OK, now that I've gotten all those My American Cousin jokes out of my system, I can properly celebrate the Lincoln Bicentennial.
That is, if the TV news parrots would stop their grating usage of the English language. I heard one of the Today Show squawkers say that Feb. 12 "would have been Lincoln's 200th birthday."
True enough, but I think it could have been better said. When you phrase it that way, it implies he might well have lived to celebrate with us, as his willpower would have ferried him on. It's the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth, or the Lincoln bicentennial, a better representation for the long-dead.
It's not as if we still have a holiday just for Lincoln's birthday - President's Day washed that custom away. Under that anemic banner, we celebrate Lincoln, Franklin Pierce and Warren G. Harding together. President's Day is the national equivalent of that joint birthday party elementary classrooms have for the kids with summer birthdays - it's easier to lump everyone in one party.
The Lincoln Lovefest is a good thing overall, reacquainting the public with the back-country lawyer who president over the four worst years in the country's history.
It's been years since I turned Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals into a column- I couldn't think of a better object lesson for modern think-tank politicos and their rigid ideologies.
His team did not get along - Secretary of War Edwin Stanton would later befriend Lincoln, but considered his a country rube when they first met. Salmon Chase joined despite a longtime lust for the presidency. Lincoln managed all those egos, plus those of his generals, during the Civil War to great effect.
April 15 brings the 144th anniversary of Lincoln's death, when Stanton reportedly marked his moment of death by saying, "Now he belongs to the ages."
As for who belongs to our ages, that would be this crazy woman and her octuplets.
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