Conn. congressman sees factual flaw in 'Lincoln'

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - As Rep. Joe Courtney watched the Oscar-nominated "Lincoln" over the weekend, something didn't seem right to him.

He said Tuesday he was shocked that the film, about President Abraham Lincoln's political struggle to abolish slavery, includes a scene in which two Connecticut congressmen vote against the 13th amendment to the Constitution, outlawing slavery.

"'Wow. Connecticut voted against abolishing slavery?'" Courtney recalled hearing audience members ask. "I obviously had the same reaction. It was really bugging me."

He said a cursory Internet search confirmed his suspicions that the movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, was historically inaccurate. He asked the Congressional Research Service to investigate, and it reported that all four Connecticut congressmen backed the amendment in a January 1865 vote.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20130206/DA48RLF00.html

[loudsue]

1. WTG Connecticut

[bluestateguy]

2. The movie also depicted Fernando Wood as much younger than he really was in 1865

The actor who played him was too boyish looking.

Wood was actually 53 at the time.

[yardwork]

3. I read that many of the congressmen's votes are inaccurate in the movie. Very disappointing.

People who see the movie will assume that it is historically accurate, and it could have been, but for some reason the filmmakers changed some of the facts, moving around the votes and characters of the congressmen. The voting on the 13th amendment is central to the film, and its very disappointing that facts were meddled with in the name of drama, or entertainment, or whatever.

I find this really unforgivable of Spielberg.

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. The movie was based on Doris Kearn's Pulitzer book.

Wonder if she got it wrong too.

[mucifer]

5. It was actually based on a lot of books

Kushner, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his play Angels in America, read more than 20 books about Lincoln as he prepared to write the screenplay.

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/15/165146361/kushners-lincoln-is-strange-but-also-savvy

[Tom Ripley]

10. That may mean that someone else got it wrong first and she just ran with it

Plagiarism controversy

In 2002, The Weekly Standard determined that her book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys used without attribution numerous phrases and sentences from three other books: Time to Remember, by Rose Kennedy; The Lost Prince, by Hank Searl; and Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times, by Lynne McTaggart.[18]

McTaggart weighed in, "If somebody takes a third of somebody's book, which is what happened to me, they are lifting out the heart and guts of somebody else's individual expression."[19] Goodwin admitted that she had previously reached a large "private settlement" with McTaggart over the issue. She wrote in Time:

Fourteen years ago, not long after the publication of my book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, I received a communication from author Lynne McTaggart pointing out that material from her book on Kathleen Kennedy had not been properly attributed. I realized that she was right. Though my footnotes repeatedly cited Ms. McTaggart's work, I failed to provide quotation marks for phrases that I had taken verbatim, having assumed that these phrases, drawn from my notes, were my words, not hers. I made the corrections she requested, and the matter was completely laid to rest—until last week, when the Weekly Standard published an article reviving the issue. The larger question for those of us who write history is to understand how citation mistakes can happen.[20]

Slate magazine also reported that there were multiple passages in Goodwin’s book on the Roosevelts (No Ordinary Time) that were apparently taken from Joseph Lash’s Eleanor and Franklin, Hugh Gregory Gallagher’s FDR’s Splendid Deception, and other books, although she "scrupulously" footnoted the material. Furthermore, The Los Angeles Times reported similar circumstances concerning her book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys.[21][22] The allegations of plagiarism caused her to leave her position as a guest pundit on the PBS NewsHour program.[23]

[Midwestern Democrat]

30. I had no idea that Spielberg played around with the facts to this degree. I had read that Spielberg

changed the names of the congressmen who voted no so as not to embarass their ancestors - a decision which is appalling from the perspective of historical accuracy and is beyond ridiculous in any event - who the hell is going to be mortally embarassed by the vote of an ancestor who died long before they were born?!?

[NinetySix]

6. Spielberg makes a historically inaccurate film?

Tell it to the Nazis who occupied Cairo!

[dlwickham]

8. you mean the Nazis didn't get the Ark of the Covenant?

my mind is officially blown

[rhett o rick]

9. You forgot to give the "spoiler" alert. nm

[dlwickham]

20. oh noes

ban me now

[rhett o rick]

23. It's cool.

You are allowed one screw up for every 500 posts.

[dlwickham]

24. thank goodness

but who keeps track of the screw-ups

[rhett o rick]

31. I am telling you this in strict confidence. New members, like yourself, are assigned to older

members to be monitored. So mind your p's and q's.

