[Marxism] Another important 200th birthday: Abraham Lincoln

[Tom Cod]

Yes, when I was a child my father made me memorize Whitman's 
"O Captain! My Captain!" Later in the 80s I knew this guy at 
a local day labor call-out I used to go to who told me his 
great grandmother that he knew when he was a kid had 
actually seen Lincoln's body in Buffalo in 1865 as part of the funeral 
train tour that took Lincoln's body to several major cities on its 
way back to Springfield.

In that regard, I thought Henry Louis Gates programs on Lincoln
were good and was somewhat offended by the snide review of them
in today's NYT by someone who first of all couldn't understand that 
Gates' questions about Lincoln's actual and perceived racism and its evolution
were rhetorical and socratic, seeking to illuminate a serious issue, 
and who was completely insenstive to how serious an issue this is actually is, 
particularly to African-Americans.  Thus in the 
worst traditions of a neophyte New Yorker contributor she sought
to cleverly come up with snide little put downs of Gates, a man of decidedly
plebeian and untrendy roots as a rube and dilletante, 
when actually the latter is exactly what that person is:
a sophmoric elitist jerk.

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