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now it turns out that Thomas Jefferson was having sex with Sally
Hemings while serving in the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War.
In a stupendously humiliating episode this week, a Pulitzer Prize-winning
historian — and author of the pre-impeachment report, "Jefferson
Fathered Slave's Last Child" — was exposed in the Boston
Globe as having lied about his service in Vietnam, in the civil-rights
movement, and even on the football field.
For years, Mount Holyoke professor Joseph "Full Metal Jacket" Ellis
had been regaling students, interviewers, and friends with gripping
stories of his service in Vietnam. He claimed to have been a platoon
leader and paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division. He said
he served in Saigon under Gen. William Westmoreland.
Ellis was recently forced to apologize for "having let stand" the
"assumption" that he served in Vietnam. Ellis whiled away the Vietnam
War in his college dorm room, presumably, like most academics, smoking
pot, and listening to the Beatles' "White Album."
Among the "assumptions" Ellis had "let stand" was his claim that
after witnessing the horror of Vietnam, he came home and enlisted
in the anti-war movement. He also boasted of having helped David
Halberstam with his 1972 best seller, The Best and the Brightest,
by sharing his vivid recollections of Vietnam.
He had no involvement in the anti-war movement, and Halberstam says
he's never talked to Ellis.
The fantasy life of this deskbound Walter Mitty didn't stop at Vietnam.
He has also bragged about his work in the civil-rights movement.
He claims that while on the Freedom Trail in Mississippi, he was
the victim of racist Southern cops banging on his door late at night
and following him in his car. He wistfully recalled his years as
a high-school football star, describing to a reporter last year
how he once scored the winning touchdown.
He wasn't in Mississippi, and his greatest moment on the football
field involved a clarinet.
Between 'Nam flashbacks and Freedom Rider reunions, Ellis co-authored
the groundbreaking 1998 report, "Jefferson Fathered Slave's Last
Child." You may remember this report if you weren't on the moon
when it was released. It was the Clinton flacks' giddiest "Gotcha!"
moment. The report was unveiled to instant acclaim — as luck
would have it — just weeks before the House impeachment vote.
Bill Clinton wasn't a pervert, liar, and felon after all! Rather,
he was part of an honorable history of venerable men molesting the
help. As report co-author Ellis put it: "It is as if Clinton had
called one of the most respected character witnesses in all of U.S.
history to testify that the primal urge has a most distinguished
presidential pedigree." Ellis claimed the new testing proved "beyond
any reasonable doubt that Jefferson had a long-term sexual relationship
with his mulatto slave."
As the author of the award-winning American Sphinx: The Character
of Thomas Jefferson — and a Vietnam veteran — Ellis
spoke with some authority on the matter. He dismissed the likely
protestations from "die-hard Jefferson worshippers," proclaiming
the debate over. "Now we know," he said.
Unfortunately, proof of a Jefferson-Hemings liaison was as fanciful
as Professor Ellis's war service. Two months after the report's
"findings" had been published in every news outlet where English
is spoken, there was a slight correction. One of Ellis' co-authors,
pathologist Eugene Foster, admitted to the British science journal
Nature that they had not proved Thomas Jefferson fathered any children
by Sally Hemings. What they meant to say was "Jefferson could have
fathered the slave's last child." Just like Ellis could have served
in Vietnam.
The scientists had compared the DNA from descendants of Hemings's
last son to the DNA of descendants of one of Jefferson's paternal
uncles. The report established only that some Jefferson male had
fathered a child with Hemings.
That isn't as incriminating as it might sound. There were 25 Jefferson
males with the same DNA alive when Hemings conceived her last son.
Seven of them were at Monticello during the relevant time period.
The report's title was a lie.
This point was being screamed from the rooftops by various Jefferson
scholars — presumably the "die-hard Jefferson worshippers"
ridiculed by war hero Ellis. But their protestations didn't get
much farther than the rooftops. The American press wasn't interested.
Nor was the American press interested when the co-author of the
study later disavowed the report's purported conclusion in Nature.
Only eight newspapers even mentioned the correction, and only four
admitted that the report had actually narrowed the paternity list
to Jefferson…or one of seven other Jeffersons.
Around the time that Ellis was promoting the phony Jefferson report,
he pompously declared in the New York Times that "a poll
of the Founders would produce a clear majority" opposing Clinton's
impeachment. So now I'm wondering — did he meet those guys
in 'Nam?
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