He Must Have Thought They Were One Of Those Non-Slaveowning Southern Plantations

You know, the fact that John McCain's ancestors owned slaves isn't all that damnable considering that it was so commonplace in the South at the time. The fact that he is playing the "I didn't know" game is an insult to our intelligence.

The family's storied military history stretches back to Carroll County, Miss., where McCain's great-great grandfather William Alexander McCain owned a plantation, and later died during the Civil War as a soldier for the Mississippi cavalry.

But what McCain didn't know about his family until Tuesday was that William Alexander McCain had owned 52 slaves. The senator seemed surprised after Salon reporters showed him documents gathered from Carroll County Courthouse, the Carrollton Merrill Museum, the Mississippi State Archives and the Greenwood, Miss., Public Library.

"I didn't know that," McCain said in measured tones wearing a stoic expression during a midday interview, as he looked at the documents before Tuesday night's debate. "I knew they had sharecroppers. I did not know that." [...]

"I knew we fought in the Civil War," McCain went on. "But no, I had no idea. I guess thinking about it, I guess when you really think about it logically, it shouldn't be a surprise. They had a plantation and they fought in the Civil War so I guess that it makes sense."

"It's very impactful," he said of learning the news. "When you think about it, they owned a plantation, why didn't I think about that before? Obviously, I'm going to have to do a little more research."

Ya think?

Actually, what's fascinating here is that McCain views himself as quite literally a child of the military; he even says that very thing in this story ("I just hadn't thought about it, to tell you the truth, because I really feel that my heritage is the military"). His military pedigree literally defines him so completely that it colors all his thoughts; thus he's mentally written out SLAVERY from a Confederate solider and plantation owner in the Civil War.

This is what's behind his opening bio spot with the tag line "The American American America has been American for. America."



Aside from the subtle smear job, which I think is about painting Democrats in general as un-American rather than any particular candidate, this shows a man just completely wrapped up in his own biography, to a far greater extent than John Kerry. I remember the media blaming Kerry for "bringing up" his military record, basing his campaign on it, and thusly making it fair game for criticism. Somehow magical McCain doesn't face such a problem. And I think basing a campaign completely on abstract concepts like "honor" and a record of military service reveals a bias toward militarism as a tool for global problem-solving, honestly.