Rex’s review of Lincoln is rather an interesting read. For one thing, it’s full of politics and it’s laughably ignorant. To start, Rex tries to basically claim Lincoln for liberals and accuse the Republicans of being pro-slavery by claiming that the Democrats of the era were “rabid right wing conservatives in those days” and he calls the Republicans “liberal, left-wing.” This is untrue, but typical of Democrats. Somehow, in their world, all good deed were done by leftists and evil regimes like the Nazis and the Soviets somehow were conservative/libertarians.
He then refers to the screen play negatively as “a whopping drag” whose “verbosity does to movies what a House filibuster does to action on a health-reform bill.” Well Rex, filibusters occur in the Senate, not the House, which is really basic civics. . . even for liberals. And the House didn’t stop the health-reform bill, that’s only in your twisted liberal imagination. Indeed, when it was passed, the Democrats controlled the House. . . and a supermajority in the Senate. That means it couldn’t be filibustered, Rex. I guess liberals don’t know that though as they keep blamed Republicans for somehow interfering with Obama passing Obamacare. . . which never happened.
He also points out that the film is based on a book by “historian Doris Kearns Goodwin,” and he describes it as “noble, civic-minded, [and] exhaustingly researched.” He does not mention that Goodwin is a liberal sycophant with a real love for the Kennedys and a close relationship with the Democratic Party. Indeed, her husband was a speechwriter and advisor to Kennedy and Johnson, both of whom she’s also written biographies for. Nor does he point out that she’s been accused of significant plagiarism. Nope, she’s just identified as an “historian.” Do you think he would be as neutral about a conservative? Doubtful.
Finally, we get this ironic ending: “In a divisive election year when the Sunday morning pundits knock themselves out debating whether the political system still works, it’s a good time to revisit a year when it did.” Yes, the Civil War was indeed a time when the nation’s political system worked. Idiot. Even if he’s just talking about Lincoln affording blacks legal protection, it would take another 100 years before that actually happened. What did you think those Civil Rights marches were about in the 1960s Rex?
Anyway, let’s get to this idea of the film being “sanitized and sentimental.” Rex points out that the following bad things are in the film. Thaddeus Stevens, the passionate abolitionist, is presented as having a secret black mistress, and his “personal motives don’t always extend to the country’s best interests.” And Lincoln “threatens his wife with the madhouse” over her grief over the death of their son. But then our political and historical genius Rex mentions some things that don’t get included:
(1) “In reality, Lincoln believed in equality under the law, but not racial equality; he had no use for blacks and maintained a strong personal belief that whites were a superior race.”There you have it. This film was evil because it didn’t show Lincoln as a deeply corrupt white supremacist. Because of this, Rex calls the film “Spielberg’s bloated $50-million history lesson” and “a colossal bore” and “so pedantic, slow-moving, sanitized and sentimental that I kept pinching myself to stay awake—which, like the film itself, didn’t always work.”
(2) “Honest Abe was not so honest either. He and his cabinet of rivals were not above bribery, lies, suspending habeas corpus or bending the Constitution to break the South’s economic infrastructure. These are facts Spielberg conveniently overlooks.”
This really highlights the problems with liberals. For one thing, Rex doesn’t know jack, yet he’s smug enough to try to give a history/civics lesson. Consequently, anyone who reads Rex’s review and believes any portion of it, will basically be a dumber American than when they started. Nice work, Rex.
Secondly, he’s so blinded by his need to see the past as full of evil people that he's incapable of enjoying a film about someone unless it shows their dark side. Talk about cynical! Not to mention, consider his inability to separate out his political views from the review. He can’t enjoy the film for what it is, he attacks it for what it is not, and what it is not is cynical enough to suit his view of history. This is why you can’t trust liberals, because they are incapable of separating their beliefs (unfounded or otherwise) from everything else they do.
