Here are my initial impressions:

• Her first known relative, Melvinia, had a tough, complicated life.
  The article opens:

  In 1850, the elderly master of a South Carolina estate took pen in hand and painstakingly divided up his possessions. Among the spinning wheels, scythes, tablecloths and cattle that he bequeathed to his far-flung heirs was a 6-year-old slave girl valued soon afterward at $475.

  It is later revealed that Melvinia had a child around age of fifteen that was categorized as "mulatto," the official term then for someone who was biracial. The reporters note:

  It is difficult to say who might have impregnated Melvinia, who gave birth to Dolphus around 1859, when she was perhaps as young as 15. At the time, Henry Shields was in his late 40s and had four sons ages 19 to 24, but other men may have spent time on the farm as well.

  "No one should be surprised anymore to hear about the number of rapes and the amount of sexual exploitation that took place under slavery; it was an everyday experience, " said Jason A. Gillmer, a law professor at Texas Wesleyan University, who has researched liaisons between slave owners and slaves. "But we do find that some of these relationships can be very complex."

  What happened with Melvinia cannot be determined. The article indicates later that another child was born post-emancipation. That could mean that the relationship continued - or it could mean that, like sharecropping, certain practices continued for lack of better options. Later on, Melvinia left the area and reunited with other people she had worked with at her original plantation. On her death certificate, it is written that her parents are unknown.

• Passing and the promise of education figure prominently in Michelle's family history.
  
  When discussing the path of Melvinia's offspring, it was noted:

  Dolphus Shields was in his 30s and very light skinned - some say he looked like a white man - a church-going carpenter who could read, write and advance in an industrializing town. By 1900, he owned his own home, census records show. By 1911, he had opened his own carpentry and tool sharpening business. [...]

  At a time when blacks despaired at the intransigence and violence of whites who barred them from voting, from most city jobs, from whites-only restaurants and from owning property in white neighborhoods, Dolphus Shields served as a rare link between the deeply divided communities.

  His carpentry shop stood in the white section of town, and he mixed easily and often with whites. "They would come to his shop and sit and talk," Mrs. Holt said.

  Dolphus Shields believed race relations would improve. "It's going to come together one day," he often said, Mrs. Holt recalled.

• Don't ever read the comments on these kind of things.

  I should know better by now, but I occasionally take a peek. I stopped when one of the comments listed said "I have no sympathy for the Obama's who are rich and influential...Eastern Europeans and Asians really had to struggle when they got here." Twenty-six people recommended that comment.

• It is important to remember that the Obama family did not necessarily participate in the information gathering of the article.
  

  Mrs. Obama and her family declined to comment for this article, aides said, in part because of the personal nature of the subject.

  Probing one's past can lead to all kinds of revelations, all of which are not necessarily for public consumption. While the story is both fascinating and complex, the Obamas have not faded away into the history books. And having a deeply personal part of one's ancestry out for the world to comment upon is a little unnerving. I don't think what the reporters did was wrong - but as a person who also only has a hazy grasp of her ancestry, I just find it unsettling.

• This article illuminates the past but, sadly, will not eradicate bigotry.

  As I read the piece, reminders of the dismissive comment about Michelle Obama's "slave blood," was bandied about by the likes of Charles Steele and Rush Limbaugh during the election cycle, kept resurfacing.

  Some people have lauded this as an American story, one of triumph and uplift. But viewed through the lens of all the racist vitriol churned up since 2008, the story also seems to function as a reminder that some of us are more American than others.

