Uncle Tom

BETHESDA -- Uncle Tom got a bum rap. I'm convinced of that after talking to James E. Henson Sr., a retired attorney in suburban Washington, D.C. He ought to know. He's known Uncle Tom as he would know a member of his own family. Mr. Henson, 69, is a direct descendant of Josiah Henson, the escaped slave whose memoir helped Harriet Beecher Stowe write her famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. He's also a descendant of Matthew Henson, the black explorer who accompanied Adm. Robert E. Peary on his historic expedition to the North Pole in 1909.

Dr. Ben Carson got a tough lesson in the past week on how quickly the angry and divisive world of cable TV can chew you up. The 61-year-old Baltimore County resident has been in the media spotlight as a darling of the right since early February, when he addressed the National Prayer Breakfast with what some interpreted as a lecture to President Barack Obama. But last week, Carson's TV image and the discussion about him shifted dramatically - for the worse. He became engaged in a TV discussion on race that included back-and-forth name calling - and he offered a critique on same-sex marriage that included such extreme rhetoric that he now has Johns Hopkins colleagues calling him out and medical students petitioning to have him removed as a graduation speaker in May. Most of it played out before millions on highly partisan Fox News, where he has recently been treated like a member of the home team.

This column pays humble tribute to some of those who have called or sent letters. Most of the reaction has been surprisingly kind, leaving me aghast that so many actually take the time to read my musings.But not all the customers are happy. One Annapolis man, upset at my "everybody takes a turn in the barrel" stand on affirmative action, responded by suggesting that the government force all blacks to move to Puerto Rico. You figure it out. I'm not going to try.Barry Hunter of Baltimore wrote in response to my column suggesting that we give Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, his followers and admirers a separate state and be done with them: "Are you such a slave in your mind that you ... your pants at the very thought of leaving your master's domain?

Archaeologists may have found remains of a barn or blacksmith shop from the days of Josiah Henson, a former slave whose autobiography was the inspiration for "Uncle Tom's Cabin," the Baltimore Sun reports. Here's an excerpt from Scott Dance's story about the dig in North Bethesda, Md.: "[A]rchaeologists with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission Montgomery Parks and the PBS program "Time Team America" began exploring the Josiah Henson Special Park on Monday.

COLIN POWELL was secretary of state barely four months when he heard the words. And he had to go to Africa to hear them. The words are "Uncle Tom." Powell, the retired Army general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has no doubt heard the term used in reference to him in his long military career. It's an insult some blacks use to describe other blacks who are perceived as servile toadies to whites. During Powell's trip in May to Africa, a South African student at Johannesburg's University of the Witwatersrand reportedly asked Powell, "What role are you in now: revolutionary, radical or Uncle Tom?"

Follow this closely. It gets tricky.First, the PTA of the Thomas G. Pullen Creative and Performing Arts School in Landover invites Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to speak at an eighth-grade graduation ceremony scheduled for this Monday. The principal of the school approves the invitation.Jerome Clark, the school superintendent of Prince George's County, rescinds the invitation after school board member Kenneth E. Johnson threatens to protest the appearance of THAT HORRIBLE NEGRO at the commencement exercises.

MARYLAND'S Democrats are railing and harrumphing and flailing their moral high horse with such vigor these days that the folks in PETA might bring them up on animal cruelty charges. After Joseph F. Steffen Jr., who worked in Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s administration, got caught spreading e-mail rumors about some alleged affairs Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley was not having, Democrats are demanding investigations and apologies. Those lovable, blessed Virgin Mary Dems -- so named because they figure they're without sin -- have even named the names of those they want to issue apologies.

EVER HAD some things you just had to get off your chest? I have just a few. I'll burst if I don't get them off. Readers, please allow me an indulgence just this one time.A few columns back I wrote that the notion of an African diaspora is an illusion. This was apparently too much for one reader, who went to the first refuge of those who believe in such things."You're an Uncle Tom and a sellout," she huffed.Dear me, when will these folks learn! Trying to teach them that the character of Uncle Tom died resisting, not being subservient to, a white man is futile.

The worst American novel? C'mon, now, aren't book reviews all about excellence? Shouldn't dismissive criticism be reserved solely for books that deserve to be punished for their threats to taste, truth, standards and values? No. But if you are stuck in that rut, I apologize. So let's be done with that.I am unabashedly proud of the 27 contributors on these pages this week. Heroes all.Almost all are sometime or frequent reviewers of books or arguers of "The Argument" here. Many have written books, a lot of them of very considerable seriousness.

