> How to Order Oprah's show on Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson > Transcript of the following Oprah Winfrey Show dated November 12, 1998: > > Thomas Jefferson's black & white relatives meet each other (guests discuss > controversy over DNA evidence confirming the sexual liaison between Thomas > Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings) snip ...not bloody likely: > THE JEFFERSON SCANDALS Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1981 > > a Rebuttal by Virginius Dabney, the Pulitzer Prize-winning > journalist, to allegations that Thomas Jefferson kept > a black mistress and fathered five illegitimate children" > > ***** In 1802 a revenge-seeking journalist named James T. Calllender > charged that Thomas Jefferson, president of the United States and > author of the Declaration of Independence, had taken a light-skinned > slave named Sally Hemmings as his mistress, and that the relationship > resulted in five children. It was also alleged that one of the > children was sold into prostitution at a slave market in New Orleans. > Callender's charges have surfaced periodically, only to be deflated > by scholars. > With the publication of two notable books - one by Fawn Brodie > and the other by Barbara Chase-Riboud - these allegations gained > wide acceptance. But the hardcover appearance of THE JEFFERSON > SCANDALS in 1981 won critical praise for its carefully researched > rebuttal and for restoring the luster to Jefferson's reputation. Vince Page 07 DEC 98 - It was one of the most neatly timed cabals in history. On the eve of the '98 elections, historians came out of the woodwork to proclaim that adultery by the President of the United States - with a girl half his age - is none of the country's business. To buttress their argument, they got a political hack / gene expert to claim that DNA evidence links Thomas Jefferson with the children of one Sally Hemmings - a slave. By so doing, of course, Friends of Bill intend to show that all presidents are as immoral as he. Thankfully for us, it ain't necessarily so. To be sure, it's the DNA, stupid. But it's William Jefferson Clinton's DNA, not Thomas Jefferson's. To understand why not, we must travel back to the first few years of the 19th century and meet one James T. Callender, the first man to ever accuse Thomas Jefferson of his alleged indiscretion. Callender began his career by writing political pamphlets in Scotland. His writings, though, were so libelous that he was sued - frequently. Caring for nothing but his own career, he failed many times to appear in court, causing warrants to be issued for his arrest. Callender fled to America where he continued his former writing style, this time using prominent Americans as the subject of his attacks. Here, too, Callender was successfully sued for libel, resulting in fines and prisonment. Ironically, it was none other than Thomas Jefferson who secured his pardon. And amazingly, Callender's first act after his release was to attack Jefferson, accusing him of gross personal immorality. Liberals ever since have tried to parrot the Sally Hemmings story without divulging the discredited source. But historians like James Truslow Adams - winner of the 1922 Pulitzer Prize - knew better. Adams claimed that "almost every scandalous story about Jefferson which is still whispered or believed" can be traced to the writings of Callender, rather than to any established fact. Today, historians such as Arthur Schlesinger put their political ideology ahead of all else. The sole purpose of such historians in asserting that adultery by the president is none of our business is to save Bill Clinton's flabby hide. I am quite certain that, had they been around in Jefferson's time, these same historians would have demonized Callender and urged us all to put the matter behind us. They may have even bothered to review the writings of Jefferson, and uncovered - as did the Richmond Times-Dispatch on November 8th - that Jefferson was adamantly against the practice of fathering slave children by their masters, writing at one point, "The amalgamation of whites and blacks produces a degradation to which no lover of his country, no lover of excellence in the human character, can innocently consent." Instead, fellow liberals in Schlesinger's court recruited the help of Eric Lander, a gene expert who would use his scientific knowledge to further the liberal political ideology. Lander wrote some commentary which accompanied the original DNA report on Thomas Jefferson in Nature magazine, and in so doing, revealed his true stripes. Lander did something that is never done in a scientific journal - he politicized a piece of scientific work when he wrote that presidents are, "not gods or saints, but flesh-and-blood humans, with all the frailties and imperfections that this entails." Unnecessary drivel, wholly improper, and in violation of every code of ethics in ence, unless you wish to use Jefferson for your own political purposes. The author of the Jefferson DNA article himself - Dr. Eugene Foster, professor of pathology at Tufts University - deplores what was done with his work and denies that his work proves Jefferson fathered any children by Sally Hemmings. Dr. Foster says Lander and others "went too far" when they reported that his study proves Jefferson fathered a son by a slave. Several of the nation's top DNA experts agree with Foster that there are serious limitations to the study, not the least of which is the lack of a DNA sample from Jefferson himself. Carl Ladd, supervisor of the DNA unit at the Connecticut State Police Department, argues that we're not likely to ever get a good enough sample, even from Jefferson's grave, "It would be highly unlikely you'd get anything from the bones except mitochondrial DNA, and that wouldn't do any good here, since mitochondrial DNA is passed maternally," he said. The people who stated that the DNA evidence proves Jefferson fathered a son by Hemmings know every bit of this. These people are not merely Friends of Bill, not simply Democrats. To call them liberals is too kind - they are Socialists who are bent upon destroying everything and everyone that made this country great. These Socialists intend to re-invent America in the image of other failed Socialist governments. To impugn the integrity of Thomas Jefferson without cause was the last straw. We should never again refer to those of this ilk as liberals - from now on, they are Socialists. Replace stuff before @ with mike1. "[America] has turned into Film Noir, complete with murder victims and psychotic conspirators in unexpected positions of authority." -- Bill Kasper =============== Victim not shot with a .38: http://www.federal.com/oct26-98/Story01.html Coup USA: gopher://freenet.akron.oh.us:70/00/SIGS/JFK/FAQ/faq-daeron/3-faq Why were the black GIs murdered? The Slaughter: http://www.theslaughter.com/ They screwed people left and right: http://users.aol.com/beachbt/screwold.txt