An "embarrassed" Ben Affleck admitted Tuesday that he asked producers of the PBS documentary show "Finding Your Roots" to edit out the discovery that one of his distant ancestors owned slaves... He said he spoke with show host and Harvard scholar Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, and lobbied him to take out his scandalous family history. "Skip agreed with me on the slave owner but made other choices I disagreed with," Affleck wrote. "In the end, it's his show and I knew that going in. I'm proud to be his friend and proud to have participated." -- NBC News."I don't know how to tell you this, but... Do you know about Nathan Bedford Forrest?"
"The founder of the Klan? Wait a minute -- are you saying one of my ancestors -- was Nathan Bedford Forrest?"
"No."
"Thank God. That would have been terrible. You have no idea how much I despise that man."
"No, I'm saying that Clayton Sykes -- who wrote a book in 1962 called Nathan Bedford Forrest: The Greatest American, and who actively petitioned to get Forrest's face on Mt. Rushmore until he died in 1975 -- was your paternal grandfather."
"This cannot possibly be made public."
"I don't know why not. It isn't your fault, after all."
"Let me put it another way: I cannot possibly allow this to be made public."
"I see."
+ + +
"But my parents were decent people from Asdofel, Missouri."
"Perhaps you've heard of the Monster of Asdofel, a deranged white supremacist who over six years raped several black women in western Missouri, leaving politically charged notes behind. One of his victims was your mother, whom he took for an African-American, probably due to his astigmatism. Though it was hushed up, documentary evidence proves that you are the child of their union."
"I'm torn here. On the one hand I'm related to a monster, on the other I'm related to his victim. Hang on, let me call my agent. [calls agent.] He says the men who are about to burst through the door should seize and destroy your notes."
+ + +
"So you're saying your have evidence that every single member of my family from 1945 onwards, including my little nieces and nephews, are neo-Nazis?"
"I'm afraid so."
"There's only one course of action left for me, Gates. Prepare to -- dammit, what's wrong with this thing? Oh, I see; it's got one of those trigger locks. Well, would you accept a bribe?"
+ + +
"Your great-grandfather, it seems, was Adolph Hitler."
"Dr. Gates, please! My fans must never know! Name your price."
"All right: No more Deuce Bigelow films."
"Are you saying I'm related to Rick Santorum?"
ReplyDelete"No, I'm saying you are Rick Santorum."
"How will my children ever cope with the shame? With any luck they'll all turn out gay so this terrible genetic legacy will end here."
"Prepare to -- dammit, what's wrong with this thing? Oh, I see; it's got
ReplyDeleteone of those trigger locks. Well, would you accept a bribe?"
Genius.
I do have some trouble understanding Affleck's reaction. At the worst, Ben profited from their bad acts, attenuated through generations. I mean, I'm sure my ancestors have done terrible things. But really, it's all orphans and deserters in my family.
And yet he put his name on "Gigli."
ReplyDeleteI guess where I get puzzled is that you have a white American shocked to discover that his ancestors from around 200 years ago owned slaves.
ReplyDeleteHopefully someone warned him that his great-grandmothers didn't always have the right to vote and most of his forebears were probably to the right of Santorum on teh ghey. Or closeted, never easy to tell.
Pride is a two-edged sword.
ReplyDeleteSome of my ancestors might have been horse thieves, stagecoach hold-up men and gunfighters. Either way, so what? Some other relatives were heroes. Some were monsters. In the end the only thing that matters is what we do, here and now.
Affleck probably wanted to preserve his pride. That never ends well.
I know, right? What kind of Batman covers up dark secrets in his past? The worst kind.
ReplyDeleteI, too, find his reaction puzzling. No living person can control what their ancestors did, and Affleck could have taken it as an opportunity to repudiate their actions and validate his own social consciousness and activism.
ReplyDeleteI LIVE LITERALLY ACROSS THE COUNTRY MAN WHAT THE HELL
ReplyDeleteHard to know what he was thinking. I mean, (and without counting second marriages, forbidden love etc) we all have 8 great grandparents, 16 great-great grandparents, 32 great-great etc etc.
ReplyDeleteYou take a complete look at your family history, it's a certainty that at some point you're going to come across a horrendous douche.
My great-grandmother was divorced circa 1905. The family hushed it up, even telling my grandmother than her stepfather was her father. People are nuts.
ReplyDeleteOr, as the punchline to a joke the setup of which I've forgotten goes, "You'se ain't confessin'. You's braggin'."
ReplyDeleteYou need to organize AlicuMeet West. Then you can make us jealous with how awesome it was to have dex and DocAmazing in one place.
