Ben Affleck became the second big-name Democrat on Christmas Eve to take a pass on the soon-to-be-vacant Massachusetts Senate seat. 
 
 The actor took to his Facebook page Monday to say he's not running to replace Sen. John Kerry, who's expected to easily win confirmation as secretary of State. Earlier Monday, Ted Kennedy Jr. said he's not taking the plunge into elected politics, either. 
 
 "I love Massachusetts and our political process, but I am not running for office," Affleck wrote. "Right now, it's a privilege to spend my time working with Eastern Congo Initiative (ECI), supporting our veterans, drawing attention to the great many who go hungry in the U.S. everyday and using filmmaking to entertain and foster discussion about issues like our relationship to Iran." 
 
 (PHOTOS: Best celeb tweets on politics in 2012) 
 
 Affleck, who drew buzz but was never believed to be serious about running, said he expects "some phenomenal" candidates to emerge for the seat. A trio of Democratic congressmen — Massachusetts Reps. Michael Capuano, Stephen Lynch and Ed Markey — are the most oft-mentioned potential contenders. 
 
 Sen. Scott Brown is by far the strongest likely candidate on the GOP side. He lost to Elizabeth Warren in November but remains popular in the Bay State. 
 
 President Barack Obama has promised to raise money and campaign for the eventual Democratic nominee, POLITICO reported on Saturday. 
 
 Read more about: John Kerry, Scott Brown, Ted Kennedy Jr., Ben Affleck ||||| Ted Kennedy Jr. will not run for John Kerry’s Senate seat in Massachusetts, he announced in a statement Monday. 
 
 (PHOTOS: The Kennedy family) 
 
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 Kennedy, son of the late former Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, said he’s “extremely grateful for all the offers of support,” but that he considers Connecticut his home. 
 
 Kennedy, a 51-year-old lawyer and president of a financial services company in New York, lives with his family in Connecticut but also has a home at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. 
 
 (Earlier on POLITICO: Scott Brown no shoo-in as Kerry successor) 
 
 Still, Kennedy didn’t rule out a run for office in the future. 
 
 “Although I have a strong desire to serve in public office, I consider Connecticut to be my home, and hope to have the honor to serve at another point in my future,” he said in his statement, per CNN. 
 
 “The statement was interesting in that really for the first time he’s said out loud that he would like to serve in public office,” said Democratic strategist Scott Ferson. “But I think he’s being thoughtful about it — he knows where he’s made his life and sees his future there.” 
 
 The news comes a day after former Rep. Patrick Kennedy indicated that his older brother was giving serious consideration to running. 
 
 Insiders in Massachusetts say Kennedy’s decision isn’t a big surprise, and that the expected Democratic field is mostly unchanged. It is, however, a boon to former Sen. Scott Brown, who is likely to run on the Republican side and has high name recognition throughout the state. 
 
 “There were plenty of trial balloons,” Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh said. “The fact that Ted Kennedy decided not to run isn’t a big surprise, and the [Democratic] field is the same at the moment.” 
 
 The names that come up most frequently on the Democratic side are Massachusetts Reps. Michael Capuano, Stephen Lynch and Ed Markey. 
 
 On the Republican side, it’s likely that Brown — who won his seat in the state’s 2010 special election to succeed Edward Kennedy — will run again. Brown was defeated in November by Democrat Elizabeth Warren as he sought a full six-year term. 
 
 Actor-filmmaker Ben Affleck has also been mentioned as a possible candidate. 
 
 Ferson said the Democratic field hasn’t changed in the wake of Ted Kennedy’s decision, but that if he’d decided to run, the field certainly could have shrunk, given the amount of attention Kennedy would have received. 
 
 “The reality is if Ted Kennedy had gotten in, Kennedys suck up a lot of political oxygen,” Ferson said. “The Democratic field would not have been as big as it potentially may be now.” ||||| Ben Affleck really didn’t want people to know that one of his distant ancestors owned slaves—going so far as to lobby celebrity genealogy TV show Finding Your Roots to suppress the segment in which that ancestor is discussed. But we got our hands on a copy of the script—and now you can read the mild interview that terrified the actor. 
 
 In his episode of Finding Your Roots, shared with actor Khandi Alexander and former NAACP president Ben Jealous, Affleck learns a great deal about his family, including his mother and a great-great-great grandfather, Almon Bruce French, a spiritualist and occultist. 
 
