Lincoln's Bad Habits

Continuing the Lincoln jokes discussion…

It seems there is a controversy being waged over the Interweb about Lincoln’s use of profanity, particularly in the Spielberg movie. Famous Lincoln historian Doris Kearns Goodwin says she saw 40 drafts of the movie script and never had a problem with the language, and on the other side, equally famous historian James McPherson says, “The profanity actually bothered me, especially Lincoln’s use of it. It struck me as completely unlikely -- a modern injection into Lincoln’s rhetoric.”

I wasn’t aware of this controversy until recently, though I have to admit that I was slightly taken aback when in the movie Lincoln told a (funny) joke which of course I can’t remember, but I believe it contained the word “bastard” or some other mild profanity. I was taken aback, not because of the word, but because they had Lincoln utter it. After years of researching Lincoln for both, In Time of War, the fifth book in the Pastmaster series, and Abraham Lincoln: Detective, the first book in the Lincoln detective series, it was clear to me, Lincoln never swore. He made fun of minorities by telling ethnic jokes in broad dialect, and he told slightly “off color” jokes, but he never swore. He also never smoked (more on that later) and he never drank. I believe many people thought that Lincoln swore because of the off color jokes. Here’s an example of a joke I have Lincoln tell in my Lincoln Detective book, and his explanation of why he told it. Lincoln’s jokes were almost always used to make a point:

"One day," Lincoln began, "a little boy ran into the house where his father the farmer was eating his lunch. ‘Dad, dad’ the boy called, all excited. ‘Come quick! The hired man is out in the barn with the maid! They’re up in the hayloft and they’ve both got their pants down around their ankles! You’d better get out there fast, I think they’re fixin’ to pee all over our hay!’"

            After a moment’s silence there was a roar of general laughter.

"My point being," said Lincoln, mildly, after the crowd quieted, "is that there can easily be two separate interpretations of the same set of facts."

No curse words, but slightly off color. Did Lincoln actually ever tell this particular joke? Maybe. One thing I am sure of, he would have thought it was funny.

The picture at the head of this entry, Lincoln smoking a pipe, I cobbled together when I needed something as an illustration for the book when I put it up as a Kindle. I took a standard picture of Lincoln and put a calabash pipe – the sort famously smoked by Sherlock Holmes – in his mouth, attempting to make the visual point that the book was about Lincoln as a detective. It never occurred to me that most of the rest of the world wasn’t aware that Lincoln never smoked, meaning that most of the rest of the world missed my little joke. I even got emails asking the origin of this particular portrait of Lincoln.

So in my books, Lincoln doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t drink and her certainly never curses. Take a lesson, Spielberg. And check out my Lincoln version:

Abraham Lincoln: Detective

and

In Time of War

Lincoln

Thriller Guy is turning the blog over to his alter ego, Allen Appel today.

Because I wrote two books about Abraham Lincoln, a lot of people have been asking me my opinion of the new Spielberg film. I liked it, which sounds like faint praise but considering how badly they could have mangled it I thought they did a good job. I do have to say, though, they screwed up by not ending the movie with the shot of Lincoln leaving the White House to go to the theatre. I would bet a thousand dollars that Tony Kushner ended his screenplay at that point and then a focus group or some dunderhead producer felt they just had to include the assassination and the scene of Lincoln giving his second inaugural speech, which looked like it had been clipped out of an earlier version and tacked on at the end.

Click to order

Click to order

         For my own Lincoln books I spent many months researching before undertaking the actual writing. I read every available biography, spent many days at the Library of Congress and looked into every Lincoln nook and cranny on the Internet. Because Lincoln was an active, speaking character in the two books I knew I had to have him tell some jokes, so I researched that area in depth. The jokes he tells in the movie are mostly ones I have heard many times. In my books I tried to put in only jokes that I hadn’t heard before and which were not recorded over and over in other books. So if you’d like to read some new Lincoln jokes, you can download the Kindle book of In Time of War, the fifth volume in my Pastmaster series, or for even more hilarity read Abraham Lincoln: Detective. This is a mystery with Lincoln taking the Sherlock Holmes role with Watson being played by his law partner, William Herndon. I think it’s a funny, intriguing look at the young Lincoln just at the point of his life shortly before he married Mary Todd.

For Thriller Guy’s next blog I’ll tell some of the Lincoln jokes in these two books. Meanwhile, here are two from my Lincoln joke file.

Number One: He was quite capable, however, of telling the story of the man in the theatre who placed his high hat on the adjoining seat, open side up, and becoming interested in the play, failed to note the approach of a fat dowager until she had plumped down upon it. Then gazing ruefully at the ruin of his top-piece, he reproachfully observed: "Madam, I could have told you the hat wouldn't fit before you tried it on."

Number Two: Trial: A small town prosecuting attorney called his first witness to the stand, an elderly grandmother. He approached her and asked, “Mrs. Jones, do you know me?” She responded, “Why yes, I do know you Mr. Williams. I’ve known you since you were a young boy. And frankly, you’ve been a disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you’re a big shot when you haven’t the brains to realize you will never amount to anything but a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you.”

The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, “Mrs. Jones, do you know the defense attorney?” She again replied, “Why yes, I do. I’ve known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. He’s lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. He can’t build a normal relationship with anyone and his law practice is one of the worst in the entire state. Not mention he cheated on his wife with three different women. Yes, I know him.”

At this point, the judge gaveled the courtroom to silence, called both counselors to the bench, and in a very quiet voice said, “If either of you bastards asks her if she knows me, you’ll be jailed for contempt.”