"De-mythologizing History!
Why We'll Boycott Spielberg's "Lincoln'"
By Gary Corseri and Janis
Schmidt
Those who"challenge the orthodoxy of belief, who question the
reigning political passions, who refuse to sacrifice their integrity to serve
the cult of power, are pushed to the margins. They are denounced by the very
people who, years later, will often claim these moral battles as their own. It
is only the outcasts and the rebels who keep truth and intellectual inquiry
alive. They alone name the crimes of the state"give a voice to the victims of
oppression" ask the difficult questions. " They expose the powerful, along with
their liberal apologists, for what they are .
--Chris Hedges ( -
2013 TruthDig.com )
( Note :
A few days after I posted an article called "Six Ways Our Supreme Court Has
Defiled Our Constitution ( http://www.alternet.org/authors/gary-corseri )
among the mostly favorable e-responses, I was pleased to find one from a
writer/painter whom I didn't know, from one of our Western states. Janis Schmidt and I exchanged a few e-mails,
discovered that we had similar views on politics and the arts.
(If the reader will imagine the space between e-mails--hours
or days--as a kind of time-lapse photography, the spontaneity of our ensuing
"conversation" will emerge--)
GC: Before I made contact with you, I was thinking about writing an
article about why I will boycott Spielberg's BS extravaganza on Lincoln. (A little like my "Argo Apostasy"
piece-- http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/28/argo-apostasy/
--condemning Ben Afleck's "Argo" BS. ")
JS: Just read it! I love your idea to occupy the media! Time for writers to stop being slugs and
wimps, and step up to the plate like Masters and Mencken! Pulling the mask
off Lincoln is definitely going to be worked into my novel. My god! I just
discovered Edgar Lee Masters' exposure of Lincoln, 1931, Lincoln: The Man,
for which he was almost crucified!
GC: I like Masters very much! Spoon River Anthology is one of my
favorite books of poetry. I didn't know he had written a book about Lincoln. "
JS: I just read thru a
list of some of the things done to Southerners by Union soldiers: Sherman's
march to Atlanta and burning the city!
Butler in New Orleans, giving his men PERMISSION to RAPE the women! All of this Lincoln must have known about. My
god! How could the American public be so ignorant of this?
GC: The American public was, is, and will continue to be ignorant
about most things! Someone said people
get the government they deserve! As long
as people prefer their myths to reality, we'll have repressive governments!
JS: H.L. Mencken wrote:
"The American people, North and South, went into the war as citizens of their
respective states, they came out as subjects. ... And what they thus lost they
have never got back."
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