 But there was one family member that Affleck bafflingly wanted to keep hidden: great-great-great grandfather Benjamin Cole, a Savannah slave-owner in the mid-19th century. Sometime after the show was filmed, Affleck contacted host Henry Louis Gates to request that the short, gentle interview about Cole be cut from the show. 
 
 In the episode, which aired on TV in October, Affleck and Gates discuss the spiritualist forebear before the show cuts directly to a new segment with Alexander. But a picture-locked copy of the script from June obtained by Gawker shows that the segment about his slave-owning predecessor would have appeared between. This is what Ben Affleck wanted no one to see: 
 
 AT THE SAME TIME THAT ALMON WAS TRYING TO OFFER THE BEREAVED SOLACE... ANOTHER OF BEN’S ANCESTORS WAS LIVING 800 MILES DUE SOUTH. WE LEARNED THAT HIS LIFE HAD ALSO BEEN FUNDAMENTALLY AFFECTED BY THE CIVIL WAR—BUT FOR VERY DIFFERENT REASONS. THIS MAN WAS BEN’S THIRD GREAT GRANDFATHER, BENJAMIN COLE, AND HE WAS LIVING IN SAVANNAH, GEORGIA AT THE TIME. COLE WAS ONE OF SAVANNAH’S MOST PROMINENT CITIZENS—A WEATLHY LAND OWNER AND THE SHERIFF OF THE ENTIRE COUNTY. AFFLECK: That’s amazing. I got a…we have a house in Savannah. GATES: Really? AFFLECK: Yeah. GATES: Did it ever occur to you that you had deep roots there? AFFLECK: No, it didn’t. It didn’t at all. I had no idea I had any southern roots at all, so this is remarkable. COLE OWNED A LARGE FARM IN GEORGIA AT A TIME WHEN SLAVE LABOR HAD MADE THE STATE THE CENTER OF THE SOUTH’S COTTON KINGDOM. WE WANTED TO SEE IF WE COULD LEARN HOW BEN’S ANCESTOR FELT ABOUT THIS PECULIAR INSTITUTION. AND FOR THAT, WE STARTED WITH THE 1850 CENSUS. GATES: This is the slave schedule of the 1850 Census. In 1850, they would list the owner of slaves in a separate Census. AFFLECK: There’s Benjamin Cole, owned 25 slaves. GATES: Your third great-grandfather owned 25 slaves. He was a slave owner. THESE HOLDINGS PUT BENJAMIN COLE AMONG THE SOUTHERN ELITE. ONLY ABOUT 10% OF ALL SLAVE HOLDERS OWNED 20 SLAVES OR MORE. AFFLECK: God. It gives me kind of a sagging feeling to see, uh, a biological relationship to that. But, you know, there it is, part of our history. GATES: But consider the irony, uh, in your family line. Your mom went back fighting for the rights of black people in Mississippi, 100 years later. That’s amazing. AFFLECK: That’s pretty cool. GATES: That’s pretty cool. AFFLECK: Yeah, it is. One of the things that’s interesting about it is like we tend to separate ourselves from these things by going like, you know, oh, well, it’s just dry history, and it’s all over now, and this shows us that there’s still a living aspect to history, like a personal connection. By the same token, I think it’s important to recognize that, um, in looking at these histories, how much work has been done by people in this country, of all kinds, to make it a better place. GATES: People like your mother. AFFLECK: Indeed, people like my mother and many others who have made a much better America than the one that they were handed. 
 
 The segment, in which Gates is careful to end on Affleck’s mother—a civil-rights worker—comes across as mild and non-confrontational, and Affleck comports himself well. 
 
 So why was it cut? 
 
 Last week, after leaked emails surfaced in which Gates describes Affleck’s desire to expurgate the segment, the Harvard professor denied removing the material at Affleck’s request—an apparent violation of PBS editorial standards—saying he had used his editorial judgment and found the material lacking. 
 
 
 
 “Ultimately, I maintain editorial control on all of my projects and, with my producers, decide what will make for the most compelling program,” he said in a statement. 
 
 But if Gates was making an independent editorial decision based on quality alone, it came extremely late in the process. The June version of the script excerpted here is picture-locked, meaning that it came at the end of the editing process, and no major cuts or additions would be made. 
 
