Lincoln (2012)

[Battalion]

from Lincoln script-

LINCOLN:
We begin with equality. That's the origin, isn't
it? That balance, that's fairness, that's justice.

Lincoln was not a proponent of equality.

 

[Battalion]

:: waiting to see how this gets twisted around to the topic of 'Black Confederates' ::

Strange how those who denounce what they call myth are all too ready to embrace it...

 

[matthew mckeon]

It was a nice thread. Why did you have to post political **** that will get it closed?

The discussion posted by CW is not "****" IMO, its pretty interesting in places. If anyone doesn't want to read all the links, don't, its a free country.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Strange how those who denounce what they call myth are all too ready to embrace it...

It's just that you're a one-note band. So the other shoe will drop, sooner or later (to mix metaphors).

 

[rob63]

The discussion posted by CW is not "****" IMO, its pretty interesting in places. If anyone doesn't want to read all the links, don't, its a free country.

Not everything he writes is ****, but some of it most assuredly is and this piece is an example.

"The conservative movement in America has always enjoyed a proximity to ****, which many of its more respectable figures must find uncomfortable. But it's not like you can simply write this relation off to fringe groups, or some unreformed anti-intellectual mass. I've always found it rather amazing to hear respectable conservatives pining for the days of William F. Buckley, whom they see as the epitome of the sober conservative intellectual. This is hard for me to take."

Here, let me re-write it in straight-forward enough terms for you to understand why it is offensive, and thus ****.

The liberal movement in America has always enjoyed a proximity to communism, which many of its more respectable figures must find uncomfortable. But it's not like you can simply write this relation off to fringe groups, or some unreformed anti-intellectual mass. I've always found it rather amazing to hear respectable liberals pining for the days of Fidel Castro, whom they see as the epitome of the sober liberal intellectual. This is hard for me to take.

Character assassination by making sweeping generalities is never pretty; it is the basis of prejudice. I would say he is a bigot. If you don't like reading that, don't, it's a free country.

 

[matthew mckeon]

Not everything he writes is ****, but some of it most assuredly is and this piece is an example.

"The conservative movement in America has always enjoyed a proximity to ****, which many of its more respectable figures must find uncomfortable. But it's not like you can simply write this relation off to fringe groups, or some unreformed anti-intellectual mass. I've always found it rather amazing to hear respectable conservatives pining for the days of William F. Buckley, whom they see as the epitome of the sober conservative intellectual. This is hard for me to take."

Here, let me re-write it in straight-forward enough terms for you to understand why it is offensive, and thus ****.

The liberal movement in America has always enjoyed a proximity to communism, which many of its more respectable figures must find uncomfortable. But it's not like you can simply write this relation off to fringe groups, or some unreformed anti-intellectual mass. I've always found it rather amazing to hear respectable liberals pining for the days of Fidel Castro, whom they see as the epitome of the sober liberal intellectual. This is hard for me to take.

Character assassination by making sweeping generalities is never pretty; it is the basis of prejudice. I would say he is a bigot. If you don't like reading that, don't, it's a free country.

Rob,
I can't read your mind but your writing is over the top. Conservatives have been playing the race card as a self conscious political strategy for at least forty years. Yell at Lee Atwater if you want, not some guy who happenned to notice it. During the historical period of the 1850s and 60s, the racist rhetoric employed by the Democrats against Lincoln was lurid. Some posters cluck-cluck over Lincoln's supposed racism. But compared to his opponents he sounds like Malcolm X.

Throwing insults arounds like "bigot" is unpersuasive. And addressing a post to me personally, and then telling me I don't like reading that, etc. doesn't make a ton of sense.

 

[rob63]

Rob,
I can't read your mind but your writing is over the top.

Fascinating, according to you the original piece is interesting, but my re-write is "over-the-top." That speaks volumes, don't you think? You clearly are failing to read my mind because you are missing the point of illustrating **** with ****.

Conservatives have been playing the race card as a self conscious political strategy for at least forty years.

You need to look in a mirror on that one. Liberals just can't stop playing the race card. It is way past tiresome.

If anyone dares to question the wisdom of a liberal policy, then racism is the only possible explanation. Even the word "Chicago" is supposedly now a code word for conservative racists. The stuff you guys make up is amazing. Susan Rice was opposed because conservatives just can't stand the thought of an African-American as Secretary of State... ummm, ever heard of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice?

I know, you personally didn't say all of those things. Yell at MSNBC if you want, not at some guy who happened to notice it.

Throwing insults arounds like "bigot" is unpersuasive

You have once again missed the point. The original post is full of insults to conservatives, yet you are defending it as "interesting."

