The Darkness of Abraham Lincoln

Cincinatti Post ^ | 1/16/05 | Patricia Brennan

[presidio9]

Can someone who watched this program last night please tell me the name of the historian who just had to get a dig in comparing the circumstances President Lincoln faced and President Bush's current war on terror?

[FilthyHands]

It was Gore Vidal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_Vidal

[CarrotAndStick]

[CarrotAndStick]

[CarrotAndStick]

Oops, sorry for the double post.

[presidio9]

That was Gore Vidal? I actually enjoyed his books. I missed this program at 8:00, and was plannign on watching the replay at 11:00. I happend to flip over and see that segment, and decided that I had seen all I wanted to see.

[Flavius]

same here i lasted about 10 seconds

[ussc1863]

The film was actually very good. Vidal's comment was the only negative in it. When I first saw him on the show as a commentator I was wondering how he was going to get his extreme leftist views in on the program. There have been several parallels made between Bush and Lincoln and I just knew that Vidal would have to make some comment to dispel that notion.

[JLAGRAYFOX]

Lincoln indeed is the greatest of United States Presidents, and GW Bush is having an adminstration much like Lincoln had. Lincoln was openly vilified by the Democrats for misconduct of the war, and in the spring of 1864 he privately admitted that he did think he could be re-elected. However, his brillant choice of Generals that would fight to victory, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, etc., was a masterstroke as this group gave him the victories he needed to sustain his Presidency. Lincoln, in addition, had the loyalty and admiration of the common Union soldier and the common folk in America. They believed in him. They realized he was a flawed human being, as we all are. And...when election time rolled around, they returned the destiny leader to the White house for a second term.

I watched the film about Lincoln last night, and actually enjoyed it, although it did not spend enough time showcasing the brillance of Lincoln in his conduct of the war, leadership of his administration and great depth and understanding of the conflict at hand. Lincoln was blessed and guided by the Lord almighty in the war he fought to maintain this great union. Like a spiritual mystery and destiny, he could see what other men could not, much like GW Bush sees the America of the future and the Democrat Party does not have a clue, just as whimpy George McClellan and the Democrat Copperheads did not have a clue in Lincoln's time. They say history repeats itself. I guess it does.

[toddlintown]

Two comments that I heard until I turned off the TV...Lincoln had syphllis, at the same time noting that this was pure speculation, and that Lincoln was gay.

I went to bed.

[Jack Hammer]

It's utterly characteristic of the modern period that anyone who was anyone was neurotic, abused, depressed, and/or battling a variety of other pathologies. No doubt this says a great deal more about these historians and their generation than it does about the great figures of history, for which our obsession with navel-gazing and our boundless appetite for wallowing in our psychic deformities would have been utterly incomprehensible.

[KC_Conspirator]

It was Gore Vidal, a hate America leftist through and through.

[FilthyHands]

Apparently the History Channel believes that it is better to have the opinion of some schmuck who did a Lincoln mini-series rather than a legitimate historian.

[ops33]

You didn't miss anything. From the very start the show stated that Lincoln was clinically depressed. Amazing how they can make such a firm diagnosis, not speculation, 140 to 150 years after the event. Perhaps he was depressed, perhaps he wasn't. But his being depressed was the whole premise of the program. And, of course, they had to throw in the theory of the day, Lincoln was gay. No evidence of that either but that didn't seem to make any difference.

The one person that had a major influence on Lincoln's life was his step mother, Sarah Bush Johnston, and she wasn't even mentioned in the program. Biographies I have read state that Lincoln had a very warm and loving relationship with his step mother all his life and she played a very crucial and supportive role in his life.

[Uncle Fud]

Lincoln realized that you had to fight total war against your enemies. Only after they were utterly defeated could he (rightly) move toward a posture of magnanimity.

Our coddling of the Saudis and "Palestinians" shows that this understanding has now been lost.

[liberty_lvr]

I completely agree.

What a waste that the valuable lessons to be gleaned from these giants of our history are ignored in favor of instead humanizing these individuals at all costs. After watching this mess last night, it is my feeling that the producer went far past searching for context in Lincoln's pathologies, instead all we got was a giant group encounter session.

Man, I hate hippies.

[presidio9]

Actually, I could understand liberals getting a little pissed if Republicans went around comparing Bush to Lincoln. I like Bush, but, no, he's no Lincoln. Reagan does not belong on the same hill as Lincoln. God willing, no president will ever be worthy of comparison to Lincoln, because none will be confronted with the unique challenges he faced. But, serious Republicans don't compare Bush to Reagan. The president he is most often compared to is Tuman (though I don't like that much -other than both followed a distracted overrated socialist). Meanwhile, the Democrats usually compared Bush to Hoover (despite the fact that Bush has presided over an expansion as remarkable as his predecessors), but are now starting to move on to Nixon (who didn't believe in free markets and bowed to media pressure to bring troops home).

[presidio9]

Lincoln was gay.

They went there, did they? One reason I wanted to watch this was because I figured if they brought this up it would surely leak. So I figured they gave this stupid theory the respect it deserved and left it out. The buttsex loves draft dead soldiers who can't defend themselves to lend legitimacy to they perverted lifestyle. There is no reason whatsoever to indicate that Lincoln was gay.

[fish hawk]

The program as a whole was actually pretty good. Gave a lot of insight to the real Lincoln. Would have been a lot better if they left out the idea (with absolutely no proof) that Lincoln may have been gay, that he may have had syphilis, and Gore Vidal's ,"the war on terrorism is nothing, it's like the war on dandruff". Gore Vidal should have not been on the program at all. He is a far leftist commie, Bush hater.

[pawdoggie]

As I watched the "Lincoln" revisionist history, I kept wondering how someone as pathologically "depressed" as Abe Lincoln allegedly was could possibly have told all those jokes and humorous "little stories" for which his friends and enemies alike best remembered him. Not to mention all the eminently quotable ad libs attributed to the Great Emancipator. With the arguable exception of "JFK", this was the most agenda driven historical "docu-drama" I've ever seen.