ReplyDeleteNobody ever wants to meet up in Texas. I do not blame them one iota.
ReplyDeleteCome on out to L.A. Just bring your own water.
ReplyDeleteTrade in all your upvotes for airmiles. That should cover it!
ReplyDeletewe all have 8 great grandparents, 16 great-great grandparentsIf by some bizarre circumstance we don't, is it okay to cover that up?
ReplyDeleteI was born near San Francisco but we moved away soon after. I'd love to see it again one day.
ReplyDeleteWho drinks water?
ReplyDeleteJimmy has three granddads?
ReplyDeleteI've been ashamed of that biogrowth vat ever since I learned they tried to clone Hitler in it.
ReplyDeleteJesus managed it, so sure.
ReplyDeleteI guess I'm more disappointed with Gates for going along with it. Seems like one of those teachable moments and he let it go for the sake of Affleck's misplaced shame.
ReplyDelete...
ReplyDeleteHey, I'd do my best if I were ever in the area again. There was a surprisingly decent BBQ place in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport food court.
ReplyDeleteFish fuck in that!
ReplyDeleteBetter than Kansas. Lawrence is cool, but with all the college students you always have to be on guard for Kris Kobach.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I mean, I have *living* relatives whose actions make me roll my eyes. But I don't feel like they're a reflection on me.
ReplyDeleteAh, well, another teachable moment down the memory hole.
ReplyDeleteBen Affleck acted stupidly.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother got married to my grandfather while she was carrying another man's child. I didn't learn of this until cued in by a relative a few years ago.
ReplyDelete"Tell the truth and shame the devil."
ReplyDeleteI think Roger Ailes already commented on Gigli.
ReplyDeleteGod only knows what my great-grandchildren will think of me.
ReplyDeleteAffleck's descendants will try to cover up any connection to that travesty.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean, "..."? The California Zephyr runs through Denver on its way to San Francisco. You could be in the Bay Area in no time**. Imagine the stories of debauched nerdery that could result.
ReplyDelete**It's the California Zephyr, so "no time" could be in the vicinity of eight hundred hours.
"All right: No more Deuce Bigelow films."Hmm, does anyone have a time machine I could borrow? I'd have it back before you knew it.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you don't at first find at least one horrendous douche in your family history, rest assured: it's probably you.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot of secrecy in families, and a lot of myth-making to hide those secrets, often for perplexing reasons, but just as often to avoid cultural stigma. Pregnancy, divorce, insanity, all were treated as extreme faults to be denied, more so in the past, but despite better understanding of those conditions, it still happens.
ReplyDeleteLife is often messy, and I would guess that everyone has skeletons somewhere in their family closets.
http://twitpic.com/ctthdi
ReplyDeleteIs it too late to move the Alicublog meetup?
ReplyDeleteI am so glad that none of my ancestors landed on these shores prior to 1900.
ReplyDeleteCue "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves".
ReplyDeleteNo more Deuce Bigelow films.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a pretty solid policy no matter what.
A friend of ours visited yesterday, and she was telling us the story of her rural upbringing. Her grandfather's father was killed by a young couple who were on a killing spree. Neighbors pointed out that buzzards had been dropping into the gutted chimney of a large old vacant house, so her grandfather inspected it and found the dismembered body of the female accomplice. he waited for the killer to come back to the house, and killed him.
ReplyDeleteHe dragged the body to the courthouse steps, sawed its head off and subsequently won a petition for exoneration.
She said he was a right bastard.
My family's history has a more of a "banality of evil" tone.
And this is what Republicans want to preserve: shame and pretense. Old fashioned values.
ReplyDeleteThat's a whole concept record by Nick Cave right there.
ReplyDeleteI've got Mormons in my background, so it's pretty much a given with me.
ReplyDeleteSo his ancestors owned slaves. So did mine. In Charleston, SC. I'm sure I probably have black relatives, but that CERTAINLY was never mentioned... Hell, I'm worse than Ben. My ancestors started coming here in 1620 and 1622, so we stole the Native Americans' land too. Should I kill myself now?
ReplyDeleteSee, Rick?
ReplyDeleteYour campaign even made your own daughter cry!
I would need to meet dex just to see if he talks like Cartoon Dexter. (I read all his posts in Cartoon Dexter's voice. It's amusing.)
ReplyDeleteDO NOT ask about the kosher menu.
ReplyDeleteOr shame the GOP, which is increasingly the same thing.
ReplyDeleteDown heah Southern way, if you mean legally, why sure; genetically, why sure; legally + genetically, Suh! We mustn't get carried away here!