 

[matthew mckeon]

Fascinating, according to you the original piece is interesting, but my re-write is "over-the-top." That speaks volumes, don't you think? You clearly are failing to read my mind because you are missing the point of illustrating **** with ****.



You need to look in a mirror on that one. Liberals just can't stop playing the race card. It is way past tiresome.

If anyone dares to question the wisdom of a liberal policy, then racism is the only possible explanation. Even the word "Chicago" is supposedly now a code word for conservative racists. The stuff you guys make up is amazing. Susan Rice was opposed because conservatives just can't stand the thought of an African-American as Secretary of State... ummm, ever heard of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice?

I know, you personally didn't say all of those things. Yell at MSNBC if you want, not at some guy who happened to notice it.


You have once again missed the point. The original post is full of insults to conservatives, yet you are defending it as "interesting."

Rob,
Take down the hostility a few notches. I realize you sincerely believe what your posts, but a lot of people are not going to agree with you. Just getting mad and ranting isn't persuading anyone of anything.

 

[Nathanb1]

Is there a full moon?

 

[rob63]

Rob,
Take down the hostility a few notches. I realize you sincerely believe what your posts, but a lot of people are not going to agree with you. Just getting mad and ranting isn't persuading anyone of anything.

Matthew, just for a few seconds, try to look at things from a different perspective. It appears to me that you are used to seeing conservatives called racist as a matter of course, actually you do it yourself in post #186, and thus seem to be blind to why it is upsetting.

The original post links modern conservatives to the white-supremacy movement. He at first offers a caveat, and then he dredges up 50 year old quotes from a dead man to tar-and-feather all conservatives. Even worse, the man in question repudiated the very statements quoted and became a great admire of Martin Luther King, Jr and the civil rights movement. He then offers up Ron Paul as a typical conservative, accuses him of claiming the war wasn't about slavery, and calls him the "ultimate lost causer." Ron Paul argues that Lincoln should have found a way to free the slaves without fighting a war that killed 600,000. He says nothing about the war not being about slavery; he couldn't very well argue that there was another way to free the slaves if he believed that. I consider his opinion on that matter naive, nor do I agree with his opinions of Lincoln's motives which are just silly, but it hardly makes him the "ultimate lost causer" and it doesn't justify putting words in his mouth.

To sum up; Mr. Coates searches for old and repudiated quotes that confirm his bias against conservatives. He then paints all conservatives as believing the most radical views and tries to prove it by putting words in the mouth of a man only moderately connected to conservatives in the first place. The definition of a bigot is: "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices." I think the definition fits Mr. Coates view of conservatives pretty well based upon what he wrote in his article.

You show up and declare that it is all "interesting." I have tried, obviously without success, to try to get you to understand why what Mr. Coates wrote is infuriating. I have attempted to illustrate the absurd with absurdity, but you only respond with yet more absurdity. I then tried to illustrate the hypocrisy of your response, which only gets me accused of being hostile and ranting. Your response tacitly acknowledges that the opinions of Mr. Coates, and your own responses as well, are hostile because I simply turned them around and used them against you.

Since this is the book and movie review forum, I would like to recommend a book for you. I can only wish Mr. Coates would read it, although I suspect he would fail to see how it applies to him.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307377903/?tag=civilwartalkc-20

 

[matthew mckeon]

Rob,
I will do exactly as you write, try to open myself to a fresh viewpoint.

 

[rob63]

Rob,
I will do exactly as you write, try to open myself to a fresh viewpoint.

Thank you. I will do the same. FWIW, I like several of the other columns by Mr. Coates. It is refreshing to see an African-American perspective on the Civil War.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Is there a full moon?

Nope. Recent new moon, though.

 

[blwhite]

OK -- who's seen it? I attended a 9:55am showing this morning and came away very impressed. Daniel-Day Lewis was outstanding as Lincoln. Sally Field made a terrific non-caricatured Mary Todd. Tommy Lee Jones was a delight as Thaddeus Stevens and gets some of the film's best lines. Actually everyone in the film was good, from David Straithairn as Seward down to the boy who plays Tad. There were a dozen familiar faces in bit roles; I don't know most of their names but everyone fit their role very well.

The guy who played Grant was just OK, and Lee was basically an extra. The only bad example of casting was that they used a pregnant Arabian mare to play Traveller. WTF? OK, I'll overlook it.

As has been said, it is NOT a hagiography... It makes clear the chicanery, bribes, lying, and intimidation, and back room "compromises" that led to the 13th amendment getting passed. Git 'er dun, boys...

I predict that Oscars will be flying in all directions.

