Misery, Thy Name is Rumsfeld's Vacation Home

[roody]

This is an old story, but I just heard it today in a talk given by Amy Goodman.
Race, power, and history come to a head at Rumsfeld's historic vacation home
October 26, 2006 Elizabeth Oliver

Eyes widened and jaws dropped around the Utne Reader editorial table this week as an editor shared with us a tidbit she picked up at the weekend's Minneapolis satellite dispatch from the annual Bioneers conference in San Rafael, California. It was a small side-note in a speech by Democracy Now host Amy Goodman, a detail just too bizarre and worrisome to let lie. I hit the internet, eager to learn more, to verify or discredit what I ultimately found out to be true: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld owns a vacation home named Mount Misery, an infamous 19th century manor where unruly slaves were sent to be broken by owner Edward Covey. The most famous of these slaves was a rebellious, teenage Frederick Douglass, who describes his brutal and formative experience there in his 1855 book, My Bondage and My Freedom.

---snip---

http://www.utne.com/2006-10-01/MiseryThyNameisRumsfeldsVacationHome.aspx

[opihimoimoi]

1. The man is in misery licking his Awe and Shock Wounds

[aquart]

2. You need to capitalize "Misery."

[Uben]

3. Do you know how hard it is to get capital these days?

And you want some for a word?

[lumberjack_jeff]

5. I suggest google adwords.

It'll be a hot search term soon.

[fasttense]

4. I wonder if Rumsfeld is haunted by the screams of tortured slaves?

But since he doesn't seems to be haunted by the screams of tortured Prisoners of War, I doubt the ghosts of slaves bother him.

[progressoid]

6. No,

I think he's used to those sounds. It's probably comforting to him.

[Supersedeas]

7. more truth for the Bush Legacy museum

[Supersedeas]

8. more truth for the Bush Legacy museum

[roody]

9. Amy Goodman comments:

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Rumsfeld and a mountain of misery

By AMY GOODMAN
SPECIAL TO THE P-I

Frederick Douglass, the renowned abolitionist, began life as a slave on Maryland's Eastern Shore. When his owner had trouble with the young, unruly slave, Douglass was sent to Edward Covey, a notorious "slave breaker." Covey's plantation, where physical and psychological torture were standard, was called Mount Misery. Douglass eventually fought back, escaped to the North and went on to change the world. Today Mount Misery is owned by Donald Rumsfeld, the outgoing secretary of defense.

It is ironic that this notorious plantation run by a practiced torturer would now be owned by Rumsfeld, himself accused as the man principally responsible for the U.S. military's program of torture and detention.

---snip---

http://www.seattlepi.com/opinion/293201_amy22.html

[annabanana]

10. He probably has a collection of Vlad the

Impaler's spikes in a box in the attic...

[bushmeister0]

11. I stand at my desk up to eight hours a day, what's the big deal with picking cotton?