[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.

[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.