I have heard nothing but great comments about this movie. Am looking forward to seeing it soon. I was actually in Richmond during the filming and had stopped at the Capital building. It was pretty cool to see all of the Hollywood trailers...

 

[blwhite]

OK -- who's seen it? I attended a 9:55am showing this morning and came away very impressed. Daniel-Day Lewis was outstanding as Lincoln. Sally Field made a terrific non-caricatured Mary Todd. Tommy Lee Jones was a delight as Thaddeus Stevens and gets some of the film's best lines. Actually everyone in the film was good, from David Straithairn as Seward down to the boy who plays Tad. There were a dozen familiar faces in bit roles; I don't know most of their names but everyone fit their role very well.

The guy who played Grant was just OK, and Lee was basically an extra. The only bad example of casting was that they used a pregnant Arabian mare to play Traveller. WTF? OK, I'll overlook it.

As has been said, it is NOT a hagiography... It makes clear the chicanery, bribes, lying, and intimidation, and back room "compromises" that led to the 13th amendment getting passed. Git 'er dun, boys...

I predict that Oscars will be flying in all directions.

I have heard nothing but great comments about this movie. Am looking forward to seeing it soon. I was actually in Richmond during the filming and had stopped at the Capital building. It was pretty cool to see all of the Hollywood trailers...

 

[lakertaker]

Was with a group of five and they wanted to see a movie. Without my input, they suggested "Lincoln." We all enjoyed it very much. Great acting. Was good insight for a young person to the political process - not always pretty, but sometimes the end justifies the means.

 

[AndyHall]

Expired Image Removed
Lincoln (Daniel Day Lewis) confers with (l.) U.S. Representative James Ashley (David Costabile) and Secretary of State William Seward (David Strathairn) on strategy for passing the 13th Amendment.


I went to see Lincoln again on Thursday afternoon. It's been playing here almost a month, but the matinee showing I attended Thursday was about as full as the first time I went, soon after it opened -- only a few, scattered empty seats. It seems to be doing well, and it deserves to. The first time around I missed the opening scene, with the soldiers reciting the Gettysburg Address, that so many reviewers found clumsy and heavy-handed, and was ready to be turned off by it. In fact, I think it "works," at least from the perspective of the non-history-buff movie-goer, because it captures the moral core of what the Civil War had become for many in the North by the last few months of the war, and effectively frames the main narrative of Spielberg's film.

One reason I wanted to go back was because I wanted to revisit some of the dialogue that seemed particularly sharp. One of these scenes appears relatively early in the movie, when Lincoln explains to his cabinet why he's chosen to fight for the 13th Amendment now, during a lame-duck session of the House of Representatives whose members had previously voted it down, instead of waiting until the fall and beginning of a new Congress, when an expanded Republican majority in the House should be able to pass it easily. The time is now, Lincoln argues, because the war will soon be over, and with it his expanded authority as commander-in-chief. In this discussion, Lincoln acknowledges that Emancipation Proclamation was a wartime measure -- a "military exigent," his Attorney General calls it, while Lincoln's own descriptor is "slippery" -- that would be uncertain to survive review by the civilian courts once the wartime necessity of it had passed. He also acknowledges that as a result of the war -- a far more desperate and prolonged conflict than any previous since the adoption of the U.S. Constitution in 1789 -- no one really knew what the limits of executive power were in wartime, and (as with the legality of secession itself) those things were even then being sorted out. That's why, Lincoln felt, the Thirteenth Amendment had to be passed and sent to the states for ratification immediately, to make permanent the provisions the Emancipation Proclamation had made temporarily, by force of arms.

Tony Kushner's script brings all this out in that scene with Lincoln and his cabinet, where in a bit of expository dialogue, the 16th President lays out political terrain of emancipation. The discussion here is between Lincoln and John Palmer Usher, his Secretary of the Interior, and James Speed, his new Attorney General.

JOHN USHER​

Then why, if I may ask are we not concentrating the nation's attention on Wilmington? Why, instead, are we reading in the Herald that the anti-slavery amendment is being precipitated onto the House floor for debate – because your eagerness, in what seems an unwarranted intrusion of the Executive into Legislative prerogatives, is compelling it to it's... to what's likely to be its premature demise? You signed the Emancipation Proclamation, you've done all that can be expected –​

​

JAMES SPEED​

The Emancipation Proclamation's merely a war measure. After the war the courts'll make a meal of it.​

​

JOHN USHER​

When Edward Bates was Attorney General, he felt confident in it enough to allow you to sign. . .​

​

JAMES SPEED​

Different lawyers, different opinions. It frees slaves as a military exigent, not in any other –​

