As Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women , once noted, it's never a good idea to meet your idols. And considering that she was a money-loving drug addict , she probably knew what she was talking about. If there's some artist, athlete, chef, or whatever who really inspires you, don't try to find out what they're really like as people. At best, you're going to be disappointed. At worst, you might find out something that will really break your heart, like that Bill Nye once broke 88 orphans' legs during a meth deal gone wrong. Don't worry, we made that one up, but here are some that are completely real ...

6 The Clintons Used African-American Prison Labor Whilst Living In The Governor's Mansion

During the 2016 presidential election, the media made sure to keep us constantly aware of every single flaw or inadequacy surrounding Hillary Clinton, from her inexpert handling of emails to her dreadful Ellen dance moves. But there's one little thing that no one thought to bring up: She, uh, had slaves at one point. Yeah.

Back before the Clintons occupied the White House, they were residents of the governor's mansion in Arkansas (what with Bill being governor and all). In Hillary's 1996 book It Takes A Village, she made an offhand remark about how they had employed unpaid prison labor, mainly "African-American men in their thirties," to help around the house. Don't worry, this was part of a "longstanding tradition" -- which is an excuse that has never, ever been used to justify terrible actions.

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How is this even a thing? Well, according to a caveat in the 13th Amendment (the only amendment we fought a war over), Americans can't be enslaved ... except as punishment for a crime. The government tends to avoid the actual word "slavery" to describe this policy, but the Constitution itself doesn't screw around with semantics:

United States Congress

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Cut it out with that "whereof" shit, though. We get it, you're cultured.

Clinton doesn't give any indication in the book that she saw this situation (black men being forced to serve rich white politicians) as kinda problematic. Instead she takes the opportunity to discuss how "apprehensive" she was about having scary black criminals in her house, until she learned that they weren't so scary after all. This would be a heartwarming memoir if it was written in the 1800s, but like we said, this book came out in 1996. That's 14 years after "Ebony And Ivory" cured racism forever, so there's really no excuse.

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This all makes the Clintons sound less like progressive Democrats and more like one of the less-shitty white characters from 12 Years A Slave. And although the book had been out for 20 years, somehow nobody -- not in the media, not even from the Trump opposition research team -- made note of this until a random Twitter user posted about it in June 2017. (We would certainly never suggest that Trump read about this and said, "So? What's wrong with slavery?" That would be cheap of us.)