The Week

■ A panel of professors evaluated how well Al Gore and George W. Bush deliver the Spanish sentences they stir into their stump speeches. They concluded that Bush had a good accent, but bad grammar. Isn’t that how he talks conservative?

■ Hillary Clinton has a Jewish family connection (her grand- mother’s second husband, according to the Forward, was Jewish), and a black link as well. Ebony magazine revealed that her great-great-grandfather, Hemings Rodham, was one-eighth black. Like many people of not much color who escaped or were manumitted in the antebellum period, he came to the Midwest and joined the white community. Harvard professor Henry Louis (“Skip”) Gates Jr. said that the connection shows that racial issues “are as multifaceted now as they were then.” “Her genes riff, like her husband’s politics,” added critic Stanley Crouch. Psychiatrist Alvin F. Poussaint, noting Mrs. Clinton’s history of spousal abuse, said “the burdens of broken families, associated with slavery and ‘blackness,’ affect white America too.” Ebony denied that Mrs. Clinton’s senatorial campaign gave them any help with the story, although filmmaker Spike Lee was reportedly in discussions with the campaign about doing an ad.

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Presidential Election

■ A panel of professors evaluated how well Al Gore and George W. Bush deliver the Spanish sentences they stir into their stump speeches. They concluded that Bush had a good accent, but bad grammar. Isn’t that how he talks conservative?

■ Hillary Clinton has a Jewish family connection (her grand- mother’s second husband, according to the Forward, was Jewish), and a black link as well. Ebony magazine revealed that her great-great-grandfather, Hemings Rodham, was one-eighth black. Like many people of not much color who escaped or were manumitted in the antebellum period, he came to the Midwest and joined the white community. Harvard professor Henry Louis (“Skip”) Gates Jr. said that the connection shows that racial issues “are as multifaceted now as they were then.” “Her genes riff, like her husband’s politics,” added critic Stanley Crouch. Psychiatrist Alvin F. Poussaint, noting Mrs. Clinton’s history of spousal abuse, said “the burdens of broken families, associated with slavery and ‘blackness,’ affect white America too.” Ebony denied that Mrs. Clinton’s senatorial campaign gave them any help with the story, although filmmaker Spike Lee was reportedly in discussions with the campaign about doing an ad.