In First Lady's Roots, A Complex Path From Slavery [NY Times]
Yeah They Said It!: "Slave Blood"- SCLC and Rush Limbaugh [Michelle Obama Watch]

• For $215 you can be the proud owner of a one inch slice of royal cake from the 1871 wedding of Queen Victoria's fourth daughter, Princess Louise, to the Marquis of Lorne. • Esquire councils their readers on how to console a crying woman. •  A man has been sentenced to six weeks in prison after he urinated on a 66-year-old woman while she was watching an in-flight movie on her way to a vacation in Hawaii. • The 31-year-old woman who came to the attention of authorities when she videotaped herself contaminating food at Domino's Pizza has turned out to be a registered sex offender. • Jossip has unearthed an insane video of a car chase in which the female driver repeatedly "fakes out" police cars and suddenly begins doing donuts on the freeway. •  This short experimental film is the work of Art Clokey, creator of Gumby. It does not feature Gumby, but it shows Clokey's first experiments with claymation. • A new report found that fewer than half of American sexually active women are currently being screened for chlamydia. • I'm not sure why this creeps me out, but here is a video of the new Obama action figures. •  There'ss been a recent spike in child abuse, which doctors are blaming on the recession. Many hospitals have seen a 20-30% increase in reports of maltreatment over last year. •  And Tango Makes Three tops the ALA's list of most challenged books yet again. Also on the list: Philip Pullman and Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. • Afghanistan's police have arrested two men suspected of murdering Sitara Achakzai, a women's rights activist who was gunned down last Sunday. • Judge Judy Eiler is facing disciplinary actions stemming from charges that she is too rude to defendants. Eiler claims that she is nothing like the "TV Judge Judy," but judging from this article, she kinda is. • For the second year in a row, moms are "taking a hit" on mothers day. • In the name of debunking stereotypes about gold digging Eastern European women, this article explains why Ukrainian women go for western men. • Upon finding a robber at her place of business, a 28-year-old Russian hairdresser disarmed him, bound him with a hairdryer, and kept him prisoner as her sex slave for several days. •  Blame it on the recession: vasectomies are on the rise. • A new report reveals that air raids in Iraq kill mostly women and children. •

On the one hand, this shit fucking sucks. This is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave and we're supposedly Proud to Be an American[s] From Sea To Shining Sea and yet, 232 years after the founding of this country, 219 years after the signing of our (admittedly racist) Constitution, 145 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, 143 years after the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution eliminated slavery, 140 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment gave African-Americans (and others) equal protection under the law, 138 years after the ratification of the 15th Amendment prohibited states from abridging the rights of citizens to vote because of their race, 132 years after the first of the Jim Crow laws abrogated the work that the Constitutional amendments started and 44 years after the Civil Rights Act supposedly put to rest any remaining doubts about what would be legal and what should not be acceptable in this fucking country, we've still got people who think that they are better than other people because of melanin content in their skin.

And, what's even more horrifying, that they think they can openly say racist shit because being at a Republican rally — the Republican party, notably, being the party responsible for the aforementioned Emancipation Proclamation and 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments — means that they are among "their" kind. And, given that neither John McCain nor Sarah Palin — the new heirs to the leadership of the party of motherfucking Lincoln — could take a minute, a second, to chide a supporter and say, "That language has no place in this party," they might be right. This is what Nixon wrought on this country and his party, this is what Rovian politics brings. There's no courage in ignoring who your supporters are. There's no honor in taking their votes if you can't take a minute to chide them for their racism. There would be honor and there would be courage in saying, "If you are voting for us because Obama is black, or because you think he is Muslim, we don't want your votes. Vote for us on the issues, or don't vote for us at all." But John McCain and Sarah Palin will take their support and their attendance at rallies with a wink and a well-coiffed nod and everyone will pretend that they didn't hear what was said and the racists will think they have someone who agrees with them in the White House and the rest of us will march happily on by like little lemmings and believe, as we want to believe, that they don't.

