So the confessed plagiarist Doris Kearns-Goodwin has written a book on Lincoln in an attempt to resurrect her reputation, as Stephen Carson blogs below. And she says all those Lincoln books on her shelves are absolutely titilating, causing her to think of The Great Obfuscator as “sexy.” Since the topic of her book is Father Abraham, there will be no criticism of her, and hardly anyone in the “mainstream media” will even bring up the fact that Goodwin stole hundreds of pages of text from another author in her book on the Roosevelts, and paid a six-figure settlement to the victim of the word-theft.
Her “sexy” comment reminded me of this passage from one of the more famous biographies of Lincoln by his law partner William Herndon. Quoting a letter Lincoln wrote to a friend(J.T. Stuart) about his feelings on his wedding day: “I am the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be a cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forbode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better.”
Very sexy indeed.
12:39 pm on October 20, 2005