I do not think Ben Affleck owed anyone any kind of apology for not wanting the show, "Finding Your Roots" to include the fact that his relatives were once slave owners. It's gross and not something anyone with a brain would want to discuss. It has nothing to do with him anyway, so why include it, if he felt uncomfortable with it? Fuck 'em all and I don't even like Ben Affleck. Don't like his organic eatin' wife much either, but, I still thought it was absurd that anyone thought he owed an apology for that hacked email info about his radical racist relatives. Bullshit.
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I am sure that many people have former slave owners in their past. You can't hold people responsible for what someone did, several generations back. It has nothing to do with the character of those alive today.
I think that it is wrong to try and pull wrongs like that, forward.
My mother had to work in a farm camp in Germany, I think it was when the Russians came through. It was slave labor, essentially, but she had to do it to survive. Do I hold the local Russian population responsible for wrongs done to my mother? Of course not.
It would be nice, if rather than having to censor one's past, as he was requesting in this instance, we could just consider the information and move on. Not have the issue of a bunch of assholes getting all judgey, when he had nothing to do with bad things that happened.
We all just need to "let it go".
No compensation will ever be adequate, so just move along.
I say all this, though most of my family is new enough to this country, that there was no-one who could have owned a slave.
On a related note, (the Jewish woman who has been in the news because she lost her parents at Auschwitz, and the guard who is now 93 or 94 and in custody?) She now says that it is too late to try him for war crimes. The time has passed. I think the same way.
Christina
I thnk the real judgeyness comes from sensation-craving gossip rags, like dailymail (which I peruse, btw). I read it but I scorn it a lot for its lowbrow approach to people.
re: slavery - people only think of blacks enslaved in america but peoples have been enslaved all throughout history, in most if not all countries/areas. The Irish slaves' descendants seem to have moved on. I wish the american blacks would too - they're not inferior to anyone and they'd be better off if they'd stop thinking they were.
He doesn't owe anyone an apology, HE didn't own any slaves. HE is not responsible for what his ancestors did. That's how it was then...THEN. This country will never move forward, if instead of learning from the past, we keep pointing fingers and passing blame.
He, like many, has a world view and fills himself only with things and people that conform to his worldview. His problem was that HE, not anybody else, was not able to accept that someone was once a slaveowner. I often hear him unable to converse with anyone who holds an opinion on anything contrary to his own. He gets upset and yells and acts crazy. It's an inability to critically think, and no new ideas can impinge upon him.
What border said describes a little narcissism. That wouldn't be surprising in an actor. I kind of liked him - all american and all that, but never paid attention to him really. Maybe he's just a hothead?
I'm more concerned about the midgets Affleck keeps locked up in his sex dungeon.
Tiny history lesson. The word slave stems comes from the word Slavic. This was a region where many people were taken from there homes and forced into slavery. So Africans were not the only slaves. Just what America has been taught. Slavic slavery only started to die out during the Medieval era; beginning at around the year 1000. And that slavery was replaced by serfdom. People allowed the live on a piece of a Knight land in exchange for farming it and giving away part to most of the crop.
Sorry so long, I'm bit of a Medieval history nerd.
His business if he wants to disallow the information he does not need to apologize for choosing to. In the end the tabloid media got hold of it anyway. Not really sure why he thinks what his forebears did means a damn thing now. Seems small minded. You define you.
I don't apologize for my mom having a mammy raise her and her siblings, in Augusta back in the day either. They loved her anyway. But slaves? Why did he even feel like he had anything to do with that? Jeez. If we have to start apologizing for our ancestors faults, umm...you go 1st! Besides, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned slaves! Sally Hemmings bore Jefferson children. I don't see his relatives apologizing. They didn't want to give them any claims. But that's another story. Not Ben Affleck fan, at all. And Jennifer, his wife. Is such a non-person to me. Sorry. She was sweet in Dallas Buyers Club, but anybody could have played that part. I feel like their marriage is one big PR scam. And she has him by the balls. Real hard. That marriage is what saved his career.
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