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From the Freep:

Thurmond’s kin owned Al Sharpton’s ancestors

The headline itself is great — you just knew something like this was going to come to light eventually, and it would be hard to find two more polarising figures to be involved. Maybe Jesse Helms and Louis Farrakhan or Malcolm X, but I think Thurmond-Sharpton is pretty far out there.

What really makes this worthy of note, however, isn’t the headline. It’s what Ellen Senter, one of Strom Thurmond’s nieces, said:

[I]t is wonderful that [Sharpton] was able to become what he is in spite of what his forefather was.

That may be the most patronising sentence I have ever seen or heard in my entire life. Senter acts like being a slave — a matter in which Sharpton’s ancestors undoubtedly had no choice — made an individual inherently less human, less worthy. Are you kidding me? Is it any wonder nobody takes anything he ever did seriously? Miss Senter might as well fly the Stars and Bars on her front porch and burn a cross so all the all the hooded men in her front yard can dance around it.

The 1850s called. They want their philosophy back. Please hand it over with all speed. Alternatively, please hand yourself over to the 1850s by hanging yourself from a tree in your front yard.