Actually, McCain, the Worst Chapter in American History Was Slavery.

Have you noticed not a single media outlet has yet raised a question about John McCain’s characterization of segregation as “the worst chapter in American history”?

I’m going to venture that most people, especially white ones, didn’t notice the Republican presidential candidate skip past 350 brutal years of America’s foundational narrative.

That is, slavery was not only the worst chapter in American history. It was the longest chapter. It was the prologue to segregation, and the practice of which segregation was merely a refinement.

I don’t imagine McCain necessarily did this on purpose. But if not, that fact only makes it worse, because it means he truly doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and isn’t just being disingenuous, but feels totally at ease talking about it, because he’s not really connected to any of it. It’s a talking point. (If segregation, to him, was really the worst chapter in American history, why did he ever vote against the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday?)
It also suggests, perhaps, why he can think that a smear against him and his running mate, Sarah Palin, linking them with segregation’s excesses, somehow compares to him a) calling Obama a terrorist-by-association, post-9/11, while b) blowing off campaign rally threats (“Kill him!”) against the Democratic presidential candidate’s life.

That is, if you’re white, discomfiting slights are equal to a host of mortal Black ills, because your comfort is so sacred.