Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The lights are all blinking red.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

So many bastards, so little time.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

“But what about the lurkers?”

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / Open Thread: They’re Calling Trump A Racist Because, Well…

Open Thread: They’re Calling Trump A Racist Because, Well…

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Comes a point in time where even the GOP-oriented Media Village Idiots can’t avoid the elephant carcass in the room…

(CNN) Donald Trump on Friday vociferously defended his claims that a judge overseeing a lawsuit against Trump University is biased because of his Mexican heritage — pushing back against criticism that his objections are racist.

Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead,” Trump repeatedly referenced his plans to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and renegotiate trade agreements between the two countries.

The presumptive GOP nominee said U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a federal district judge in the Southern District of California, has made “rulings that people can’t even believe.”

“He’s proud of his his heritage. I respect him for that,” Trump said, dismissing charges that his allegation was racist. “He’s a Mexican. We’re building a wall between here and Mexico.”…

Last week, Curiel ordered parts of internal documents, including “playbooks” regarding running the enterprise, to be released as part of a lawsuit against Trump University.

The documents were released in response to a request by The Washington Post…

And Trump is German-American, we fought a war against people of his heritage, but you don’t see the media invoking Godwin’s Law. Yet.

Video at the link, but I figured some of you might still be eating dinner.

Even the remnant #NeverTrump Repubs are pleased to pile on, because say what you will about dogwhistles, at least their use is an ethos!

Paul Campos, at LGM, thinks “There’s a non-trivial chance that Trump actually withdraws from the race at some point prior to the election.” If it’s true that he only jumped into the race in the first place to escape legal scrutiny for his numerous shady business practices — how’s that working out for ya, Donald? — maybe the RNC can scrounge up a few hundred millions and a couple of “safe” district judges, get him to step down before the convention?…

ETA:

Reader Interactions

223Comments

  1. 1.

    Schlemazel Khan

    I can hardly wait for Cramping Up to get here & tell us how Hillary is the real racist

  3. 3.

    Corner Stone

    This bloated, infantile, incoherent, vulgar yam is increasingly seeing how the focused spotlight gets to shine on him, like the crazy diamond he is.

  4. 4.

    Baud

    “There’s a non-trivial chance that Trump actually withdraws from the race at some point prior to the election.”

    I don’t know whether to be thrilled or disappointed if America won’t have a chance to vote on Trump’s message.

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    @Baud: Be thrilled, both because it would be interpreted as a rejection of Trumpism and because the GOP chaos in such an eventuality would be glorious.

  7. 7.

    redshirt

    This is so extreme and unbelievable for a modern Presidential candidate. Trump is beyond the pale and yet “both sides hurf-durf”.

  8. 8.

    dmsilev

    @Corner Stone: My nephew built a wall the other day. He’s 4 and a half and used Duplo bricks. Maybe if we all chip in and buy Trump a Lego set (a nice YUGE and classy one like say the Millennium Falcon), he’ll go off and stop bothering us.

  9. 9.

    Ellie

    I keep reading Drumpf’s comment, “I’m building a wall.”
    No, you moron, you’re not building anything.

  10. 10.

    some guy

    Bribes to Pam Bondi and Gregg Abbott. yes, please, let’s hear more about that.

  12. 12.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @ KatyTurNBC
    NEW: Trump aides not happy with Trump’s attack on Judge Curiel impartiality, telling me “these are the things that will defeat us.”

    Translated by me: “Dammit, we work in dog whistles, not hog calls!”

  16. 16.

    burnspbesq

    One would have thought that Trump would love a guy who made his bones by sending dozens of Mexican narcotraficantes to Federal prison.

  17. 17.

    lamh36

    I posted this late in the last evening thread, I meant to post it earlier today, but I wanted to post it again.

    yesterday I watched the finale of the Roots tv reboot.

    Here are my final final reflections.

    So, you may already know, I wasn’t gonna watch…then thanks to blogger Awesomely Luvvie ( On ROOTS Reimagined and Retelling This Classic Story) and other folk I respect I decided to give it a chance. I never saw the original. Usually, I shy away from this type of drama because unless you are a heartless bastard it sticks with you and unless you are a ditzy absentminded sort of person it lingers in your mind even after watching…but I disregarded my usual aversion and I watched episode one.

    So first of all, History channel did a GREAT job of filling in some of the holes in the story, that folks expressed about Haley’s original book with facts, figures and real life events of the time. In fact, even though it was based on Haley’s book and ancestors, they stuck to the story Haley told, but interspersed the personal family story, with a History channel style reenactments of real life events and happenings of the time in which the story was set (if you followed them on twitter, they also sent out factoids about the time and the people during the commercial breaks, and also with blurbs at the end of scenes with significant historical impact).

    Another thing I applauded, was that unlike with the orignal mini-series, they didn’t go for ANY stunt casting (no white sitcom stars or black pro-athletes in this one). Instead, other than for a couple of the iconic roles (i.e. Fiddler, Kizzy, Tom Lea…) the cast was made up of new, and hopefully, up and coming young actresses and actors of color, including some for whom the show was their very first real acting job (US or otherwise). The standouts including Malachi Kirby as Kunta Kinte, Regé-Jean Page as Chicken George, Erica Tazel as Matilda, and a number of other younger actresses and actors. The casting for the series was really good.

    As I expected, each and every scene lingered. but as I watched the first ep and the second ep…I began to see this NOT as a story of victim hood, or airing grievances against white people (though to be fair from this family’s saga standpoint and millions of others who were slaves…the grievances against white folks were valid and should NOT be forgotten or erased from conversation). Anyway, I began to see it as the story of SURVIVORS! From Africa to the Americas…these people SURVIVED all this brutality and came out of it on the other side yes bloodied but ALIVE and in many cases unbowed. So even with the painful acts and lingering anger at the entire institution of slavery in America, I feel blessed to know that I come from generations of these Survivors and I’d like to hope that their stories are told and heard by as many folks as can see or hear them, Black or white.

  18. 18.

    p.a.

    I posted yesterday, more about TrumpU sleaze becoming public than about attacking a Federal Judge:
    Do we want Trump to implode/withdraw before the convention? That could lead to a (politically horrible obviously) but electorally stronger candidate replacing him.

    OR

    Do we want him dumped with the idea that his supporters will burn the party to the ground?- it’s what fascists do when they get crossed.