ReplyDeleteIncluding my experiences with genealogy. I was young at the time, and asked my mom (genealogy was her kick at the time) questions like "but if aunt Myrtle wasn't his *mom* mom, then it must be aunt Flossie? What, aunt Flossie wasn't really her sister?
But she lived with them? I'm confused."
Oh yeah, great formative experience into human nature.
My mother seemed embarrassed that our ancestors on Maryland's Eastern Shore owned slaves. Or maybe she was just pretending.
ReplyDeleteI predict that one of these kids will grow up and write one of those "tell-all" books about what it was like to grow up in one of the country's most dysfunctional families.
ReplyDeleteThey couldn't be much worse than the "Palmetto bugs" we've got down South.
ReplyDeleteGood grief, those things are HUGE. Plus, they can fly (usually when you least expect it.)
Genealogy: an exception to the 'The More You Know' rule.
ReplyDeleteAlthough it gives one a great appreciation that folks today aren't nearly as freaky-deaky as the media would lead one to believe.
I'm in Cheshire, I'll see if I can make it.
ReplyDeleteAre there no wormholes?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I have some sympathy for Aflleck, even though his request was nonsensical, and a response like what Derelict suggests above seems like it would have been much more in character for Affleck.
ReplyDeleteBut the family secrecy thing can be so corrosive. Over the years, I heard that my mom had spent some time with her cousins as an infant because my grandpa worked six days a week and my grandma was sick with "female problems" after my mother was born. I've gradually pieced together that my grandmother was most likely in a sanatarium for severe post-partum depression, and my mother spent her first few years apart from her mom. I can't confirm this because they're all dead now, but it would explain a lot. Families is weird.
Yes indeed. Using shame and pretense to control the masses while they hire a new Dominican pool boy to carry the wetsuits and dildos.
ReplyDeleteOh, FUCK, palmetto bugs.
ReplyDeleteSomething I do not miss at all.
I really hope to read Heather Poe's memoirs some day - you know, Mary Cheney's wife.
ReplyDeleteHe Made Us Handle the Dead Fetus, by Sarah Santorum.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, when you're an actor and your face appears on the screen, it's kind of hard to pull the "Allen Smithee" dodge.
ReplyDeleteI assume they'll be migrating north with the climate change. Hmm. Do you think there'd be any money in it if we could weaponize them?
ReplyDeleteThey're the same thing.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it turns out that when you put out roach motels they go bug-shit crazy and fly around in a frenzy.
I live very near San Francisco, so you can always come stay with me. We just have to time it for when I am house-sitting somewhere fabulous.
ReplyDelete"In January 2015, Santorum announced Bella's Gift: How One Little Girl Transformed Our Family and Inspired a Nation, a book about his daughter Bella, who lives with a rare genetic condition called Trisomy 18. The book is authored by Santorum and his wife, Karen Santorum, and co-authored by their daughter, Elizabeth Santorum. It is set to be released February 10, 2015.[264]" from Wikipedia
ReplyDeleteGet in on the grift, girl!
"Ben Affleck? No, no, we're descendants of that duck, you know, Ben Aflac."
ReplyDeleteI suspect it will be a very long time before I can travel anywhere, with three kids in/going into/will be going into college.
ReplyDeleteThanks Obama :(
ReplyDeleteThat's a source of comfort? Why, you probably forced my ancestors out of their hovels to come here as indentured servants. There's no escape from ancestral shame.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt there's an NRA member who is making tiny little AK-47s as we speak.
ReplyDeleteI heard a comedian joke about accidently weaponizing them.
ReplyDeleteHe said he tried killing one by dropping a brick on it. Not only is it unhurt, but now it's armed with a brick.
That's their version of writing a negative Yelp review I suppose.
ReplyDeleteIt's Okay When I Terminate a Pregnancy, You Sluts: The Karen Santorum Story.
ReplyDeleteWith LASERS!
ReplyDeleteHamburger Helper: The Dark side.
ReplyDeleteThat'd be funny if it weren't true.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth aims to dedicate her life in service of the marginalized,
ReplyDeleteabused, and disabled; during the summer of 2014, she will be working
alongside missionaries in Uganda as a teacher to underprivileged
children
And will undoubtedly be supporting the whole "death to gays" thing while she's there.
(I hate to sound nativist, but, fuck, she's got to traipse all the way to Uganda to find "the marginalized,
abused, and disabled"?)
Nah, strictly Western European peasant stock. My forebears didn't have the wherewithal to push anyone off their already marginal land.
ReplyDeleteThey came here because they couldn't eat scenery.