​

LINCOLN​

I don't recall Bates being any too certain about the legality of my Proclamation, just it wasn't downright criminal. Somewhere's in between.​

​

Back when I rode the legal circuit in Illinois I defended a woman from Metamora named Melissa Goings, 77 years old, they said she murdered her husband; he was 83. He was choking her; and, uh, she grabbed ahold of a stick of fire-wood and fractured his skull, 'n he died. In his will he wrote "I expect she has killed me. If I get over it, I will have revenge."​

​

No one was keen to see her convicted, he was that kind of husband. I asked the prosecuting attorney if I might have a short conference with my client. And she and I went into a room in the courthouse, but I alone emerged. The window in the room was found to be wide open. It was believed the old lady may have climbed out of it. I told the bailiff right before I left her in the room she asked me where she could get a good drink of water, and I told her Tennessee.​

​

Mrs. Goings was seen no more in Metamora. Enough justice had been done; they even forgave the bondsman her bail.​

​

JOHN USHER​

I'm afraid I don't –​

​

LINCOLN​

I decided that the Constitution gives me war powers, but no one knows just exactly what those powers are. Some say they don't exist. I don't know. I decided I needed them to exist to uphold my oath to protect the Constitution, which I decided meant that I could take the rebels' slaves from 'em as property confiscated in war. That might recommend to suspicion that I agree with the rebs that their slaves are property in the first place. Of course I don't, never have, I'm glad to see any man free, and if calling a man property, or war contraband, does the trick... Why I caught at the opportunity.​

​

Now here's where it gets truly slippery. I use the law allowing for the seizure of property in a war knowing it applies only to the property of governments and citizens of belligerent nations. But the South ain't a nation, that's why I can't negotiate with 'em. So if in fact the Negroes are property according to law, have I the right to take the rebels' property from 'em, if I insist they're rebels only, and not citizens of a belligerent country?​

​

And slipperier still: I maintain it ain't our actual Southern states in rebellion, but only the rebels living in those states, the laws of which states remain in force. The laws of which states remain in force. That means, that since it's states' laws that determine whether Negroes can be sold as slaves, as property - the Federal government doesn't have a say in that, least not yet, then Negroes in those states are slaves, hence property, hence my war powers allow me to confiscate 'em as such. So I confiscated 'em.​

​

But if I'm a respecter of states' laws, how then can I legally free 'em with my Proclamation, as I done, unless I'm cancelling states' laws? I felt the war demanded it; my oath demanded it; I felt right with myself; and I hoped it was legal to do it, I'm hoping still.​

​

Two years ago I proclaimed these people emancipated - "then, thenceforward and forever free." But let's say the courts decide I had no authority to do it. They might well decide that. Say there's no amendment abolishing slavery. Say it's after the war, and I can no longer use my war powers to just ignore the courts' decisions, like I sometimes felt I had to do. Might those people I freed be ordered back into slavery? That's why I'd like to get the Thirteenth Amendment through the House, and on its way to ratification by the states, wrap the whole slavery thing up, forever and aye. As soon as I'm able. Now. End of this month. And I'd like you to stand behind me. Like my cabinet's most always done.​

​

As the preacher said, I could write shorter sermons but once I start I get too lazy to stop.​

​

JOHN USHER​

It seems to me, sir, you're describing precisely the sort of dictator the Democrats have been howling about.​

​

JAMES SPEED​

Dictators aren't susceptible to law.​

​

JOHN USHER​

Neither is he! He just said as much! Ignoring the courts? Twisting meanings? What reins him in from, from. . . .​

​

LINCOLN​

Well, the people do that, I suppose. I signed the Emancipation Proclamation a year and half before my second election. I felt I was within my power to do it; however I also felt that I might be wrong about that; I knew the people would tell me. I gave 'em a year and half to think about it. And they reelected me.​

​

And come February the first, I intend to sign the Thirteenth Amendment.​

I wish Tony Kushner would spend some time writing K-12 lesson plans. Not many young people, it seems to me, have any concept of the complexity of this stuff, and it seems like it mostly doesn't get covered very well. That's all our loss.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Masterful. Now I want to go see it again.

I didn't have too much trouble with that opening scene, talking to the troops. It seemed an effective way to "set the stage," as it were. I was still aware I was "seeing a movie" at that point, so to speak... if it had happened somewhere in the middle it might have been more jarring.

 

[matthew mckeon]

I want to see it again. I think I missed a couple of parts that other people described.

 

[Jake Patterson]

Finally saw the movie this evening... The theater was packed and you could hear a pin drop through most of the movie and while people exited. I thought it was well done...

All except the scene that showed a poorly covered electrical conduit.