  19. 19.

    lamh36

    Sending good vibes, prayers, well wishes…whatever to the family of Mohammed Ali and to the champ himself.

  20. 20.

    dmsilev

    @Mike J: One of the things I occasionally do at work is build stuff out of what can best be described as an Erector set for adults (T-slot extruded-aluminum framing). It can be kind of fun, though discovering that you put the pieces together in the wrong order and you need to take the thing apart and redo a bunch of joints is a bit less amusing.

    Also, the company we buy most of the stuff from sells these linear bearings which allow sliding things back and forth, with the head-scratcher of a motto of “wears like a pig’s nose”. If anyone can explain that to me, I’d be grateful.

  24. 24.

    Major Major Major Major

    Trump said that in Redding? Ha!

    Redding. One of those cities that exist because log truckers needed a place along I-5 to eat every two and a half hours. Now there’s one of California’s biggest armpits.

    When I was in college, my boyfriend at the time and I were heading up to a camping trip by Weaverville and stopped at Redding to eat and get some gas. We went to some diner or other, one of those places that isn’t a chain but still has a big sign right by the highway. The waitress asked where we were from, and we said San Francisco. She said “ah, they’re comin’, you know. From down south, they’re comin’. My friend in Los Angeles said they’re already there, you’ve probably seen ’em too. They’re comin’ north and they’re gonna take our jobs. Look out!”

    The food was alright.

  25. 25.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mike J: But the Grand Prix of Mexico is!
    https://www.grandprixevents.com/f1-races/mexican-grand-prix

    Mexico F1™ Grand Prix 2016
    Mexico City
    Dates:
    28 October Friday (Practice)
    29 October Saturday (Qualifying)
    30 October Sunday (Race)

    The first Mexican Grand Prix of the 21st century was a major success, and the enthusiastic and knowledgeable crowd loved every second of it. F1’s return to the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez produced a fascinating 71 laps of racing, in which polesitter Rosberg was never headed – pit stops aside – and in which a late safety car bunched the pack up, allowing Bottas to jump the Red Bull of Daniil Kvyat on the restart to secure his podium place.

    The Mexican Grand Prix (Gran Premio de México) is a Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile sanctioned auto race held at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City named after Mexico’s famous racing brothers and F1 trailblazers Ricardo and Pedro Rodriguez. It first appeared as a non-championship event in 1962 before being held as a championship event from 1963-1970 and 1986-1992. The Grand Prix returned in 2015 at the Mexico City circuit. But what certainly will not have changed is the passion for motorsport among the local fans, as demonstrated by the flocks of Mexicans who travelled across the border to Austin for the U.S. GP in recent years.

    Mexico is a great new venue for Formula One. Well, not that new – the sport has been here twice before, but the atmosphere, with great excitement among the packed stands a 135,000 turnout after 23 years away. The altitude and thin air caused by the place being 2,240m above sea level, was responsible for making everyone feel giddy. “I felt like a rock star,” said Rosberg after his triumph.

    A return of Formula One to Mexico is almost perfect and deal has been agreed. It is down to the Mexican promoter now to improve facilities and bring the circuit up to scratch with Formula One’s high expectations. The circuit which hosted its last race two decades ago, will be completely renovated. The Main Grandstands and Paddock Club will now accommodate over 85,000 spectators. The circuit will cut through centre and left-fields of the Foro Sol baseball stadium and rejoin the old track via a hairpin and two right-handers. Race viewing guests now will be able to enjoy a “beach area” in front of the Main Grandstand. However the once-fearsome Peraltada corner will not be kept in the in the complete revamping-project.

    Sergio Perez was quoted:

    “I’m very excited. It’s not confirmed yet, it’s just a pre-calendar but I feel there are very big chances now of this happening,” Perez said.

    “It will be great for my country, great for the sport. Formula One will be amazed how popular this grand prix can become. … It will be huge for Formula One as a sport to go there.”

    Last year’s inaugural race in Austin drew a strong Latin crowd from both sides of the border and Perez agreed having the two races together would be like having two home grand prix in succession with big crowds at both. He said he had been kept abreast of developments in Mexico City and was there a few weeks ago to watch his brother race.

    “I know how good the racetrack is,” Perez said. “Obviously they need to rebuild it but there is time enough. I really hope for the good of the sport and my country that it happens.”

    The Mexican reckoned a few months of work would be required to upgrade the pit and paddock facilities but the layout was good.

    FACTS AND CIRCUIT FIGURES

    New Suites building with more capacity and comfort
    Track length 4.580 meters
    New polymer-modified asphalt without cold joints
    33 Repair garages as FIA needs
    New control tower
    Renovation and construction of new temporary stands to 75,000 spectators
    New horizontal line from the track body
    3 new pedestrian bridges
    22,720 m2 in Paddock areas
    120 thousand seated spectators. Over 30 000 general admission
    Paddock Club, Hospitalities
    80,000 m2 track and pit lane
    “Esses” Softening zone
    Emergency Medical Services, Media Centre, Chapel
    Creating 3,000 jobs
    FORMULA ONE PADDOCK CLUB TICKETS STILL ON SALE

    Mexico last hosted a grand prix at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in 1992, when Nigel Mansell was triumphant for Williams who were a top team in those days.

    They have scored just one point this season, however, and that is not the only way in which the sport’s landscape has changed with new venues like Russia and India opening up.

    “Looking at it, they have to change the pits to make them proper for Formula One, [improve] a few corners maybe and apart from that it’s just a matter of time what they can do,” he said. “But I think they don’t have to do big things for the racetrack to be ready.”

  27. 27.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Jonathan Martin ✔ @jmartNYT

    GOP response to 8 years of America’s first black president was to nominate man who openly practices racial politics

    6:46 PM – 2 Jun 2016

    That’s hilarious coming from Martin. He built that.

    When Martin was at politico he was the one pushing the fake racist story that a black obama supporter had robbed a white woman and carved the letter B in her face. Of course she was a fake – she carved the letter backwards because she used a mirror.

    A McCain campaign volunteer who claimed she was robbed, pinned to the ground and had the letter ‘B’ scratched on her face by a Barack Obama supporter made the whole story up, police said.
    ***
    Todd was charged with making a false report to police, and Bryant said police doubted her story from the start.

  28. 28.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36: Send me this, and any additions you want to make, and I’ll put it up as a front page guest post if you’d like. It shouldn’t be buried in a comment section.