And on the other hand, if enough of those people come out of their noose-festooned closets wearing their Confederate-decorated clothing and quit talking about how the Flag of Intolerance is some sort of states' rights-Southern pride bullshit and acknowledge that it is about racism, showing their non-running red-white-and-blueblood for what it is, maybe I can stop hearing about how calling Obama "articulate" isn't really racist and calling him "young man" isn't really calling him "boy" and calling Michelle "angry" isn't playing to stereotypes because the people that want to turn a blind eye to the kind of underlying racism that pervades too much of our actions in this country won't be able to be willfully blind anymore. I understand that lots of people grew up with parents who preached tolerance and in environments that encouraged tolerance and lead (one might be tempted to say "sheltered") lives in which racism has never touched their lives in a way that they've seen or been able or willing to acknowledge, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And if the racists hiding among us — the guy who taped the "Whites Only" sign above my high school water fountain the year 3 African-American kids started attending my high school, for instance, or the woman who told AFL-CIO Treasurer Richard Trumka that she's not voting for Obama because of his race — have to come out and say it, then the rest of us have to acknowledge that it exists and that 44 years, and 138 years, and 140 years, and 143 years and 145 years hasn't been enough to wipe the stains of slavery from our country's soul or racism from its consciousness. And maybe once we recognize that as a country, once we acknowledge that the evil of it walks amongst not just the worst of us but some of the best of us, maybe then we can figure out why 150 years isn't enough.

Obama Hatred At McCain-Palin Rallies: "Terrorist!" "Kill Him!" [Huffington Post]
Unleashed, Palin Makes a Pit Bull Look Tame [Washington Post]
Racism Without Racists [NY Times]
This Is Exactly What I Have Been Waiting For [Ta-Nehisi Coates]

MOE: Ohhhhh mann, I'm still like on Seattle time or something
MEGAN: I'm on "got home at midnight after an 8 hour drive" fog.
MOE: What should we talk about? Yikes!
MEGAN: Oh, see, I was going to suggest that we talk about how Alaskan Republican Senator Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens was indicted on 7 counts yesterday, but fetish hookers is way more prurient. Also, rumors around the courts here in D.C. is that touchy-feely ass-grabbing Congressman Don Young is next. Actually, that's just been the rumor for a while, but doesn't it sound cooler when I semi-source it?
MOE: Isn't just the fact that Alaska has two senators corruption in itself?
MEGAN: Well, they do have a whole 100,000 more people than Washington, DC, so of course they deserve 2 Senators and a Congressman and D.C. shouldn't get either.
Geek moment: Did you know that there are more people in Hawai'i than Alaska? Like, almost twice as many.
MOE: Yes. Does that surprise you? Any more than, like, this? Oh god I need coffee.
MEGAN: Back to Stevens, the most hilarious thing of all is that they couldn't charge him with bribery because sometimes he just took the lavish gifts from Veco and told them to fuck off! It's sort of like how Congressmen and Senators feel about campaign contributions only flashier (now including a Land Rover and a Viking Grill!).
As a white resident of upstate New York, I particularly like this statement of Sharpton's:

"We have all made mistakes. We have all erred, and we ought not try to sugar coat when we err."

Oh, really, Al?
MOE: The Ted Stevens thing reminds me of when I used to cover Nike for the Journal, and the guys from SLAM just couldn't figure out why I wasn't allowed to take free shoes. "Sure, it's bribery, but when EVERYONE bribes you you're still objective!"
MEGAN: "As long as you 'slam' them later," right? (Apologies for the bad but necessary pun).Speaking of apologies...
MOE: Jesus this totally makes the AMA's timing look COMPLETELY NORMAL!

In February, the Senate apologized for atrocities committed against Native Americans, and the body apologized in 2005 for standing by during a lynching campaign against African Americans throughout much of the past century. Twenty years ago, Congress apologized for interning Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.