[Ken Burch]

25. And none of them got their faces melted, either...dammit!

(in a decent world, we'd have HAD the face-melting).

[onehandle]

21. I don't think they actually portrayed Cairo as 'occupied.'

The dig site, somewhere outside of Cairo, seemed to be self contained and the diggers were hired, not captured.

The actual ground war didn't come to Cairo, true.

[Great Cthulhu]

7. "History-wood"

Sickens me, it truly does.

Movie-makers seem to think that their "vision" is always better than reality.

[UpInArms]

11. the opening credits said Fox 20th Century film

And in the movie, there were continual references that the good guys were Republicans and the bad guys were Democrats, it certainly felt as though I was sitting through a propaganda film.

[Selatius]

12. In those decades, the Republican Party was the more progressive of the two.

The whole reason the Democratic Party reigned supreme in the South until the 1970s was because it was the Democratic Party that was opposed to the abolition of slavery or any attempt to curtail the political and economic power of the South in the years prior to the American Civil War.

Republicans were typically on the fence about slavery or were leaning against it, and many other Republicans outright favored abolition. The fact that the South rebelled and fired the first shot essentially forced the hand of the Republicans into opposing slavery, and the war itself settled the issue of secession.

It wouldn't be until after Teddy Roosevelt ran on the Bull Moose Party ticket in 1912 that the Democratic Party fell into the hands of the more progressive elements of politics. His run for office pulled so many progressives out of the Republican Party that it fell into the hands of bankers and big business interests. From that point on, the Republican Party became the party of big business, while the Democratic Party became the party for the working man.

[xoom]

13. +1

[apnu]

14. Another +1. Awesome breakdown of the facts. (nt)

[Myrina]

16. + some more

Thank you.

[UpInArms]

17. thanks for that information

It still felt like a hit piece, but maybe I'm just overly sensitive these days.

[Pab Sungenis]

18. To a degree.

The Republican Party's transformation into the current bigoted version started with the break-off from the Democrats of the Dixiecrats in 1948. That started the seeds of discord within the Democrats.

The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 were the nail in the coffin. South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana were the only states (other than Goldwater's home state of Arizona) to vote Republican in the 1964 Presidential election, and except for 1976 and 1992 they haven't looked back since.

Nixon's Southern Strategy sealed the deal in 1968, committing the Republicans to racist policies.

[CreekDog]

33. good summation

[roxy1234]

15. Another reason why it is always good

to read the story before watching the movie.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

19. Hmmmmmmmmm

It's a movie. If it was supposed to be factually correct it would be called a 'documentary' wouldn't it?

[Ken Burch]

26. Uh, no. A documentary is where you use real footage of the events you're depicting.

It would have been sort of hard to do that with LINCOLN.

(just like Ken Burns had trouble with that with his "LEWIS & CLARK" series on PBS...for some reason, none of Meriwether Lewis' home movies came back from the developers-rumor has it that that's the real reason he killed himself).

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

27. Not sure footage is required for a documentary

only that you can 'document' your facts.
I heard it was the winter spent in what is now Astoria Oregon that pushed Lewis over the edge.......

[Ken Burch]

29. At the very least, it stops being a true documentary if you do re-enactments

(as you would in a feature film such as this).

As to Lewis, winter in Astoria probably didn't help...I've BEEN there in the winter and it's STILL bloody depressing(it's nice from May to August, though, if you're there on a good day).

(note to the Astoria Convention and Visitors Bureau: that was a joke-please don't take a contract out on me).

[RobinA]

22. Weird

I wondered about this, too. I'm not from Conn. and I'm not a Civil War buff, but it got my attention in the movie. Not that I suspected it was wrong, I just found it curious.

[graham4anything]

28. Argo was rightwing movie with a totally phony ending.

Why do you think repubs wanted Argo to open before election, but the Dark Zero Thirty to be delayed til after the election

Because ARgo remnded people of the Iran hostage situation and hoped it would cause votes lost.

btw, Lincoln is a movie.

And Lincoln is our best president ever, though like President Obama, Lincoln had many haters.

btw, Teddy Roosevelt would have loved drones. They are today's big stick he refered to.

[Nihil]

32. Shock horror! Hollywood get history wrong again

"The Patriot" ... "Braveheart" ... "Battle of the Bulge" ... "Pearl Harbour" ...
the list is ridiculously long and as for shit like "The Tudors" ...