  29. 29.

    Mnemosyne

    This Happy Hour has free wi-fi! Woot!

    After a pizzete and a Dark N Stormy, I’ll stumble down to Target to get a graduation card for my nephew and a birthday card for G.

  30. 30.

    Quinerly

    Cole posted previously that he was depressed. Me too. We might all be on overload with the news cycle. A lot coming at us fast and furious…relentless. I have watched and read way too much this week…plus too much Book of Faces with the screeching Bern Feelers (and I keep my circle small with people I only know and like in person…they have been particularly delusional and whiney for the last few days.) With all that said, everything that I have seen out of Trump in last 48 hours makes me believe he won’t make it to the convention…he’s clearly more unstable than even I dreamed of. I’m thinking dementia or some organic brain problem. Tweety has shown clips this week of past interviews…his whole cadence, speech pattern, demeanor has changed from years past. Something is up. He seems to have absolutely no self control. He could have never survived this long with this little self control. I don’t care how many yes men and women he surrounded himself with in the past. That’s it from me…10 year lurker who has posted more today than in all the previous years. Let’s all try to have a great weekend! Take care.

  32. 32.

    rikyrah

    Adam Jentleson‏@AJentleson

    Louisiana: 47% of those eligible for Medicaid expansion already enrolled…in first 11 HOURS.

  33. 33.

    Mike J

    @Adam L Silverman: Right after Austin, same as last year. Canada next week, and Hamilton will go ham. I don’t think Red Bull have the straight line speed to make it interesting like they did in Monaco, Ferrari doesn’t have the downforce to get them through the corners. Lewis has drawn blood and Nico is always shaky after a crash.

  34. 34.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: The kid posted a pic on Facebook of her and one of her fellow students on their last day of Nursing school, she still has a Philosophy final next week.

  41. 41.

    ThresherK

    “Look at my African-American” sounds bad until you realize it probably took some one a long time, a la Bess Truman, to convert him from “What up my —–?”

  42. 42.

    NotMax

    *sigh*

    If only there were factory recalls for human beings…

    Paranoia run amuck. Compared Trump to Capt. Queeg in this space last summer and see no reason to alter or amend that.

  44. 44.

    Mike in NC

    Funny how when Drumpf was talking about building the physically impossible to build wall (rivers, mountains, gorges, private property, etc.) it kept getting higher and higher and billions of dollars more expensive every day. Didn’t matter to the elderly white Tea Party types watching FOX News in their recliners.

  52. 52.

    NotMax

    Hard to conceive that Sunday will mark 48 years since Bobby Kennedy was shot. Memories still vivid and painful.

  57. 57.

    indycat32

    @dmsilev: pigs spend a lot of time rooting around in the dirt with no ill effects to their noses so I would guess it means they don’t wear out

  58. 58.

    jimmiraybob

    “He’s proud of his his heritage. I respect him for that,” Trump said…

    Anybody else get the feeling that the Trumpenwhiner is using this to inoculate the American public against his white supremacist friends? As in, “My Arian white nationalist supporters are proud of their heritage. I respect them for that.”

  59. 59.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    This. All of it.

    My “Hamilton” obsession has led to me reading up a lot more about that time period, and what’s really striking is that in the pre-Revolutionary period, everyone owned slaves. Every. One. As Wanda Sykes found out on “Finding Your Roots,” even free black families living in the North owned them. That’s how normal it was. The only difference between the North and the South is that slavery was never very practical in the North, so it died off pretty quickly once the abolitionist pushback started. It’s a hard thing to come to terms with, realizing that something that was totally average and normal at the time was in fact deeply *wrong,* and your own ancestors participated in it.

  60. 60.

    germy shoemangler

    @Mnemosyne: Last night I was dozing in front of a new yorker magazine (print edition) and I saw a small thumbnail-sized ad off to one side of the page with the bold headline: See Hamilton For Free.

    Turned out it was an ad to see him on a stamp at the Javits Center. The World Stamp Show.

  61. 61.

    Lizzy L

    @NotMax: Yes. Thank you. I remember that day. I graduated from the University of Chicago (Master’s Degree) three days later. I wore a black armband on the sleeve of my gown. It was a somber procession for most of us. What a bitter year that was.

  62. 62.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Mnemosyne:
    According to something I just read recently only about 1.6% of all Americans owned slaves in 1860. I’ll try to dig up the source in that but, no, all American’s did not own slaves.

    EDIT: The number came from the 1860 census. I need to dig into it but given how expensive slaves were that number would not surprise me.

  67. 67.

    geg6

    @lamh36:

    I think they did an absolutely bang up job. I’m just blown away by how great. I, unlike you, saw the original in real time and was moved and blown away by it. It was ground breaking for its time. But this was superior in almost every way, but especially in that it didn’t pander to white sensibilities. Kudos to all involved. Spectacular history lesson and story telling.

  70. 70.

    Mnemosyne

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    Re-read what I said — in colonial (pre-American Revolution) times, EVERYONE owned slaves. It had died off in the North by about 1830 (though I think New Jersey hung on until 1850 — everything’s legal in Jersey).

    Also, that 1.6 percent is kind of a bullshit number, because it only counts the legal owner — ie the father — as the owner. Once you add in the wives and children of the legal owners who benefited from slavery without being the on-paper legal owner, it’s a much bigger number.

  71. 71.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: Commencement is on Sat.(we’re not going) but we’re going to her pinning dinner on sunday. I’m talking to her on IM and she said she got a job; starting after she passes her boards.

  72. 72.

    lamh36

    @geg6: I really enjoyed it.

    that final sequence had me more misty-eyed than even the more gruesome and heart wrenching bits, from all 4 nights.

  73. 73.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @NotMax: I think my parents let me stay up for the election coverage and saw RFK’s speech and then news of the shooting.

  74. 74.

    Ramping Up

    @Mike in NC:

    That’s just it: Trump took out the entire GOP field while breaking all the rules, with the media totally against him, with little money, no GOTV operation to speak of and not even a Super PAC. Just aTwitter account, free media and a knack for self-promotion. His campaign was supposed to end the day it launched with promising to build the wall, yet he won.

    He’s a supremely talented politician coated in Teflon. Nothing sticks to him. He’s politically invincible. Never seen anything like it. Any other year Jeb would have won handily.

