-knowing, you’d think that he’d have a better translator and editor.
I wasn’t offended. Then again, there is little that anyone can say about Christianity or Catholicism (my flavor) that I find offensive.
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It’s religion. It’s a strange confusing thing where contradictions abound. There’s no proof.
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For me, that makes it all fair game. Question, criticize, mock away. That I am secure in my beliefs is exactly why it doesn’t bother me, and why I’m willing to do it myself.
all these things I wouldn’t mind, and have done myself. Its the mocking that bothers me. While I don’t have a flavor myself, or even a brand, I still think it is one of those things that deserve our respect. I was out having a couple beers with a priest and some friends a week or two ago. Jokes about his Church were told, but they were all in good fun. Raj’s comments crossed the line, at least as far as I am concerned.
What can I say? Religion is crazy stuff by definition. If it were sane and obvious and logical, it wouldn’t really be religion; there’d be no faith.
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So, along with the questioning, criticizing, and joking, expect the mocking too, and don’t sweat it.
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Sometimes, it just helps to think: “Heh heh… we’ll just see who mocks whom when he BURNS IN HELL!“.
It’s called sarcasm. It’s a rhetorical device much used throughout history.
You may want to stop and consider whether your usage of this “rhetorical device” is having the effect you are desiring.
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I suspect it isn’t, based on people’s reactions.
I searched the whole thread, and sco, yours is the one I was looking for; if you hadn’t said it, I would have. As has been discussed here in the past, the mythology of “traditional marriage” doesn’t hold water. It was a revelation to me when I learned a little about the history of marriage, and I think too many folks are ready to accept that 2-dimensional “traditional” label at face value.
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In the context of Romney’s marriage politics, it’s fair to bring up his ancestry, if only as an example to show that the rules change over time.
…I guess the reporter had to supply a few words to justify his or her salary from the AP.
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Of more interest to me is that Mitt’s father famously said that he had been “brainwashed” in his support of the Vietnam War. Acorns might fall far from grandparent and great-grandparent trees, but not so much from parent trees.
What’s your point here?
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I’m personally hopeful Romney will also realize, like his Dad, that he and other Iraq War supporters are being “brainwashed” but I assume that’s not your point?
I am reading Talyor Branch’s book, At Canaan’s Edge, America in the King Years 1965-1968. He mentions that George Romney led thousands of people on marches around the federal buildings in Detroit to in support of the efforts in Alabama to get people registered to vote. Who knew?
This falls into the No Good Deed Goes Unpunished category. ;~)
The Lord moves in mysterious ways.
Per the prophet WC Fields. ” I would rather have two girls at 21 than one at 42″
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Enuf~sed