clever and humorous...nice job...5s

Well done! 5s

Always good to get a little History education with your morning parodies...nice job, Steve...5's ~ ~ ~

It's always nice when you can combine history and a good song. Good parody. 5's

Steve, your conclusions are entirely possible, but who knows for sure? There were 25 men within 20 miles of Monticello who were all Jeffersons and had the same Y chromosome. And 23 of them were younger than Jefferson, who was 65 years old when Eston was conceived. Several historians have concluded that Randolph Jefferson, Thomas' brother, was more likely to have fathered Eston Hemings.

In any case, very good parody.

The parody was excellent. Of course, when I was doing the Presidential Parody Project, I went out of my way NOT to mention this particular controversy in my Jefferson piece (http://www.amiright.com/parody/80s/starship7.shtml). John J gives some mitigating circumstances, which have been much-debated. Then there's Fawn Brodie, considered by some to be the Albert Goldman of Presidents (she also psychoanalyzed Nixon), who suggests that Tom and Sally were a genuine love affair, which also was suggested at the time. Indeed, James Callender, who first broke the story in the Richmond Recorder in 1802, had been a Jefferson ally who slimed John Adams. When he didn't get the post of Postmaster of Richmond, he turned coat. He was the David Brock of his day, except he went the opposite, from left to right. A notorious drunk, he ended up dead in a creek in 1804. Had there been today's vast right-wing conspiracy, Jefferson would've been impeached. But there wasn't, and he was re-elected in a landslide.

Thanks, everyone. Paul & Adagio: TOS is itself a bit of history. I've sometimes wondered if the (alleged) Jefferson-Hemmings affair was the inspiration for Jagger and Richards. JJ: You are correct in pointing out that there is still quite a bit of uncertainty as to who Eston's father really was. For one thing, the descendants of his brother Madison lack the Jefferson Y-chromosome. Although TJ's age makes less likely his fathering Eston, let me point out that John Tyler had children (by his wife, not by any slaves) when he was in his 70's. Mike: Strangely enough, what made the TJ-SH affair (if indeed there was one) controversial is that it allegedly was more like a love affair than the way that slave owners sometimes took advantage of their female slaves, practically using them as sex-toys. Of course, it would still not have been a relationship of equals. There wasn't any right-wing conspiracy back then, but the politics of personal destruction was already in practice.