  75. 75.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne: Everyone? Citation please.

    ETA: If you want to say that slave ownership extended through the 13 colonies, you will get no argument from me. If you say everyone, as your capitalization seemed to imply, I’ll call BS.

  76. 76.

    Honus

    @Corner Stone: what I said about Gingrich in ’94- the more people see of this guy the less they’ll like him. He was gone in two years. Trump won’t last nearly that long. He’s the kind of guy that as the saying goes “even his friends don’t like him.”

  77. 77.

    Mnemosyne

    @geg6:

    I admit, I was about 8 years old when I saw the original, but it was pretty traumatizing and definitely didn’t cater to my sensibilities much. People my age mostly remember the bloody whippings and the foot being chopped off and the children being separated from their screaming mother, so not a lot of the catering to our white sensibilities came through at that age.

    (Mnemo +1, in case I made any typing mistakes. I definitely got my money’s worth of rum in this drink!)

  80. 80.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    Everyone is a bit of a stretch, but not a large one (population numbers of slaves and non-slaves was not 1:1). Are you also counting indentured servants as slaves, BTW?

  81. 81.

    raven

    @BillinGlendaleCA: I went to Seattle on the bus with a couple of the GI’s. We copped, dropped and got back on the bus. By the time we got back it was too late to be in the barracks so we took a radio into the laundry room and, when we turned it on, we heard the news. Great way to wind down your first trip.

  84. 84.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    Yes indeed. The fact that his assassination came only 4-1/2 years after his brother’s death, and a scant two months after MLK’s murder, meant that those of us who were around felt just worn down and battered by the violence, shock, grief, and anger. Apart from anything else, that whole period changed the way I watch/listen to news. I think that’s one reason why to this day I get so upset when CNN or MSNBC flag stories as “breaking news” even if nothing has changed in 12 hours, or if they’re doing a countdown clock to a debate or poll closing or something. It ends up being “the boy who cried wolf” when they call everything “breaking.”

  89. 89.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Citation. If all of your ancestors were Quakers (the OG abolitionists), you were probably in the clear. Otherwise, if you have ancestors who were here prior to the American Revolution, your ancestors were slaveowners, usually a few household servants.

    John Adams did not himself own slaves, but his ancestors did. Etc.

  94. 94.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @germy shoemangler:

    I’m against poaching Liz Warren (not just because she’s my Senator), but I think Sherrod Brown would be a better choice from the Senate. He’s popular in OHIO. O-H-I-O. He’s a labor guy, an aw shucks guy, and his wife Connie Schultz is awesome and a huge asset on the social media front. He’d help up and down ticket.

  95. 95.

    lamh36

    .FOUNDATIONS OF SLAVERY IN AMERICA
    In the early 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants (who were mostly poorer Europeans). After 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 Africans ashore at the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia, slavery spread throughout the American colonies. Though it is impossible to give accurate figures, some historians have estimated that 6 to 7 million slaves were imported to the New World during the 18th century alone, depriving the African continent of some of its healthiest and ablest men and women…

    Slavery itself was never widespread in the North, though many of the region’s businessmen grew rich on the slave trade and investments in southern plantations. Between 1774 and 1804, all of the northern states abolished slavery, but the so-called “peculiar institution” remained absolutely vital to the South. Though the U.S. Congress outlawed the African slave trade in 1808, the domestic trade flourished, and the slave population in the U.S. nearly tripled over the next 50 years. By 1860 it had reached nearly 4 million, with more than half living in the cotton-producing states of the South…

    SLAVES AND SLAVEHOLDERS
    Slaves in the antebellum South constituted about one-third of the southern population. Most slaves lived on large farms or small plantations; many masters owned less than 50 slaves…

    More here: SLAVERY IN AMERICA

    Someone with better math skills can extrapolate %, I guess…either way…we can all agree, “everyone” or not…alot of complacency even in those without…

  96. 96.

    msdc

    GOP response to 8 years of America’s first black president was to nominate man who openly practices racial politics

    If we can follow that up with 8 years of America’s first female president, they’ll have no choice but to nominate Ted Nugent.

  97. 97.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    Right, it’s not 1:1, but if you have a household with a husband, wife, and 6 children, and that household has 2 slaves, does only the legal owner (the husband) count as the slaveowner, or does the whole family count because they all benefit from that labor even though only 1 person out of the 8 is the legal owner?

    If I say “every family” or “every household,” does that make it more clear?

  99. 99.

    Llelldorin

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I think we’ve gone well beyond dog-whistles or hog calls. The original metaphor was for candidates speaking to racists using deniable terms that they would nonetheless clearly hear. Trump is the logical conclusion of this process–a candidate with a taste for Milk Bone.

  100. 100.

    NotMax

    @SiubhanDuinne

    Could not agree more. One of my college majors (3 majors, 2 minors, plus an M.A., for the record) was in Journalism and Mass Communication and I constantly lament the dilution, obeisance to glitz and dumbing down of substantive reporting.

  101. 101.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Mnemosyne:
    OK, so go back & only count adult males, the number is still the minority. I have not seen pre-revolutionary numbers but still do not buy that it was the majority of people. There just were not enough slaves, black or white for the majority to own one.

  102. 102.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne:

    But still from a state with a Republican governor who would handpick his successor. I love Sherrod (and Connie!) but I don’t want to mess with the possibility of our regaining control of the Senate, especially with several SCOTUS nominations presumably on the line.

  103. 103.

    grandpa john

    @raven: all ways helps to have a nurse or two in the family, I have a sister who has been a great help over the years, and also a granddaughter

  105. 105.

    hovercraft

    @shomi:
    Speaking of both sides bullshit. Ruth Marcus was on Tweety’s show and equated Hillary’s tone with the dumpsters because she was really mean to him yesterday. I need to stop watching this shit or I swear I’ll have a stroke. Racism, misogyny, etc. the same as critiquing what he has said.

  106. 106.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    I don’t get why people only count the legal owner as the slaveholder, especially when we’re talking about the days when people had 10+ children pretty routinely.

    My ancestry on my mom’s side traces back to William Bradford, first governor of Virginia so, yeah, my way-back family owned slaves.

  107. 107.

    lamh36

    #MichelleObama’s commencement address reminded us what makes this country great: diversity.

