Lincoln Bicentennial

[R. Richard]

You can really learn a lot by just reading your newspaper. For instance, today is the Lincoln Bicentennial. Until I read it in the newspaper, I didn't know that Lincoln was bi. However, just by reading my newspaper ...

 

[The_Fool]

You can really learn a lot by just reading your newspaper. For instance, today is the Lincoln Bicentennial. Until I read it in the newspaper, I didn't know that Lincoln was bi. However, just by reading my newspaper ...

Tongue-in-cheek statement, but I have read comments that indicate that might be true. Need to see if I can find some references to that...in my spare time.

 

[midwestyankee]

Tongue-in-cheek statement, but I have read comments that indicate that might be true. Need to see if I can find some references to that...in my spare time.

The references that you've read all rely on the single fact that when Lincoln shared an apartment with Joshua Speed, the two men had but one bed, which they shared. This was rather a common practice in the frontier at that time so it's not in any way proof of anything other than that the two men were not wealthy enough to own two beds.

 

[trysail]

The references that you've read all rely on the single fact that when Lincoln shared an apartment with Joshua Speed, the two men had but one bed, which they shared. This was rather a common practice in the frontier at that time so it's not in any way proof of anything other than that the two men were not wealthy enough to own two beds.

Thank you. I tire of revisionist, politically correct history written with an eye to selling nonsense to a gullible and thus receptive market segment.

"Consider C.A. Tripp and his contention that Lincoln was gay. His 2005 book, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, begins with the fact that Lincoln during his late 20s and early 30s shared a bed with a young man named Joshua Speed. As President, Lincoln may also have shared his bed with a captain of his guard unit in Washington.

But for men to share beds in the mid-19th century was as common and mundane as men sharing houses or apartments in the early 21st. Tripp's claim proceeds from what Jonathan Ned Katz calls 'epistemological hubris and ontological chutzpah.' "

-Joshua Wolf Shenk

 

[3113]

Thank you. I tire of revisionist, politically correct history written with an eye to selling nonsense to a gullible and thus receptive market segment.

Funny, I tire of revisionist history built on racial lies and there seem to be a lot more of them that have lasted a lot longer. Like the Holocaust never happened.

I'm not saying you're wrong about revisionist historians, but I am saying that it's equally tiring to hear people always going on about the "politically correct" revisionists as compared to any other type of revisionists aiming to sell their nonsense to the public.

If you're going to condemn revisionists with an eye to selling nonsense to the gullible, be so kind as to include them all, not just the "politically correct" ones as if to say that those are the only kind that exist or the only ones we should condemn or be tired of.

 

[3113]

The references that you've read all rely on the single fact that when Lincoln shared an apartment with Joshua Speed, the two men had but one bed, which they shared. This was rather a common practice in the frontier at that time so it's not in any way proof of anything other than that the two men were not wealthy enough to own two beds.

True. Walt Whitman, on the other hand, was very likely as gay as a three dollar bill.

 

[trysail]

True. Walt Whitman, on the other hand, was very likely as gay as a three dollar bill.

That is probable.

Nonetheless, wishful thinking doesn't make for historical accuracy anymore than politicization of science supplants scientific method.

I repeat:
"Tripp's claim proceeds from what Jonathan Ned Katz calls 'epistemological hubris and ontological chutzpah.' "
-Joshua Wolf Shenk

 

[cloudy]

Let's talk historical accuracy, then.

 

[trysail]

I am fond of a Lincoln anecdote related by Carl Sandburg in his six-volume biography ( and— to my utter delight— once used by Warren Buffett to reinforce his point concerning the wisdom of employing conservative accounting methods ):

Lincoln queried a small group gathered in a circuit-riding tavern with the question: How many legs does a dog have if you call its tail a leg? Answer, four— calling a dog's tail a leg doesn't make it so.