 Picture-lock must have been revoked sometime over the summer in order to make at least two major cuts, including to the opening segment. Here’s the voice-over introduction, as it appears in the June script: 
 
 
 
 IN THIS EPISODE, WE PIECE TOGETHER THE LOST FAMILY HISTORIES OF ACTOR BEN AFFLECK, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST BEN JEALOUS, AND ACTOR KHANDI ALEXANDER. 
 
 THEIR ROOTS HIGHLIGHT A UNIQUELY AMERICAN PARADOX: EACH DESCENDS FROM A PATRIOT WHO FOUGHT FOR OUR NATION’S INDEPENDENCE—BUT EACH ALSO DESCENDS FROM AN ANCESTOR WHO OWNED SLAVES. 
 
 
 
 And here’s how it appears in the final script, submitted in August: 
 
 
 
 GATES VO: IN THIS EPISODE, WE PIECE TOGETHER THE LOST FAMILY HISTORIES OF ACTOR BEN AFFLECK, CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVIST BEN JEALOUS, AND ACTOR KHANDI ALEXANDER. 
 
 THEIR ROOTS LEAD TO ANCESTORS WHOSE LIVES WERE SHAPED BY THE TWO DEFINING WARS IN OUR NATIONS HISTORY. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND THE CIVIL WAR. 
 
 Three Americans, two of whom are black, each of whom “descends from a patriot” but also “an ancestor who owned slaves” sounds like much more compelling television to me (relatively speaking, of course). 
 
 Not so to Skip Gates: “In the case of Mr. Affleck — we focused on what we felt were the most interesting aspects of his ancestry — including a Revolutionary War ancestor, a 3rd great–grandfather who was an occult enthusiast, and his mother who marched for Civil Rights during the Freedom Summer of 1964,” Gates told PBS’s ombudsman. 
 
 But “interesting” wasn’t the only thing on Gates’ mind. In a widely publicized July 22, 2014 email chain leaked during the Sony Hack and now available on Wikileaks, Gates asks Sony Entertainment CEO Lynton for his advice on a guest who “has asked us to edit something about one of his ancestors—the fact that he owned slaves,” openly admitting that editing the piece would be a “violation of PBS rules.” 
 
 
 
 “And he wasn’t even a bad guy. We don’t demonize him at all,” Gates grumbles about Affleck’s ancestor. (Bolding throughout ours.) 
 
 >>>>>>> On Jul 22, 2014, at 9:01 AM, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote: >>>>>>> >>>>>>> As long as you stay on the board, you are free to say this is crazy! I hardly know Harvey; you are my friend. I really would be devastated if you left. 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? >>>>>> On Jul 22, 2014, at 12:09 PM, “Lynton, Michael” <Michael_Lynton@spe.sony.com> wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> Of course I will stay on the board if you want me to. 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. >>>>> On Jul 22, 2014, at 9:11 AM, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote: 
 
 >>>>> 
 
 >>>>> Good; relieved. As for the doc: 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. >>>>> 
 
 >>>>> Sent from my iPad 
 
 >>>>> >>>> On Jul 22, 2014, at 11:28 AM, “Lynton, Michael” <Michael_Lynton@spe.sony.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> 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. >>> On Jul 22, 2014, at 9:30 AM, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote: 
 
 >>> 
 
 >>> 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. >>> 
 
 >>> Sent from my iPad >> On Jul 22, 2014, at 12:28 PM, “Lynton, Michael” <Michael_Lynton@spe.sony.com> wrote: >> >> yeah,, the past is the past….. On Jul 22, 2014, at 10:30 AM, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote: > 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. > 
 
 > Sent from my iPad 
 
 “Yes, bad idea,” Lynton replies. 
 
 Bad idea indeed. 
 
 [image via AP]
– Ben Affleck is done being coy about his political ambitions, and is joining the growing list of people who won't be running for John Kerry's Senate seat, reports Politico. "I love Massachusetts and our political process, but I am not running for office," Affleck wrote on his Facebook page. "Right now it's a privilege to spend my time working with Eastern Congo Initiative, supporting our veterans, drawing attention to the great many who go hungry in the US everyday and using filmmaking to entertain and foster discussion about issues like our relationship to Iran." Affleck joined the ranks of Ted Kennedy Jr., who yesterday made a similar announcement, reports Politico. Kennedy said that while he's “extremely grateful for all the offers of support,” uprooting his family from Connecticut wasn't in the cards—though he did leave open the idea of a run for public office: “Although I have a strong desire to serve in public office, I consider Connecticut to be my home, and hope to have the honor to serve at another point in my future."