    …“Some folks out there have a different perspective,” said Obama. “They believe that diversity should be contained instead of a resource to be tapped. As if anger and intolerance should be our default state.

    “But I have seen what happens when ideas like this take hold,” she continued. “I have seen how leaders who rule by intimidation—leaders who demonize and dehumanize entire groups of people—often do so because they have nothing else to offer. And I have seen how places that stifle the voices and dismiss the potential of their citizens are diminished; how they are less vital, less hopeful, less free. Graduates, that is not who we are. That is not what we stand for. We don’t build up walls to keep people out.

    “More than anything else, graduates, that is the American story,” she said. “And, graduates, it’s the story that I witness every single day when I wake up in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters, two beautiful black young women, head off to school, waving goodbye to their father, the president of the United States; the son of a man from Kenya who came here to America for the same reasons as many of you: to get an education and improve his prospects in life.”

    She added: “So, graduates, while I think it’s fair to say that our Founding Fathers never could have imagined this day, all of you are very much the fruits of their vision.”…

  109. 109.

    Honus

    @Mnemosyne: you mean like segregation up to and through the 1950s, 60s and 70s ? And not your ancestors but your parents and siblings participated in it?

  110. 110.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Mnemosyne:
    anticdot != data. You said everyone but I know from my reading that is not true. Perhaps a majority but I would dispute that assertion unless you can cite some reliable data from somewhere

    BTW – apprenticeship, which had a lot of similarities to slavery does not count because an apprentice was not owned by a master & could leave without having to buy themselves. so no, not everyone & probably not even the majority. A large number and in every state but that is very different.

  111. 111.

    patroclus

    My father’s father’s family owned slaves (North Carolina). My father’s mother’s family didn’t (Kentucky). My mother’s father’s family didn’t (Massachusetts). My mother’s mother’s family didn’t (England/Scotland). The first three were all here in Revolutionary War times – the last one didn’t immigrate until the 1880’s.

  113. 113.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    It infuriates me. At this point I don’t own a TV, but I see CNN in public venues and that damned “Breaking News” chyron is up almost constantly, or so it seems. I don’t know why they don’t just change their acronym to BNN and be done with it.

  114. 114.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Let me put it another way: if your family was prosperous enough to have servants, those servants were probably slaves. As I said, Adams himself was not a slaveowner, but his ancestors owned slaves, because it was that normal. They literally didn’t think anything of it (and, frankly, it was much more casual than what it turned into in the South — it was totally acceptable in colonial times for a slave to ask someone else to buy him/her because s/he didn’t like their current master).

  115. 115.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @patroclus:

    One of the things I’m most proud of was to find out that my ancestors who emigrated to Canada from the Rhineland in the mid 1700s were yeoman farmers, and never owned slaves. We don’t have much, but we don’t have that stain in our family’s legacy.

  116. 116.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Gin & Tonic:
    I am often embarrassed by things I have to do to earn a paycheck but I do them the best I can to keep the money rolling in.

  117. 117.

    geg6

    A pig just flew by my window. Matt Welch has actually been praising Hilz on Real Time. I admit to being completely taken aback.

  119. 119.

    lurker dean

    @lamh36: totally agree with this, though i’ve only just finished the second episode. i saw the original way back when, and rewatched it a few years ago. as with all remakes, i was very skeptical that this version could even come close. but it was great, for many of the reasons you say. no stunt casting, and a real focus on showing the bravery, strength, and dignity of the people taken as slaves. the original did the same, and this version was just as powerful without seeming repetitive or derivative.

  120. 120.

    Mnemosyne

    @Honus:

    Yes, and? Though my whole family is in Illinois, so we had legal segregation/discrimination but not Jim Crow.

    Did you miss the part where I talked about my slaveowning ancestors?

  124. 124.

    Mnemosyne

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    Well, no, that’s my point — you’re going to vastly UNDERcount if you only count the legal, on-paper owner, because the rest of the family benefited from owning those slaves, not just the on-paper owner.

  126. 126.

    PhoenixRising

    @Mnemosyne: And my ancestors didn’t own slaves, but only because they couldn’t afford any, having worked off their own passage from Ulster (dad’s side) and immigrated to NY then DC in the 1850s (mom’s side).

    But if those Scots-Irish cabin-dwelling moonshine-making Kentucky frontiersmen had the money, they would have moved to town and owned their household help. Because that was what defined ‘success’ and ‘white’ back then. Not a statistical analysis, but a historical one.

  127. 127.

    burnspbesq

    I should really stop listening to “Left, Right, and Center.” Very bad for my blood pressure. And it’s not primarily because of Rich Lowry.

    Fuck Robert Scheer with a farm implement.

  128. 128.

    Ramping Up

    @Honus:

    It is isn’t it? Why wouldn’t it be?And using unconventional tactics as cited above. Including opponents much more well funded than him!

    And LOL to him dropping out. Do you know how long people on the GOP side kept saying that would happen and he would go home? Get real.

  129. 129.

    Adam L Silverman

    @shomi: @redshirt: @Baud: They’ll rip themselves apart trying to select a replacement. Senator Cruz will stake the best claim based on delegates. Governor Kasich on being the last alternative standing. Speaker Gingrich will put himself forward as the civilizational savior he thinks he is. It’ll be a free for all and at the end the candidate will be Speaker Ryan.

    ETA: And Ryan still won’t be able to hold them all together as the Tea Partiers have decided he’s a squish by honoring Boehner’s outgoing spending agreement and budget deal.

  130. 130.

    patroclus

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: Well, I’m proudest of my father’s mother’s family who lived in the South but didn’t own slaves. In fact, the patriarch was an evangelical minister from Germany (like the character in Django) and was passionately opposed to it. Unfortunately, the name I have was from the family that did own slaves. It’s embarrassing, to say the least.

  132. 132.

    hovercraft

    Can someone explain to Throwing Up that while the GOP primary electorate fell in love with Trump, the general election electorate is different.
    In spite of the fact that he has consolidated the republicans around him, he is still trailing Hillary who is still in a primary. The GOP couldn’t beat a weak, effeminate, muslim, illegal alien, who destroyed the economy, lost Iraq, and everything else that happened to us. And now Trump is the best you have to offer, your super deep bench produced this man as your nominee. The teflon was for the GOP base, I think you’ll find that for the rest of us that’s some baked on shit that you can’t just wash off.