MEGAN: Well, you know, they're really, really worried about reparations. That's, like, a completely legitimate concern.
MOE: As I'm sure is the fact that there is a lot in those Jim Crow laws some Americans still would like to resurrect! Sorry, that's a year old, but I didn't remember it until today.
MEGAN: Luckily for Jonah and at the behest of plenty of Republican state governments, states are passing government-ID laws to make it more difficult for people to vote, especially poor people. You heard, right, that the first people fucked over by that law were a bunch of nuns and students? But it was the Democratic primary, so that was the intention, anyway, to keep Democrats from voting, so hooray Indiana for designing a law that actually works as it was intended. Sort of hooray. More like, um, FUCK YOU Mitch Daniels. Cialis was marketed under his tenure at Lilly, by the way. You knew he was a pharmaceutical company exec before he was OMB Director before he was Governor of Indiana, right?
MOE: Uh no but doesn't that just make this world make a little more sense! That and this guy. Um I just blew some of my literacy reading this. Also, is it just me or is it surprising that nuns of all people would not have their IDs ready? I know they probably don't get carded too often, but isn't it in the nun personality type?
MEGAN: But why would they need an ID? And, yes, OMG, can we please, please, please stop dumbing Michelle Obama down so that people think she's more like them? Please? It makes my brain hurty. Oh, and did you see that the International Olympics Committee negotiated a secret deal with the Chinese to limit journalists' internet access?
MOE: God everytime I think I know how full of shitheads the IOC is I am proved wrong. Who are these IOC officials anyway? Hey, maybe there's a job for Mitt Romney!
MEGAN: Someone's got to give him on eventually if McCain won't. His hair is too bulletproof to retire.
MOE: So $15,000 a month is Rielle Hunter's hush money . I feel like we should do a poll on how much you'd ask if you'd been knocked up by a filthy rich presidential candidate. I think fifteen grand is good, because there's not a whole lot an unimaginative person like myself can't do on that money, but it's not so disgusting people will question her genuine love for the bastard. But hey, where's the "real father" Andrew Young in all of this?
MEGAN:Apparently, getting paid off by the same middleman! That's $180,000 a year, or, if it continues at the same rate, $3.24 million over the next 18, not including tuition. I don't think I'll make $3 million in the next 18 years. Also, can we just discuss how exactly the Enquirer knew that Rielle was in the hotel, whose name she checked in under and when Edwards would show? Because between that and the news that she's negotiating a paid interview, I don't think the "hush" part of the money is working.

That November, she attended a public debate on the subject "The West or Islam: Who Needs a Voltaire?" The first three speakers called for a new Voltaire in the West, a rational reformer to counter Western arrogance and neocolonialism and consumerist decadence. Only the last speaker, a refugee from Iran who taught law at Amsterdam University, spoke up for the "critical renewal" of Islam.



During the question and answer period, comment was heavily supportive of the first view. Finally Hirsi Ali raised her hand. Here is what she said as she recalled it in her 2007 memoir, Infidel: Look at how many Voltaires the West has. Don't deny us the right to have our Voltaire, too. Look at our women, and look at our countries. Look at how we are all fleeing and asking for refuge here, and how people are now flying planes into buildings in their madness. Allow us a Voltaire, because we are truly living in the Dark Ages.

And speaking of said Dark Ages: In a gesture that Hirsi Ali will appreciate—she considers the date of her escape to freedom her "real birthday"—Frederick Douglass marked the tenth anniversary of his escape in a special way. He published in the North Star an open letter to his former owner, Thomas Auld, one of the slaveholders whose religious profession he deemed a travesty. It is a most unusual and highly charged communication, and this is how it ends:

I will now bring this letter to a close; you shall hear from me again unless you let me hear from you. I intend to make use of you as a weapon with which to assail the system of slavery—as a means of concentrating public attention on the system, and deepening the horror of trafficking in the souls and bodies of men. I shall make use of you as a means of exposing the character of the American church and clergy—and as a means of bringing this guilty nation, with yourself, to repentance. In doing this, I entertain no malice toward you personally. There is no roof under which you would be more safe than mine, and there is nothing in my house which you might need for your comfort, which I would not readily grant. Indeed, I should esteem it a privilege to set you an example as to how mankind ought to treat each other.

I am your fellow-man, but not your slave.

Related: The Countertraffickers [New Yorker]

MOE: This story is almost too wonderful.

MOE: Gene Weingarten reads blogs and listens to talk radio and watches five television sets for 24 hours and it gives him a brief appreciation for Rush Limbaugh.

MEGAN: The WaPo site has been trying to get me to read that story for 2 full days but I have been resisting its lure because I don't want to know my future.