Please read the question at the top of this page, then the 25 responses. I think the reason I so much enjoy these occasional informal surveys about books and ideas is the interplay: The joining of perceptions and flickerings of visions -- meetings of minds.Any single question and a two-sentence restriction on the answer are outrageous impositions on the wisdom and expressiveness of the respondents. Accept the question as a provocation. And the answers must be taken as the same.It is very interesting, I believe, that among 25 smart and wise women and men recommending the best one-volume guidance for new Americans, only two books received more than one nomination.

Archaeologists have discovered what they think are remains of a barn or blacksmith workshop in North Bethesda that could date to the days of Josiah Henson, a former slave whose autobiography inspired the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin. " Looking for evidence of what slave life in Maryland was like, archaeologists with the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission Montgomery Parks and the PBS program "Time Team America" began exploring the Josiah Henson Special Park on Monday.

Darn it, I knew I should have gone to Cincinnati. I mean, I sure would have loved to have been there when Sen. Barack Obama spoke before the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and repeatedly used the dreaded "r" word throughout his speech. The word wasn't "racism." It was "responsibility," the word that has been an Obama theme lately. The word that Obama used when he chastised irresponsible black fathers on Father's Day. The word that caused Jesse Jackson to have such a hankering for removing Obama's family jewels.

Don King alighted from Lt. Gov. Michael Steele's campaign bus, smiling broadly, waving two small American flags and sporting his American-flag-Statue-of-Liberty tie. The small crowd of onlookers cheered as King and Steele walked to television microphones set up for the occasion. "It's great to be a citizen of the United States of America in the great state of Maryland," King, campaigning for Steele's U.S. Senate candidacy, boomed as the crowd applauded. In one brief scene, I got just one example of how King rose from serving time for a manslaughter conviction to become the premier promoter in boxing.

If you happen to see me on the street and notice a dazed, confused expression on my face, it will be my astonishment about why Ann Coulter's comments about some widows of 9/11 victims became front-page news last week. In her new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Coulter referred to the widows as "witches" and "harpies." She added that "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." Editors of the New York Daily News thought Coulter's opining was worthy of a cover story.

Record books show that former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson, who died Thursday in New York, was the first man to win the title twice. Actually, Patterson should have won it three times -- and would have won it three times, if it weren't for a referee in desperate need of cataract surgery. The first came on Nov. 30, 1956, exactly 30 days before my 5th birthday. As a child born in the early 1950s, I remember Patterson most vividly as the first heavyweight champion whose name was mentioned by my elders.

BETHESDA -- Uncle Tom got a bum rap. I'm convinced of that after talking to James E. Henson Sr., a retired attorney in suburban Washington, D.C. He ought to know. He's known Uncle Tom as he would know a member of his own family. Mr. Henson, 69, is a direct descendant of Josiah Henson, the escaped slave whose memoir helped Harriet Beecher Stowe write her famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. He's also a descendant of Matthew Henson, the black explorer who accompanied Adm. Robert E. Peary on his historic expedition to the North Pole in 1909.

I am determined not to call Del. Howard "Pete" Rawlings an Uncle Tom just because he co-sponsored a measure to cut funding to city schools. That would be an unkind, even cruel, thing to say about the poor man."Uncle Tom" is one of the worst insults one black can hurl at another. It would be akin to calling Del. Rawlings, D-City, a traitor to his race; a man who curries favor with whites by confirming their worst stereotypes about blacks.The term conjures up images of a Stepin Fetchit-type character, grinning and shuffling and bobbing his head -- a buffoon, a fool, a caricature of a man.Many in the city may call Mr. Rawlings these horrible things.

If you happen to see me on the street and notice a dazed, confused expression on my face, it will be my astonishment about why Ann Coulter's comments about some widows of 9/11 victims became front-page news last week. In her new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, Coulter referred to the widows as "witches" and "harpies." She added that "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." Editors of the New York Daily News thought Coulter's opining was worthy of a cover story.

It's debatable whether President Bush will consent to meet face-to-face with Gold Star Mother Cindy Sheehan, who began a vigil outside of his Crawford, Texas, ranch in early August. Sheehan's son, Army Spec. Casey Sheehan, was killed in Iraq last year, and she has become the focal point of an anti-war movement that has grown increasingly frustrated by the loss of American lives and the president's determination to "stay the course" in that war-torn country. Sheehan wants a few minutes of the president's time to talk about the war that took her son and is becoming, according to recent polls, increasingly unpopular with the American public.

MARYLAND'S Democrats are railing and harrumphing and flailing their moral high horse with such vigor these days that the folks in PETA might bring them up on animal cruelty charges. After Joseph F. Steffen Jr., who worked in Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s administration, got caught spreading e-mail rumors about some alleged affairs Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley was not having, Democrats are demanding investigations and apologies. Those lovable, blessed Virgin Mary Dems -- so named because they figure they're without sin -- have even named the names of those they want to issue apologies.