Even if they are spoiled rich kids, I look at that picture and I know for sure that I don't envy them one little bit.
ReplyDeletethey couldn't eat scenery
ReplyDeleteUnlike Ben Affleck?
Elizabeth aims to dedicate her life in service of the marginalized, abused, and disabledWell, thanks to the policies of politicians like Rick Santorum, they need all the help they can get.
ReplyDeleteI would like to take this comment on a movie date to see "Batman vs. Superman".
ReplyDeleteGoing by her twitter feed she is spending her time giving speeches to conservative groups and going on conservative media.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking more of the parents, who definitely aren't hurting financially. Rick's come a long way from living in government-provided housing in West Virginia.
ReplyDeleteYeah, even the Bush twins managed to do a better job of putting deeds with similar words.
ReplyDeleteAh, yeah, that's going to fucking help a lot indeed.
ReplyDeleteSnerk.
(I hate to sound nativist, but, fuck, she's got to traipse all the way to Uganda to find "the marginalized,
ReplyDeleteabused, and disabled", much less "underprivileged children"?
"I'm sorry, Ms. Santorum, but we've looked over your resume and, quite frankly, we think you're, uh, well, ummm, well, let's say you're overqualified to teach inner-city third graders about what you call history."
I'd have it back before you knew it I borrowed it.
ReplyDeleteFTFY
That boy's eyes are what gets me.
ReplyDelete"I must now become a serial killer"
. . . if you - or your family - have ever done something wrong or stupid, it must be forever held against you.
ReplyDeleteThis only applies to Democrats and liberals. If you're a conservative, there is nothing--absolutely NOTHING--that you can do that gets you dismissed from polite company or not invited on TV to give your opinion. This includes proclaiming that Hitler wasn't such a bad guy, which should have gotten him banned from any public discussion about anything ever.
Do what I did. Grow facial hair and claim that everything everyone ever thought they knew about me was the work of my evil twin, recently deceased.
ReplyDeleteHave the milt shake!
ReplyDeleteWeaponized Roaches, you say?
ReplyDeleteOnly is I can get a side of eggs with that. Otherwise, it's a tough roe to hoe.
ReplyDeleteWow. Teen spree killers before Charlie Starkweather? America is truly a wondrous nation!
ReplyDeleteYou might notice I commented about a time machine elsewhere in this thread. Or have I not done that yet?
ReplyDeleteI was thinking, "Now Dad's going to be home *all* the time."
ReplyDeleteIt was Schroedinger's comment in that it's an equal probability that you both did and you didn't.
ReplyDeleteAny Mrs. Santorum's sideways look. Maybe it's time to move on to husband number three. You know, for the kids.
ReplyDeleteNah pop no style, I strictly ROOTS!
ReplyDeleteThey speak forty languages in Uganda. Who do you think is going to be checking up on her work...or for that matter, whether she makes it to Uganda at all?
ReplyDelete(Odds are good that she will actually go there; it's about fifty-fifty whether the missionary program is doing anything besides grifting.)
Does that work with the IRS and parole officers? I'm asking for a friend.
ReplyDeleteEasy there. Visitors should be expected to bring water for us too.
ReplyDeleteI think you have to add the 'skedaddle for a country with no extradition treaty' option to avoid them.
ReplyDeleteCambridge meetup! Tonight, on Skip Gates' porch.
ReplyDeleteTell me about it. My dad's father died of TB in 1930's, when dad was only 7; about all anyone seemed to know of him was that his family came out of Florida and he served in WWI. On his mother's side, they had traced the family back to the 1300's, before Roots came along and most people cared anything about tracing ancestry. Dad died 20 years ago, and recently I got curious about his family and started poking into it. I didn't have to poke very far to find some odd things - first, it's like these people were ghosts; the only mention I've been able to find of them under the names that were given on grandfather's death certificate came from the 1900 census, in which the census taker had included a ? after each of the names in the family. It showed a mother-in-law living with the family - I looked at earlier censuses, and it showed her and her daughter (my great-grandmother) as living in a household of people with another name of unknown relation....leading me to believe that great-grandmother was perhaps illegitimate.