MOE: Okay, I'll send you some excerpts. First

". . . the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." — Umberto Eco.

MEGAN: I read The Name of the Rose in high school. I was mad, upon seeing the movie, that there was not more of Christian Slater's bare ass. I think this would not be an opinion I would hold today were the movie to be made today, with today's Christian Slater.

MOE: And speaking of ...the down there zone, remember when Jane Fonda said "cunt" on TV?

Fortunately, the gaffe is all over the Web in streaming video, and, yes indeed, here she is, Hanoi Jane herself, the bete noire of right wing radio, flagrantly uttering the unutterable. Clearly, Rush and Bill are courageously willing to address this shocking and distasteful subject even at the risk of driving their audiences into multi-orgasmic rapture.
Limbaugh joyfully eviscerates Fonda and moves quickly on to other things, but O'Reilly is in high dudgeon and is all over this reprehensible event. He's morally outraged, and seems to want to wring all he can get out of it, as though it were, say, a luffa sponge.
As someone in the broadcasting business, he says, he doesn't want to become "the scold police," but he wonders just the same if someone ought to call the FCC and demand punishment.

(Later at night, on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor," he will devote an entire segment to the issue, practically sputtering in exasperation when he can't persuade his guest, lawyer Anita Kay, to agree with him that heads must roll. Kay will point out, reasonably, that Fonda wasn't using the word in a hostile manner; she was simply stating the actual title of one of the monologues from the play "The Vagina Monologues," which is, ironically, about how the word should be destigmatized.) B-b-but "this is the most vile word in the lexicon of obscenity!" O'Reilly protests. Laughing, Kay basically tells him to calm down and grow up, that the average 12-year-old girl has heard this word, and it's no big deal. It's my favorite moment of the day. (Anita Kay, the cure for the common scold.) The peril of listening to Limbaugh and O'Reilly at the same time is that you tend to compare them, and these are dangerous waters for an unapologetic, unreconstructed New Deal liberal like me. The comparison makes you actually like Rush. He's funny; O'Reilly is not. Limbaugh teases and baits his political adversaries; O'Reilly sneers and snarls at them. Limbaugh is mock-heroic; O'Reilly is self-righteous. So, when Limbaugh speculates that the Democrats in the House committee went after Roger Clemens because liberals hate cherished American institutions such as churches, the Boy Scouts and baseball, you know he's sorta kidding. When O'Reilly says liberals who oppose torture of prisoners just don't care how many people will die in a terrorist attack, you know he's as serious as an aneurysm.

MOE: I can only listen to Fox News, on account of my mysterious muting problem. Although I was thinking of switching to CNBC this morning. Here we go. The Dow is possibly up because JP Morgan might be raising its bid for Bear Stearns. Wait, the market is not open yet, that is just what the futures betters are betting. They are talking about something called fractionalization creating a lot of possibilities for arbitrage in these securities. I am not really sure what this means. Do regular CNBC viewers really engage in "arbitrage"? Whatever. Ooooh, someone called Wisdomtree.com is pushing an exchange traded fund that tracks India's economy. Good idea. All right, back to the meme of the day. What is it? A lot of things happened this weekend, including the publication of the Peggy Noonan column that finally pushed me over the edge into the realm of begging Peggy Noonan for an interview.

MEGAN: Also, as of this morning, 4,000 soldiers have officially died in Iraq. Cheney would like us to know that the White House mourns every single death but it is, after all, a "volunteer army."
MEGAN: Because there's nothing nauseating about saying that.
MEGAN: They volunteered to die, so it's not as big a deal apparently. Perhaps to commemorate, we can each take a moment of silence today to think about the 4,000 soldiers and then yell "Cheney, go fuck yourself"

MOE: Aiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeee. Puppies! Polar Bears! Peggy! Peggy heard the speech and thought "Go America Go." She just thought it was kind of a downer. The first comment goes:

I think Peggy needs to recycle Reagan101 again, and while she's at it perhaps she can read what a real journalist thought of the speech.....Washinton Post writer Charles Krauthammer's article "The Speech, A Brilliant Fraud".

