This is a Rather Low Blow Even for Politics … Barack Obama’s Ancestors Owned Slaves

Now here is a story that makes you go hmmm and shake your head. Politics has always been a mud slinging business, but this is a low blow even as it relates to politics. It is being reported that Obama’s family owned slaves. One can only speculate where this story came from? Who has the most to gain by getting mud on Obama … I wonder who?

Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas.

But an intriguing sliver of his family history has received almost no attention until now: It appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and census records.

According to the research, one of Obama’s great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 census in Nelson County, Ky. The same records show that one of Obama’s great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two slaves. (Baltimore Sun)

Trust me, I do not care for Obama and I can find enough wrong with Barack Obama without having to do a hatchet job on him like this and include his great, great, great ancestors owning slaves. Barack was responsible for this how? Although, this story brings out another rather different yet important point. Whether a candidate or individual in general is black or white, are any of us responsible for what our ancestors did? The answer is no. So if one is white, the “slavery owning ancestor” card is just as wrong. 100% wrong.

• QandO asks that very same question, “And I have to wonder where it came from?”
• The Carpet Bagger Report ask the very valid question, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Obama’s great-great-great-great grandfather is relevant to his presidential campaign, why?”
• The Virginian asks what media world do we live in today that would print this as a front page story.

I really don’t care who or what any candidate’s ancestors were or what they did. What is fascinating about this is that the news media should report on it. This is certainly not the media that failed to inform the public that Roosevelt was a polio victim confined to a wheel chair by only taking pictures of him that excluded that chair.

We are this far out of the primaries and 2008 elections and stories like this make print. Can we only begin to imagine how dirty the campaign will be.