ReplyDeleteIt gets weirder - the 1910 census shows the family with a different last name (I was only able to find them by tracing the mother-in-law, who still lived in the household). Did they give the wrong name in 1900 or in 1910, and why? The 1910 census notes that both the great grandfather and grandmother reported being able to read and write, so apparently it wasn't an issue of illiteracy but who knows? After 1910, they disappear altogether; the next record I find is of my grandfather's "service" in WWI on his induction card - showing he was only in "service" for 5 months at tail end of war, never went overseas, and was discharged with a service disability rating of 25%. He shows up in 1920 census in SC, and by the 1930 census, shows up as a patient in a sanatorium in NC. Can find no birth records for either my father or his sister (at least not in my free record searches), no record of grandfather's marriage to my grandmother, and no record of them ever living together in the same home. About all I've been able to glean from Mom is that she always had the feeling that my grandmother's family disapproved of the marriage. I think I know why now - at best, it appears he came from a family of really bad North Florida white trash, perhaps bad enough to lie about their name to a census-taker in 1910. It's all very mysterious.
Love that song!
ReplyDelete"MESSAGE HEARD AND UNDERSTOOD< DREAD LORD."
ReplyDeleteThere's a few tales of freedom-fightin' criminals giving the law hell in
ReplyDeletemy family. Back in 1776, we resisted the British Army -- a.k.a. the
god-sanctioned legal authority, founder and benefactor of all social order. Still, we did it, cuz we thought that authority had gone tyrannic. More
recently, an unarmed Irish ancestor escaped arrest by bluffing a British
cop into thinking he had a gun trained on him -- later he pulled down some unfortunate merchant's
wall of stacked barrels to slow pursuers. I was raised to take this as
swashbuckling heroism in the name of basic dignity. And I do.
I
don't, however, hear a lot of sympathy from these story-telling family members
when people are beaten or shot by police now in real life. Some sympathy, yes!
"It's terrible when someone dies." But also, you're supposed to be respectful, obey the officer, don't talk
back, think from his point of view so you don't startle or anger him,
never challenge his authority -- I mean come on. It's not racism, it's
just "were you even listening when you told me to improve the world by
telling a cop I'd kill him if he made one false move?"
#TeamSwashbuckle
later he pulled down some unfortunate merchant's wall of stacked barrels to slow pursuers
ReplyDeleteWell, I suppose someone had to be the first, and since empty cardboard boxes hadn't been invented yet...
I'm in the South Dakota, so maybe we could meet somewhere in the middle. Kansas City? Oklahoma Joe's barbeque and beer at the Flying Saucer?
ReplyDeleteRight? It's so cinematic, it sets off my bullshit detector big time. But it's a family story so I'll take it.
ReplyDelete#TeamElizabethWarren (Oh, incidentally, the family members who cheerfully pass on their own lore see Warren doing so as disqualifying and shameful.)
That carpet really tied the set together.
ReplyDeleteIt becomes the insect equivalent of a Tea Party meeting? Kinky!
ReplyDeleteThis hits pretty close to home for me, since my great-grandfather, and probably my grandfather were in the Klan. I'm not proud of it, but I've never thought to deny it or hide it.
ReplyDeleteIf you go back far enough, I probably have some Saxon relatives who gave the Angles hell. "These hovels belong to us now, dogs!" Oh shit here come the Picts.
ReplyDeleteOh shit here come the Picts.... or it didn't happen.
ReplyDeleteMy father has become such a winger/Bircher/Nutbag that I wonder if I'm guilty by association. Joining the Klan isn't a step too far for him, except that he'd have to turn off Fox Spews long enough to leave the house for the meetings/burnings.
ReplyDeleteOh, wode!
ReplyDeleteWe have traced your most distant ancestor possible. He was a Roman centurion - the one who stabbed Jesus in the side while on the cross. His brother, also a centurion, was the one who ponded in the nails. Your family killed Christ.
ReplyDeleteIf you publish that I will have "Doc" Brown go back and kill your ancestors
Well, we thought that was your most distant ancestor. We have now proven you are also descended from a caveman. In fact, the very one who brought to an end the arcardian coexistence of homo sapiens and homo neanderthal and launched the successful genocide of the latter. Your ancestor wiped out an entire species of human.
ReplyDeleteIf you can't trace your ancestors back to the apes you're an arriviste.
ReplyDeletePooh-Bah:
ReplyDeleteDon't mention it. I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and
exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand
this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal
primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something
inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
My ancestors' chemicals arrived on this planet via a superior asteroid belt.
ReplyDeleteGives new meaning to "Don't tread on me."
ReplyDeleteI will have to stay put for a while and skip any meets. Unless you have a real flying saucer.
ReplyDeleteMy mother was adopted in 1922 when she was a few weeks old. Her "parents" changed her birthday from Jan 6 to Jan 12 so as to hinder any attempt to find her real parents in the future. She was not told she was adopted until grannie had died and grandad was on his deathbed. Fortunately grannie's cousin was able to provide enough information for us to track down her birth mother but not before her and all her children were dead (missed the last one by a couple of months). Turns out she was a single woman at the time who had an affair with a married man who was high up in the Anglican Church in Canada at the time - we never did find out his name. I did have a conversation with one of her grandsons though. Kind of awkward :)
ReplyDeletebest you don't know :)
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine went there and isn't Catholic. At least when he was there (mid-1980s) it wasn't wingnutty. Further, I can't say.