MEGAN: I mean, that sort of a little bit puts the lie to the "all volunteer" army idea. Because definitely some people join despite having tons of other options because it's the family business or they have heroic ideals or just want the extra money or whatever, but some people do it because they don't have good grades, or money for college or career prospects or even job prospects where they grew up. So, yeah, they volunteered to not be even more grindingly poor, to not try to get on welfare, to do something to achieve that American dream thing everyone's been telling them about their whole lives and instead some number of them end up on food stamps anyway and are eking out on existence trying to stay alive in some country where they don't really want us.

MOE: Also, everything that Peggy Noonan said Obama was overly gloomy about can be summed up in this, Maria Bartiromo's response to Tim Russert's query as to what America's biggest economic challenge is.

Well, our biggest challenge economically right now is the tight credit environment.  From an individual standpoint, it is very tough to get a mortgage, it is very tough to borrow money anymore.  From a business standpoint, the same thing.  I would say one of the key representations of what's happening right now is what happened at Carlyle Capital.  Very simple stuff, Tim.  They had $600 million in assets, they borrowed $22 billion. Doesn't work out.  The math just doesn't work.  And that's exactly what's happening.  People have overextended themselves, businesses as well as consumers, and now we're paying the price

MEGAN: Duh, Moe, the $600 million wasn't the only collateral. It was also secured by the fact that 90% of every person involved was an older white man who went to a small number of the right schools and participated in the dinner clubs or fraternities or whatever deemed appropriate by their set and who belongs to a small number of socially appropriate country clubs or whatever. That's the real
collateral.

MOE: DAMMIT YOU AND YOUR FINE PRINT MEGAN

MEGAN: I am a cunt like that.

MOE: Okay does rehashing that conversation I'm pretty sure we already had but for the constant cache-clearing of the 24-hour pundit cycle that we'll come back to a moment because I'm going to tell you about my mom, and also, ask what you did to commemorate Christ's resurrection, about how McCain wanted to switch parties after 2001 just delay the inevitable awesome conversation about the Nixon-tattoed Republican huckster who tipped off the government to Eliot Spitzer's whore habit (because he went to the same whores, duh) and also, printed up those clever Citizens United Not Timid T-shirts that sunk the Hillary campaign?
8:50 AM
MOE: Cunts are such a theme today!

MEGAN: To commemorate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ (no H., thanks), I had brunch that included bagels with lox, champagne and coffee. Then I took a nap. I worked, then I went to dinner with a friend who is having relationship issues, and I came home and worked some more.

MEGAN: And I talked to my parents.

MOE: I got high with a very good friend whose name I am gonna leave off the blog even though he seems to have posted pictures commemorating that on his Facebook profile. It was the first time I have ever 1. bought weed by myself, which I did successfully, along with the first time I have 2. attempted to roll a joint, an endeavor at which I failed miserably.The best part of the evening was buying junk food in anticipation of the muchies. The next morning we walked a mile and a half to Chipotle but it was closed. I got on the wrong subway home and ended up getting out in Williamsburg and walking home over the bridge. I smiled unilaterally at a lot of Hasids and realized it was Easter only when some dudes sitting at the front of the bridge said, "Hey sexy, happy Easter."

MEGAN: It was really good weather, wasn't it?

MOE: And my mother said that she always forgets until she visits my sister in Charlottesville how marginalized and disenfranchised black people are. And the throwing his grandma under the bus line went over well with her. She was like "when he said that I was like, oh my god that is like a universal experience, to cringe over how old white people talk about black people." We have a lot of typical white people in my family as you can probably tell.

MEGAN: Wow, your mom is cool. I think I might owe her some wine some time.

MOE: But it made me think, you know, the same thought Gene Weingarten had over the extent to which regular voters are completely oblivious to the meme of the moment and thank god for that.
MOE: Now G-d can you do something about William Kristol? And Pat Buchanan?