  133. 133.

    geg6

    @Mnemosyne:

    There was plenty of pandering, but considering when it was made, it was a revelation to most white people. Even white people like my family, which was considered super liberal about civil rights. Not that I’m proud of this, but we were known as the only family who had black visitors in our lily white suburban neighborhood in the 60s and 70s. It embarrasses me that I grew up in a neighborhood with good but ignorant people who thought that was extremely radical of my parents.

  135. 135.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Mnemosyne:
    they might have had 10 babies but only 5 lived to have a fifth birthday. I have only a small sample, my ancestors on both sides & my wifes on 1 side but none of them had 4 children over the age of 5 (none gave birth to 10 either). My reading of Civil War stories makes me believe that at least in the 1860s families were still not that large but again I have no data or too small a sampling. Still I am not buying 10 kids a family.

  136. 136.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    As my primary area of study for a degree in history was colonial America from about 1720 – 1810, no it doesn’t make it more clear. It’s not an entirely invalid generalization, but a generalization nonetheless.

    Now, if you want to to talk about the French Louisiana Territory and slavery, or Spanish Mexico, or Portuguese Brazil or the Caribbean in toto, we’ll find British America not out of the norm for the time in the New World, but rather demonstrating differences of degree (speaking here of colonial “ownership” as opposed to the obvious vast participation in the maritime slave trade).

  138. 138.

    Ramping Up

    @hovercraft:

    All wrong. Reagan Democrats and “missing white voters” in the Midwest and maybe even Upstate New York will show up in droves, they eat this shit up.

    Meanwhile Trump will gladly sign whatever Ryan passes and nominate SCOTUS justices randomly from a list provided by The Heritage Foundation. And that’s all we really absolutely need in the end, though Jeb could have provided more.

    All this without even discussing Hillary’s looming indictment (Lib activist Susan Sarandon said its a real possibility!)

  139. 139.

    Mnemosyne

    @patroclus:

    Massachusetts slavery went very deep. As I said above, unless your family had a religious objection, if they were prosperous enough to have 1 or 2
    household servants, those servants were probably slaves until about the mid-1700s.

    Benjamin Franklin was a slave trader as a young man, though he repented in later years and became a manumissionist (the precursors to the abolitionists).

  142. 142.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman:

    They’ll rip themselves apart trying to select a replacement.

    You know, under the criteria (such as it is) and statements from various GOP officials (including Ryan) that it ‘ought to be someone who ran’…and clearly Cruz and Kaisch a) won delegates and b) never jumped on the Trump train…that could be their unity ticket right there, should Trump stroke out.

    I’m not terribly worried about it either. It’s pretty unappealing (especially with Cruz at the top of the ticket) to most Americans, and naturally most all of Trump’s supporters would stay home if The Donald was out…because once The Donald is out, he’s going to bash the holy crud out of the GOP and label it as Enemy #1.

  143. 143.

    C.S.

    I know the racism is bad enough, but Trump is also substantively wrong about the entire basis for his complaint. This is a bit picayune, inside baseball legal procedure mumbo-jumbo, but …

    Trump says Curiel is biased as shown by all the bad rulings he’s handed down. But check it out — after the plaintiff filed this suit, Trump filed a counterclaim. The plaintiff — defendant in the counterclaim — filed an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss the counterclaim (9th Circuit recognizes and applies state anti-SLAPP laws). Curiel denied the anti-SLAPP motion, ruling in Trump’s favor and allowing the counterclaim to proceed. But the plaintiff/defendant appealed Curiel’s ruling to the 9th Circuit, which reversed, and told Curiel to grant the anti-SLAPP and dismiss Trump’s counterclaim.

    So this is the upshot — quite literally the ONLY thing that has gone Trump’s way in this case was because Curiel was too deferential to Trump, and it was the 9th Circuit that had to overrule Curiel’s biased-towards-Trump ruling.

    That said … yeah, Trump is totally racist and that’s totally enough on its own.

  145. 145.

    Honus

    @Mnemosyne: I’m agreeing with you about the normalization. My brother is five years older than me. He never played high school sports against a team with black players. It was not only prohibited, but it was thought to be correct. By the the time I played, such a prohibition was inconceivable. Over the state line, in Virginia, not so much. My point is, segregation was considered normal and unquestioned (and even virtuous) well into the 1960s in most of the country, like slavery in the 18th century.

  146. 146.

    redshirt

    @hovercraft: You do realize he is now a multi-election troll, yes? Do you know what it’s like to switch from looser to looser to looser to looser over at least 8 years, and probably longer? Do you know what commitment and dedication it takes to support 12 different Republican fools as if all 12 were guaranteed UNLIMITED VICTORY?

    Walk in Right To Rise’s shoes.

  148. 148.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @PhoenixRising:
    My family arrived in the late 1780s (2 branches) 1804, 1832 and 1914 plus one line that arrived before 8,000BC. None owned slaves as far as I can find records and at least 2 served in Union forces used to suppress treason in defense of slavery. That said I know I still benefit from my white skin.

  151. 151.

    Honus

    @Ramping Up: because those guys, like trump, and you, are a joke. Anybody with a brain was laughing months ago at the GOPs “deep bench”

  153. 153.

    debbie

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne:

    No, no, no! Keep your mitts off our Sherrod!

    Seriously, the Ohio Democratic Party is pitiful. There are no viable candidates to replace Brown. Don’t make Ohio worse than it already is!

  155. 155.

    patroclus

    @Mnemosyne: It was poverty for my mother’s father’s family who lived in Massachusetts. By the time the family had any money, slavery was long gone. They were Congregationalists albeit not all that religious (but probably way more so than today). They probably wanted slaves (i.e., wealth) but they didn’t have any.

  156. 156.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Mnemosyne:
    That is a lot different from EVERYONE (emphasis yours) owned slaves. Also, indentured servitude is still a long way from slavery, if for no other reason than it was time limited and not cross-generational.

  157. 157.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    Here, I’ll qualify it if it makes you feel better: if your family was here prior to the American Revolution and was prosperous enough to have at least 1 or 2 household servants, odds are very good that those servants were slaves unless you know for a fact that every one of your ancestors had a stated religious objection to slavery.

    This really isn’t that controversial, historically speaking. In that time period, “household servant” almost always = “slave,” even for nonwhite families.

  160. 160.

