Ooops. Turns out Ben Affleck’s ancestors owned slaves. Not only that, it turns out Ben was so embarrassed by this revelation that he moved heaven and earth to have his family’s history whitewashed by PBS!
Thanks to the Sony hack, now everyone knows Affleck is a slave-denier when it comes to his own kin.
Ben’s ancestors enslaved people. Ben just enslaved PBS’s editorial integrity. Daily Mail reports…
EXCLUSIVE: Ben Affleck wanted his slave owner ancestor ‘censored’ from Finding Your Roots PBS documentary – and show’s host covered it up, leaked emails reveal
The show’s host Henry Louis Gates Jr knew what he was doing was wrong, but did it anyway to protect the liberal megastar. From the leaked email exchange:
Gates: By the way, I need your advice: I’m on a flight to L.A. for the TCA Press Tour. We launch season two of Finding Your Roots tomorrow at noon, and four celebrities, including Nas, are showing up. Here’s my dilemma: confidentially, for the first time, one of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors–the fact that he owned slaves. Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns. We’ve never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found. He’s a megastar. What do we do?
Lynton: On the doc the big question is who knows that the material is in the doc and is being taken out. I would take it out if no one knows, but if it gets out that you are editing the material based on this kind of sensitivity then it gets tricky. Again, all things being equal I would definitely take it out.
Gates: All my producers would know; his PR agency the same as mine, and everyone there has been involved trying to resolve this; my agent at CAA knows. And PBS would know. To do this would be a violation of PBS rules, actually, even for Batman.
Lynton: then it is tricky because it may get out that you made the change and it comes down to editorial integrity. We can talk when you land.
Gates: Will call. It would embarrass him and compromise our integrity. I think he is getting very bad advice. I’ve offered to fly to Detroit, where he is filming, to talk it through.
Lynton: Yeah,, the past is the past…..
Gates: And he wasn’t even a bad guy. We don’t demonize him at all. Now Anderson Cooper’s ancestor was a real s.o.b.; one of his slaves actually murdered him. Of course, the slave was promptly hanged. And Anderson didn’t miss a beat about that. Once we open the door to censorship, we lose control of the brand.
Lynton: Yes, bad idea.
Even worse, PBS played up Ben’s other connections to the civil war. Guess Ben didn’t want PBS to whitewash his connection to the American revolution.
Instead viewers were shown heartwarming stories of how his third grandfather was a mystic in the Civil War and how his sixth grandfather was a patriot who fought in the American Revolution.
Must be nice to have PBS and their tax dollars to clean up your family’s slave holding history.
