As you may remember, Rep. Allen West -- the self-proclaimed "modern-day Harriet Tubman" -- said the other day that he was starting his own "underground railroad" to get black people away from the "21st-century plantation."
Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, whom West had identified as a "plantation overseer" in the interview, later told MSNBC that West had actually sent his own brother to her the next day because he needed help finding a job.
Maybe this was part of one of those revisionist-history textbooks, but we don't remember Harriet Tubman sending anyone back to the "plantation overseer."
Here's how Waters responded to Hardball host Chris Matthews about West's accusations:
Waters: I think that's odd and doesn't make good sense, and I don't think it even deserves a response. Did he tell you his brother was here today?
Matthews: Tell me.
Waters: He has a brother out of work. His brother came up to me, introduced himself, and told me that he had lost his job -- had been laid off -- and I asked him if he'd called his brother. He said he had. I said, 'What did he say?' He told me to come to the job fair -- he told me to come and see you. So we're hopeful we can help his brother.
Matthews: So he sent him to the plantation, as he put it?
Waters: Well, you know, that's a reasonable conclusion.
Rep. West's brother, Arlan West, then told MSNBC's Ed Schultz later that day that he thought the job fair was exactly the type of thing elected officials should be doing, and then talked about his brother's often-outlandish statements:
"That kind of dialogue is not productive, we need to have productive dialogue in Washington," he said. "We need to all sit at the table together as one. We need to stop using negative rhetoric and negative dialogue, because that is not productive."
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