For their feature on Lincoln, a Time reporter interviewed Lincoln skeptics including Clyde Wilson, Don Livingston, Tom DiLorenzo, and me. All of us were photographed, the whole bit. And then? The piece is cut. No skepticism, no matter how founded in fact, can be permitted to challenge the president-as-demigod routine.
Inspired by Tom’s comments, I wrote to the reporter in question, a young guy named Jeff Chu, to say: “After all that, they cut your piece? Is that not all the evidence you need of what we were saying? In place of a rational and sober assessment of a mortal man, we get hero worship worthy of the old Soviet Union. To add insult to injury, we have to get it from admitted plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin. Some world we live in.”
Chu says the piece ran online, though I don’t see it. And considering the effort he put into this — and I know it was a lot; he called twice to interview me, and then again for fact-checking, etc. — I believe him when he tells me he’s rather disillusioned.
11:14 am on June 28, 2005