MEGAN: Word. The whole Gene Weingarten piece reminded me of the conversation I had with my parents about how I do this in the morning and I was like, well, I get up at 7, read 15+ sites and then start typing and they were like, wow, you're the most well-informed person we know and then I realized I was probably fucked and this is why I'm a political misanthrope.
MEGAN: I think Bill Kristol, who, seriously, if you put that man in some fucking clown make up IS THE JOKER FROM BATMAN will take care of his own demise. But someone get Rachel Maddow a spit shield for when she has to sit next to him on MSNBC.
MEGAN: and by "him" I mean Pat Buchanan

MOE: Apparently Michael Smerconish has been defending the speech. He's a much-beloved Pennsylvania conservative radio talker. Ugh, but before I feel click over on one more thing only to rue that here we are, balls deep in the memes again, let me call out this sentiment from Pat Buchanan's most recent blog utterance.

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

MOE: He actually asked, "Where is the gratitude?

MEGAN: So, why the FUCK is he still a commentator on MSNBC? Oh, right, they're trying to out-Fox Fox or something, because that's why they're 3rd in the ratings.

MOE: I'm not sure. I don't know. I think I have heard sentiments from my grandfather who was a typical white person of the first generation immigrant vein that would echo these sentiments. I think William F. Buckley might have echoed these statements. Enough of these statements might give you the notion that racism is endemic in white America, you know? Because implicit in statements like this, I don't have to point it out to you but I will anyway, was that buying and selling and pricing people as commodities is not a grave injustice if they are black. What is interesting is that Judeo Chrisitian rooted humanism is supposed to be the basis for the notion that a person is a person, uniquely different from other objects and organisms, and yet here he seems to be subverting that notion, rendering it backward according to some logic I can barely fathom, except to echo Obama via William Faulkner.
MOE: Via Peggy Noonan.
MOE: The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past.

MEGAN: Like, it's obviously not the motherfucking past if people like Pat Buchanan think that

MEGAN: Seriously? The means (slavery) are justified by the ends (acceptance of Jesus Christ as their savior, forced or not)? Seriously? This is what people think? What country do I live in? No wonder Michelle Obama isn't proud of it all the time.

MOE: Pat Buchanan went to my brother's high school, a Jesuit boy's school in Northeast DC. That is what is scariest but most fascinating about that statement. It is not coming from the progeny of anyone who actually owned slaves. Who actually knows, at all, what he is talking about. Perhaps he ought to listen to Mike Huckabee.

MEGAN: Perhaps Pat Buchanan, too, ought to just go fuck himself.
MEGAN: The list of people who can go fuck themselves seems to be growing.

MOE: You had a little piece of recent civil rights history you wanted to share with the class, didn't you Megan?

MEGAN: I did, in the vein of people that can go fuck themselves. The New York Times reminded its readers (some of whom heard it for the first time because they were too young at the time) that Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 Presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi with a nod to the unreconstructed racists of the world.

"In 1980, Ronald Reagan, campaigning on a platform that included "states' rights," opened his general election campaign in Philadelphia, Miss. — a decision criticized because it was where three civil rights workers had been murdered in 1964.

MEGAN: It was in a story on race in campaigns. Also, the incident was actually chronicled by no less than American chintzy painter Norman Rockwell in an enormous and moving painting that you will find in absolutely no book of his work anywhere (because I've tried) but you can see a bad internet print of it here. It's actually really moving in person.

MEGAN: Also, Lt. Governor Michael Steele? Former Senator JC Watts of Oklahoma? Condoleeza Rice? This is what the Republican Party thought was acceptable when you were joining up. Pat Buchanan's remarks? Still acceptable in the Republican party. If Obama has to explain his allegiance to his pastor and friend of 20 years and should have left him by the wayside to "prove" his love of America, I would like some explanations from you about that shit. Thank you. And go fuck yourselves.

MOE: No, go fuck whores!
MOE: Gay whores!
MOE: Kthanxbai.