ReplyDeleteAsteroid? Yes, I see that now. Of course, my people's chemicals arrived by comet. Hmm? Oh, no, of course not Halley's. How common. No, it's one I'm sure you've never heard of.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you can, then have fun in hell, atheist.
ReplyDeleteBoy oh boy, I hate the word "dignity" when right-wing theocrats use the term in conjunction with handicapped people (speaking as one myself). It's code for
ReplyDelete-- opposing terminations by would-be parents who don't want to raise handicapped kids (I am okay with this because a) pro-choice, and b) raising handicapped kids is fucking hard and I don't want anyone doing it who isn't committed to it);
-- holding themselves up as moral exemplars for raising their handicapped kids (because all of us dirty liberals would just genocide them in the womb, or something), as opposed to like normal people, who just get on with it;
-- and treating handicapped kids like special malformed snowflakes who don't get to be mainstreamed in any way. Blechh.
They also use the same term to oppose right-to-die stuff, because lingering in a hospital bed connected to tubes and wires and machines while cancer, ALS old age, or some other medical horror eats you alive by millimetres is totes dignified.
Bob's Comet.
ReplyDeleteI think of you as a giant cookie from texas who I agree with 98% of the time.
ReplyDeleteYup - that was a really good episode
ReplyDeleteMy paternal grandfather's cousin lived with them as his brother from early childhood. It was never a formal adoption, but working-class people did that in that day and age quite commonly. My great-grandmother on that side of the family was my great-grandfather's third wife or something, too, but I don't know the story there.
ReplyDeleteInteresting how your surname has changed over time...
ReplyDeleteMy maternal grandfather asked my great-great aunt (the family geneologist) to stop looking into his family history after she found the third relative who'd been hanged for stealing sheep; he couldn't stand the shame. So I kind of get where Affleck is coming from. :D
ReplyDelete"I know where I came from, but where did all you zombies come from?"
ReplyDeleteIn a sweater vest.
ReplyDeleteFrom the daughter&dolly matching outfits, to the Simpsons character looking son in what has to be a sweater vest...
ReplyDeleteThe mind boggles, the flesh crawls
An ancestor of mine was the first person to use the word "irregardless" in a sentence.
ReplyDeleteI live figuratively across the country.
ReplyDeleteFather Lonigan: "So it's himself you're named after. Your grandfather. Who died in Australia. In a penal colony. And your father, he was a good man too."
ReplyDeleteFor SHAME!
ReplyDeleteIf God didn't want you to slowly disintegrate in a hospital bed, kept alive by machines, He wouldn't have invented them.
ReplyDeleteOr something.
Gromet H.B. Margarine, at your service I'll expect the last of the acreage seeded by sundown and dinner at 8 sharp.
ReplyDeleteThis. (Make everyone involved African-American, and you have my wife's family; her family tree is a kudzu vine.)
ReplyDeleteand there's a lot more of 'em--
ReplyDeleteYeah, Uganda, where her "degree" in history will serve her well...
ReplyDeleteOh, and WTF? Raised in a young earth creationist household, and history?
Mine owned slaves too and had a big plantation. But they lost everything in the Civil War so that's some consolation. (Why my great-grandfather headed west). But things are what they are. Spilt milk, &c.
ReplyDeleteoh zeig heil, thesaurus man
ReplyDelete"We have traced back your most distant ancestor, the hominid who decided to follow the chimpanzee behavioral model rather than the bonobo behavioral model."
ReplyDeleteAncestors? Hah! I popped out of Zeus's head (fully-growed) when
ReplyDeleteHephaestus whacked him on the head w/ a hammer.
My colorful ancestor was a sort of bootlegger-cum-grifter who successfully transitioned into legitimate business late in life and wrote a memoir of his life and times that largely whitewashed their more interesting details. I'm sure the rest of my forebears, most of whom were cobblers, pub owners, domestic servants, or farmers were nicer people on the whole, but there you go.
ReplyDeleteMy great-grandfather was an abusive piece of shit who left my illiterate, non-English-speaking great-grandmother with nine kids. He worked for the railroad, so he just went somewhere else and started a new family while his relatives who were still in town tried to take the kids away from my great-grandmother -- my grandmother said she wasn't allowed to leave the house for two years for fear she'd be kidnapped.