    Surreal American

    @Ramping Up:

    All this without even discussing Hillary’s looming indictment (Lib activist Susan Sarandon said its a real possibility!)

    Would that be noted legal scholar Susan Sarandon?

  161. 161.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    10+ children routinely? Many, many women died during or after childbirth well before that.

    10 in one household? Maybe, but that often included surviving grandparents, spinster sisters, (possibly indolent) in-laws and cousins, etc.

  163. 163.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne: Let me put it another way. I disagreed with a particular statement that you made. I called BS on your statement that everyone owned slaves. You have admitted that everyone did not. That’s pretty much the end of it as far as I concerned.

    Do a lot of people with ancestors from the 1600-1700s North-East have slave owners in their family tree? I am sure they do. As lamb36 noted above, even if they didn’t own slaves, many were involved in the slave trade at some level.

  168. 168.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @SiubhanDuinne: Even if there were a Dem governor in MA, I would hate the idea of Warren as Veep. I was reading a book review about Kennedy as the Lion of the Senate, and I think that’s a role Warren could fill, as a leader of the caucus (especially as a counterweight to Schumer) and a national voice for progressivism. There’s a lot more to it than just a safe vote.

  169. 169.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    Your point? One could say the same of China or countless other countries and colonies of the time period. Singling out colonial America is a bit disingenuous.

  171. 171.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    If you’ve researched your ancestry to before the American Revolution and not found a single slave owner, then congratulations — you hit the jackpot. But you need to be aware that your ancestors were the exception, not the norm.

  173. 173.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Mnemosyne:
    nope, still not buying it without some valid cite. Yes, it was wide-spread, yes it was acceptable but those are not your assertions. and you also need to draw a sharp line between slavery and indentured servitude. Neither was a good thing but one was much, much, much, much, much worse than the other

  175. 175.

    hovercraft

    @Surreal American:
    It’s the extensive legal education she got from being in Dead Man Walking.
    You know that if you needed legal assistance she would be your first call.

  177. 177.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @hovercraft:

    I’m glad they fact-checked him. It does seem more media outlets are beginning to do that.

    But I would still maintain that fact-checking something a candidate says does not qualify as “breaking news.” Quite the contrary: that is an expected, ordinary part of their job description as journalists.

    “Breaking” means covering something really surprising and unexpected, something of national/international import. And after 6-8-10 hours of reporting and discussion and analysis, unless there’s truly new information about the story, it becomes misleading to call it “breaking.”

  178. 178.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne: Are you intentionally ignoring the point I was making?

    And I have ancestors in MA going back to about 1629. Some of them were quite prominent; I would not be remote surprised if some of those ancestors owned slaves. Stop moving the goalposts.

  179. 179.

    Corner Stone

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    If you’ve researched your ancestry to before the American Revolution and not found a single slave owner, then congratulations — you hit the jackpot. But you need to be aware that your ancestors were the exception, not the norm.

    And I, for one, contend that you smell of elderberrys. And you need to be aware of that.

  182. 182.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Completely agree. I was talking about Sherrod Brown, not Elizabeth Warren, but completely apart from the possibility/likelihood/certainty that either of them would be replaced by a Republican, I do think they’re both far more valuable in the Senate, and not just as safe votes but as good votes and moral leadership.

  183. 183.

    Baud

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    “Breaking” means covering something really surprising and unexpected,

    That’s why it’s used. Everything nowadays is about attracting attention.

  184. 184.

    redshirt

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Are you intentionally ignoring the point I was making?

    And I have ancestors in MA going back to about 1629. Some of them were quite prominent; I would not be remote surprised if some of those ancestors owned slaves. Stop moving the goalposts.

    So you are literally a descendant of the Founding Fathers? And their Fathers? And their Fathers too?

  188. 188.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @redshirt: No Mayflower. No Declaration signer. Bunch of people from the Salem witch trials though. And as long as we are talking about original sins of this country- folks who served in the Pequot War.

  189. 189.

    hovercraft

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    Agree, it’s part of the legacy of Roger Ailes any his flashy unnecessary graphics and sound effects. They grab attention without imparting any new News.

  191. 191.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @sigaba: and then the Rubio-Bush-Cruz cage match starts all over again?

    I see Halperin is getting rightly roasted for his line about how you can’t be racist against Mexicans, and I remembered, he’s the one who called Obama a “dick” wasn’t he?

  192. 192.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    Clicks and sticky eyeballs. I get that. But surely I can’t be the only person who eventually goes numb at yet another BREAKING NEWS!!! banner or chyron, or ominous music stings, only to have the story be something they first told me about before breakfast.

  201. 201.

    NotMax

    @efgoldman

    Sad to say, whether he would have survived a full term in office is problematic.

    His being tied to Joe McCarthy via Roy Cohn was always a stain, but in ’68 he was the most realistic hope (the other McCarthy in ’68 was never going to get the nomination).

  202. 202.

    Wumpus

    @Mnemosyne

    If you were rich enough in early colonial America to have a couple of servants, then your servants were probably unfree – they were either slaves or indentured servants.

    But indentured servants were not identical to slaves, either legally (they were only legally bound to their masters for an explicit number of years) or more importantly racially. Slaves were all black or Native American; indentured servants were mostly white Norther Europeans. About half of all per-Revolutionary European immigrants came over as indentured servants.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant

    (Needless to say, if you’re coming over as an indentured servant – which you did because you couldn’t otherwise afford the fare – you didn’t start out with any servants yourselves, slaves or otherwise.)

  203. 203.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @efgoldman:

    I know, I know, but he brings so much to the ticket that I think he’d make up for it. But like debbie said upthread, they’re both needed in Ohio. Sherrod was my first choice last year to run for president, and Connie would make an awesome first lady. Alas. No Senators should be chosen for VP, but it should be someone who has that kind of comfortable stable demeanor. Hillary and her VP need to present to the country solidity and stability, because Trump is getting really fucking scary now.

  204. 204.

    Mike in NC

    @Ramping Up: Enjoy slobbering over Drumpf’s tiny knob. As always, every number you ever post came pulled straight out of your asshole. Remember President Rmoney and low energy loser Jeb Bush, you shitbag.

  205. 205.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne: I still like Perez, but I don’t know how he is on TV (which I think matters), and I worry a bit about his resume. Of course, it remains to be seen who he’d be debating. I wonder to what extent people like Corker are no longer willing to take a risk they might maybe could have been talked into a week ago.

