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.
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.