ReplyDeleteHe never did divorce her, though, and when he died, she managed to assert, and win, a claim to his railroad pension. I don't think much of him, but I am incredibly proud of her.
What's the joke: a guy hoping to emigrate calls the local Australian consulate and is asked, "Do you have a criminal record?" So he replies, "Why, do you still need one?"
ReplyDeleteWhat a perfect author's name for that book.
ReplyDeleteSee? Bristol Palin was an upgrade. Little did we know.
ReplyDeleteCheese & crackers, how far up that four-eyed mess's ass does the stick go?
ReplyDeleteOr is it just medication?
I learned it reading a really fun book on the history of geneaology as a social practice and naming conventions. Can't remember the guys name but the book was called "The Mountain of Names" and it took as its jumping off point the Mormon project of identifying and baptizing/converting the dead. Fascinating and very well written.
ReplyDeleteI'm hearing the Decemberists.
ReplyDeleteJob security?
ReplyDeleteSo who killed the female accomplice? Her partner?
ReplyDeleteWait. That's a thing people can do, now?
ReplyDeleteThe fact that your line was not extirpated for that shows the mercy of humanity.
ReplyDeleteMy folks, on the maternal and paternal side, fought in the Civil War on the losing side. They didn't have enough money to avoid it.
ReplyDeleteI can assure you it was to get something to eat, and as feeding programs go, it sucked.
They raised some racist ass young'uns.
I was never interested in my ancestors, but my brother undertook that task and uncovered the obvious. Morose Anglo-Irish/German hop-Heads going back before the industrial revolution.
ReplyDeleteI get the impression he was disappointed.
I felt it validated my ass.
Most of my ancestors came from Scotland, Wales, England, and then a bunch from the Alsace Lorraine area. But my maternal grandfather came from southwestern Germany in 1909. He was a little kid traveling with his mom and siblings. They sailed out of Southampton on the Oceanic and arrived in New York on June 30, 1909. Have you looked up your forebears at the Ellis Island Project? It's pretty cool. I mean, they won't be listed there if they were actually bears, but otherwise you can see the manifests online.
ReplyDeleteYou know, my dad always proudly proclaimed some Native American ancestry, but so did half the people I knew. I figured he was just bloviating, but when I had my DNA ancestry done, I found out that I'm like 98% European, mostly northern European...but there's this tiny bit of Asian or Amerindian blood. I swear, my first thought was not, "Ooh, how cool!" but "Oh god, please let it have been consensual". See what a sunny personality I have? I should wander off and paint myself blue like we did in the olden days.
ReplyDeleteYes. They had stolen the victim's shoe, where he kept his money. This is a story passed down to a girl who was raised by her grandparents.
ReplyDeleteIt's like every other narrative in the south. It sounds like some fever dream until you've lived here for awhile, and then it's too fucking late. You're part of the dream.
Hiya, cousin!
ReplyDeleteMy junior high English teacher married a Granville County, NC Currin, the indirect product of Elam Currin, who buried three wives and had to be restrained from marrying a fourth.
ReplyDeleteHe fathered thirty children from women who were his cousins at the most distant. She tells me the family tree is a straight, vertical line.
"Unamerican Gothic, With Get"
ReplyDeleteWe are sadly lacking in that kind of book. There are three Rush Limbaugh books he probably spent a ton of money preventing.
ReplyDeleteI have heard so many stories about men leading double lives in that era, and always wondered where they got the energy or the means. But goddamn if they didn't.
ReplyDeleteMy father's family went to the beach sometime in the 30's, and my grandfather swam out past the breakers and didn't reunite with the family for two years. They said he had another family in California.
A friend of mine's father graduated through the Pacific theater in WWII to admiral. He survived sixteen years as a lung cancer patient, and he told me that 100's were better for you because they helped filter out the worst stuff. on his deathbed, he notified his kids he had TWO OTHER FAMILIES.
I've never been nearly that goddamn hungry.Or that good a swimmer.
Just a guess, but: Affleck does great work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and he might have rightly thought that this news be used to smear the good work done by his org, the Eastern Congo Initiative. And still another guess, but I don't think a guy who's done extensive, respected work (not Madonna in Malawi bullshit) in a post-colonial African country would be shocked to hear his ancestors were slave owners.
ReplyDeleteThe urge to protect the future of an important NGO is, to me, the simplest answer to a) why he would request such a thing and b) why Gates would go along with it.
Funny, but I think the laws of supply and demand have already made a more compelling petition for the end of the Deuce Bigalow series.