  207. 207.

    Elie

    @efgoldman:

    What a time that was — what a time…. I was a junior in HS… I couldn’t understand what was happening to our country…. I still don’t understand — the times seem as extreme…. nothing was resolved… civil war continues or so it seems…

  210. 210.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @redshirt: of? establishment republicans who would’ve been willing to be Trump’s number two? Corker, according to gossip… I’m thinking somebody who was old enough and had a safe enough position to not have their own presidential ambitions, and would have nothing to lose as a longshot to be an éminence grise for President Blunderbuss

  212. 212.

    columbusqueen

    @Mnemosyne: JA’s mother’s family, the Boylstons, did own slaves, but the Adams family didn’t–like many New England farmers, they used the children & hired help. But Abigail’s father owned three slaves while she was growing up and freed them in his will. She refers to this in a letter from the late 1780’s, & makes it plain how much she disliked the situation, particularly in regards to Phoebe, the woman she calls her “second mother.”

  213. 213.

    Mnemosyne

    @NotMax:

    Your point? One could say the same of China or countless other countries and colonies of the time period. Singling out colonial America is a bit disingenuous.

    China? Talk about being disingenuous. Sure, if we ignore that America developed a unique system of race-based chattel slavery, we can pretend that it was the same thing as what China was doing.

  214. 214.

    Anne Laurie

    @Schlemazel Khan:

    OK, so go back & only count adult males, the number is still the minority. I have not seen pre-revolutionary numbers but still do not buy that it was the majority of people. There just were not enough slaves, black or white for the majority to own one.

    Gonna jump in without reading later comments — my first impression was that Mnem mistook a “town census” for voting purposes for the kind of every-live-person census we’re used to. IIRC, apart from well-labelled anomalies like the Domesday Book, traditional “English” censuses weren’t much different than classical Roman documents — they counted only LEGAL PERSONS – white adult male property-holders, even sometimes only ‘citizens’.

    By *that* definition, in a society where almost all power was muscle-based (especially in one where slaves might be cheaper than good draft animals), yes, every citizen would have one or more slaves. (And many of the lesser not-property-holding adult white males would have at least one approximation of a slave-equivalent, a/k/a a wife.)

    Doesn’t mean that “everyone” profited from slaves, but it does mean that every voter was almost certainly doing so.

  215. 215.

    Mnemosyne

    @columbusqueen:

    Exactly the point I was making. Slavery was a part of everyday life in colonial America including in the North, and everyone who could afford a slave had one (again, unless you were a Quaker or Methodist and had a religious objection). It was completely normalized. Pretending otherwise does nobody any good. If you have ancestors who were here prior to the American Revolution, it would be quite UNcommon for none of them to have ever owned a slave or to not have any relatives who owned slaves.

    And, sure, I’ll bring up Alexander Hamilton. His mother owned two slaves, who were sold as part of her estate when she died. His in-laws, the Schulyers, owned slaves, and his wife may have brought two slaves as part of her dowry (though they seem to have been manumitted). He facilitated the purchase of slaves for his sister-in-law, Angelica Church, and her husband. And no one thought anything of any of these actions, because they were common, everyday actions.

  216. 216.

    Mnemosyne

    @Anne Laurie:

    The problem seems to be that people interpreted what I said extremely literally and decided I meant that each person owned at least one slave when it was more like each family.

    If I ask you, What kind of car did you have when you were a kid?, most people realize I don’t think that a 6-year-old owned a car in his/her own name. But bring up a common piece of family property in colonial America and suddenly the assumption is that I must be referring to each individual.

  217. 217.

    Mnemosyne

    @Wumpus:

    People would have both in the same household. In fact, that’s why Wanda Sykes’ family was free since the 1600s — their family was started by the child of a black male slave and a white female indentured servant.

  218. 218.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mnemosyne: Bad stats make for bad assumptions. To use your analogy, if it’s assumed that “everybody has (access to) a car, even six-year-olds”, then planners put all the government’s money into roads & car services. That’s bad for all the people who don’t have cars, from six-year-olds who could be more independent with public transport to working adults who are forced to spend too much of their income on car upkeep to people who can’t (shouldn’t be) driving themselves (like those with medical issues, from substance abuse to advanced age). Saying that “everybody in pre-Revolutionary America had slaves” is an assertion too broad to defend on the evidence you present… although it could be argued that Tom Jefferson, for example, took enormous advantage of that But-Everybody loophole in both his personal and political life.

  219. 219.

    columbusqueen

    @Mnemosyne: I think you’re missing part of my point–yes, slavery in the North was more common than we realize, but I’m not sure we can say it was completely normalized there as much as the South. In my example, Abigail Adams became very anti-slavery after living with it in childhood. I suspect this was not unusual then. I also think slavery was much more of a class marker in the North; the more genteel a family was, the more likely they would own slaves to show that gentility. Lower class folk didn’t bother with that.

  220. 220.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    What you said:

    in the pre-Revolutionary period, everyone owned slaves. Every. One.

    It’s not interpretation, it’s impossible not to take that at face value what with those last two words included as emphasis.

  221. 221.

    Ken

    @Gin & Tonic:

    God, you’re pathetic.

    In a single thread, it’s pathetic. If you look through the history (were there any of the other 16 that he didn’t claim would knock out Trump at some point?), it looks more like dementia.

  222. 222.

    Matt McIrvin

    @shomi:

    A lot of commenters on TPM wondering if he’s having some kind of breakdown and whether he will bow out. I am starting to get worried. I hope he can keep it together for a few more months before Repubs have time for plan B which would probably end up being better than their current Plan A.

    I am not starting to think this could give them an opening to nominate someone else at the convention.

    If that does happen, it will be a clusterfuck that will be mighty and wonderful to behold, and it will not save them in the general election. Trump’s supporters will resent whoever they nominate, and if Trump is still capable of speaking in public, he’ll cause trouble afterward. Not only that, all the Republicans who fell in line over the past couple of weeks and endorsed Trump (including, probably, the replacement party nominee) will still have that fact stuck to them forever and ever.

  223. 223.

    No One You Know

    Seems odd, and troubling, to insist that every.one was either wealthy enough to own slaves, or didn’t matter enough to be counted. The Social Register definition Every.One doesn’t work for me.

    Ain’t I a woman too?

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