Paula Abeles, under threat

As noted earlier, progressives have launched a fierce attack on Paula Abeles -- the prominent Clinton supporter who now prefers McCain to Obama. See here, for example. Also see TPM:

Apparently, for her, racism trumps women's rights.

What a retarded woman. Maybe everyone should send her a nice "Heard you were a racist, get well soon!" card.

The O-Borg published her private contact information. As a result, she and members of her family have received death threats.

(You may recall how outraged I was when Ann Coulter pulled that very same trick on Lydia Cornell. Lydia, why won't you speak out against Obama's disgusting supporters?)

After this blog helped to publicize Paula's story, Obot readers warned me to mistrust her, since she was an alleged racist. I did not publish these diatribes, due to the odor of fish they carried. Now we learn the truth from Abeles herself.

The "racism" charge stems from a role she formerly played in the controversy over whether Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his slave, Sally Hemings. Paula Abeles' husband is a Jefferson descendant, and she has argued against the well-publicized DNA findings which (apparently) ruled that the long-rumored Jefferson/Hemings union was no mere rumor.

Is Paula a racist for taking a stand in conflict with conventional wisdom? Before you answer, read her side of the argument:

As many of you have probably heard, some descendants of Sally Hemings, a slave in the household of Thomas Jefferson, have claimed that they are descendants of Thomas Jefferson. Sally Hemings had three sons: Thomas Woodson, Madison Hemings, and Eston Hemings. Descendants of Thomas Woodson had their DNA tested 7 times—each time there was no match. Descendants of Madison Hemings declined to be tested. The white descendants of Eston Hemings had their DNA tested and were a match to a Jefferson, but the DNA tests could not determine if the Jefferson genes were from Thomas Jefferson or one of the 27 other Jefferson males that lived in the area at the time and visited frequently. Additionally, since Thomas Jefferson was 64 at the time of Eston’s birth and was suffering from prostate cancer, which often caused impotency, it is less likely that Eston was a son of Thomas Jefferson. A 2001 Scholars Commission of 13 prominent Jefferson historians (including the former chair of Harvard’s Department of Government), examined all the evidence for a year, and issued a 500-page report that concluded that the allegations of a relationship between Hemings and Thomas Jefferson were not true, and that was not enough evidence to determine Eston Hemings’ paternity.

However, it was never a racial issue. Eston Hemings’ descendents (the only Hemings that applied) are, by any calculus, white. No doubt passions at the time were overheated, and honorable people can disagree. Part of the consideration was that as DNA typing becomes more sophisticated, a definitive analysis could prove the issue in the future.

This is the sum and total of the activities for which I have been vilified.

Rather puts a different spin on the situation, eh wot? Heretofore, I did not understand that the matter remained unsettled from a scientific standpoint.

This intriguing comment appeared on the Confluence:

I am a biologist by training. Most people do not understand the complexities of genetic testing. I was troubled about the lack of data on Eston Hemmings. Long story short, when the NY Times had an article about the DNA findings for Eston’s offspring, I thought it was a feel-good ending, but not an accurate one. I also thought that nobody would ever challenge Eston’s claims for fear of being called racist. I remember thinking to myself that if I were a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, I would keep my mouth shut about my doubts.

Does this argument really matter, in any practical "make-a-shoe" sense of the word? No.

Still, we all argue over history, perhaps because these arguments give us a way of better knowing ourselves. Unfortunately, misplaced passion can turn even an academic debate into something ugly. Brilliant as Jefferson was, I can't quite understand why the offspring of Eston Hemings would want to claim descent from a slave-master. Whom would you prefer as an ancestor -- Moses or the Pharoah?

Incidentally, Gore Vidal -- who has written about Jefferson at some length -- has always dismissed the Hemings allegation. (In print, he once sneered at Fawn Brodie, who accepted the claim.) Will the progressives now toss Vidal under that infamous bus? Will they call him a racist and print his home telephone number?

It is said that Paula misrepresented herself in an internet chat room -- as though everyone on the internet uses his or her real name. Apparently, after being barred from a site by zealots wedded to one side of the Hemings argument, Paula assumed a disguise in order to discover what was being said. Read your Conan Doyle: Sherlock Holmes did that sort of thing all the time.

Paula Abeles' position on the Hemings affair hardly makes her a racist and hardly justifies the attacks on her. The Obama supporters who have written to me have sent contradictory messages: She's lying when she says she got threats -- and besides, she deserved them.

I know damn well that she's not lying, because my own mailbox tells me what Obama supporters are like. Those people are monsters. Monsters.

Will the creeps who attacked Paula on TPM and Kos ever get tired of being wrong? They were wrong about the "darkened video" hoax. They were wrong about the "RFK assassination" smear. They were wrong when they called the "fairy tale" remark a "racist dog whistle." They were wrong when the believed Barack Obama's claims that he hardly knew Tony Rezko. They were wrong to create an inane conspiracy story blaming Hillary for Obama's NAFTA-gate scandal. And yes, they were wrong about Geraldine Ferraro. (A black male candidate really does have an advantage over a female candidate, or so say all the polls.)

It's a shoddy record. These fools are never right. Yet the Obots continue to strut with all the jackass self-confidence of Joseph L. Mankiewicz on the set of Cleopatra, convinced that he's making a really good movie.

One day, O-beasts will understand that they have created most of their own problems. If they had behaved like reasonable adults -- if they had moderated their hate, eschewed race-baiting and refrained from spreading inane anti-Clinton conspiracy theories -- Obama would have won all the late primaries and Hillary's donors would now be flooding his campaign with cash. In a future post, I will present the argument for blaming Obama himself for the tone of his campaign -- and yes, I still maintain that he controlled the major left-wing blogs.

Paula Abeles deserves the final word:

But, as far as I can tell, that has been the Obama campaign’s strategy all along—to isolate, to discredit, to destroy. But, Clinton supporters have seen this game before. You will not frighten us anymore. Even when four of our member networks were disrupted by mysterious viruses—with barely 24-hour notice—we managed to turn out thousands of HRC supporters on a conference call with John McCain. Supporters that will not, under any circumstances vote for a “democratic” party that disenfranchised us—not because we are racists, or ‘closet republicans,’ but because we are Americans.

PS: Ever visit Monticello? Can you believe that Thomas Jefferson actually slept in that tiny weird-ass bed-in-the-wall? He certainly didn't have enough room to spoon with Sally Hemings, or with anyone else.