ReplyDeleteThere are standards by which that counts as spending your time productively. I don't get it either.
ReplyDeleteGiant... cookie...
ReplyDeleteGiant... cookie...,
ReplyDeleteThat's pretty amazing. I'm glad she managed to get something out of him, even posthumously.
ReplyDeleteHa! I got you beat. One of my ancestors was the first to use "dialog" as a verb.
ReplyDeleteThat's truly horrible. I raise sheep. To hang someone for stealing them is like electrocuting someone for stealing a houseplant.
ReplyDeleteSo . . . why did the killer dismember his accomplice? Why did he come back to the house? Why didn't you ask your friend these questions?
ReplyDeleteThat had to be an ecstatic experience for the kids. i don't know how they were briefed before the meet by their officers, but I have a good impression of how they came to that point, wading through a seemingly invincible army of motherfuckers.
ReplyDeleteI'll bet some of them felt like it was a new day.
Because we're rurals too, and we're all talking ninety miles a minute because you rarely see another Democrat out here anymore.
ReplyDeleteAnd also, you've got to try and imagine the south, especially the pre WWII south, as a kind of sticky green jelly, where the cult of murder that spawned the Civil War gained broad acceptance among the starving.
This is still #1, but obviously...
ReplyDeletehttp://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7crqyaxMU1rbaxuco1_400.gif
I had a great-uncle who remained a mystery all my life--he was rarely mentioned, except briefly and usually with some hint of dark doings. As best as I can figure, he had been shunned by the family because of something that happened in the early `30s. He was a priest who'd been sent to do missionary work in China, and, um, then he wasn't. Best as I can figure, he left the priesthood to get married--a cardinal sin to a good Catholic family--and had then been in the service doing public relations for the Navy, had a long career doing PR for one of the big life insurance companies, and retired to Florida. Had at least one son, maybe other children, but I never knew more than that. My mother at times vaguely suggested that it was he that had cut himself off from the rest of the family.
ReplyDeleteWhen my aunt died, they found letters to her from him, saying, in effect, "you're the only one of all the family that cared about keeping in touch," and it was apparent from the letters that he would have been eager to meet the rest of his large extended family (especially in his last years, spent in assisted living), but that my aunt had withheld knowledge of his whereabouts, likely in hopes of getting some of his estate.
That in itself is one of those tawdry little things that goes on in families, but it's also a story of how one story obscured a wealth of other stories from family history. What stories my great-uncle might have told about China, about what compelled him to leave the priesthood, etc., would have been fascinating, but those stories remain untold.
(I hate to sound nativist, but, fuck, she's got to traipse all the way to Uganda to find "the marginalized,
ReplyDeleteabused, and disabled", much less "underprivileged children"?)
It may have been that Uganda is a long way from her parents; that is, if she were a normal college graduate
How many tank models do you have in your basement?
ReplyDeleteThere are cockroaches in Hawaii that would terrorize palmetto bugs. i was a few days from getting out of the army there, nothing to do, so I went down to watch one of the guys I knew play softball. He was a pretty big guy, maybe two hundred pounds, and was standing with his teammates talking before the game, with a sidewalk between them. He noticed a cockroach, about 3-4" long, walking along the sidewalk, and he leaped in the air and landed on the bug, crushing it with a peremptory epithet, and went on talking with his teammates.
ReplyDeleteI watched the bug. It took a few minutes, but the damned thing used its legs to push itself up and unstick itself from the concrete and then dragged itself off into the bushes.
I've read that mosquitoes have been around for 100 million years, and cockroaches and their variants for possibly longer than that. It's humbling, in a way, to think that a brain with less than 800 ganglia is all that's necessary to outlive us.
I had friends in college that were banned from a local Hardees for stealing a houseplant. They weren't hung, but they did spend a weekend in jail for trespassing on the college campus while living in the dorms.
ReplyDeleteI'm betting that "quasi-monastic life" does not include a vow of silence.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine was a German Wehrmacht soldier in WWII. He was drafted into the artillery right after Poland fell. Invaded France, then invaded Greece, then invaded southern Russia where he was wounded outside Sebastopol. After we recuperated, he was sent to North Africa and fought the Brits at El Alamein, retreated across North Africa and fought Americans at Kasserine. Was finally captured by the French, handed over to the Brits, and shipped to Oklahoma to finish out the war in American POW camps.
ReplyDeleteHe's 96 years old, and loves to tell his war stories. It's always interesting to hear about the war from the other side.
the chimpanzee behavioral model rather than the bonobo behavioral model.
ReplyDeleteThis is a roundabout way of saying "doggy-style".