NBC News really thought they had put Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in a “gotcha” situation when they published a story on Monday revealing that McConnell’s great-great-grandfathers owned slaves.
This, they insinuated, could explain why McConnell (along with the vast majority of Americans, by the way) opposes the new Democratic push to secure reparations for slavery. After all, if these long-dead relatives were slave owners, we can surmise that McConnell and his family benefited financially from the practice. No WONDER he’s standing in the way of reparations!
This is all nonsensical, of course, but it passes for logic and reason in today’s clickbait-and-outrage environment, where a cheeky line on Twitter is just as valuable as a well-researched essay. So it was no surprise on Tuesday when a reporter tried to put McConnell on the spot, asking him if he’d changed his mind about reparations in light of the new revelations.
McConnell had the perfect response: “I find myself once again in the same position as President Obama. We both oppose reparations and we both are the descendants of slave owners.”
Oof, that had to hurt.
It’s also completely true, as NBC News was forced to acknowledge: “During the 2008 election, an amateur genealogist found that on his white mother’s side, Obama had a great-great-great-grandfather named George Washington Overall who owned two male slaves in Kentucky. The genealogist, William Reitwiesner, also found that Obama’s great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Mary Duvall, also owned a pair of slaves.”
Funny how life works out, isn’t it?
The quest for reparations is a dead issue with virtually no public support behind it. Worse, it is an illogical quest to cleanse modern-day Americans for something they had nothing to do with.
McConnell put it well weeks ago when asked why he was opposed to the idea.
“I don’t think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago, when none of us currently living are responsible, is a good idea,” he said last month. “We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We’ve elected an African American president.”
Exactly. At some point, enough’s enough. The left is never satisfied, anyway, so why should we bother trying anymore?