The Devil Wears Nankeen Breeches
Pity the once buttoned-up historian who, fresh from a harrowing plagiarism scandal, returns to the shelf with a little cleavage and some saucy shoptalk. This is Doris Kearns Goodwin on her latest biography:
"[Lincoln] looks vital, alive, evensexy. I dont want to sound embarassing, but he lookssensual. It's more the Lincoln I came to know and love.
Those are Doris's italics, and that's her hand on your knee. She's describing a photograph taken of the 16th president in 1857, wherein he appears beardless (in more ways than one, as Gore Vidal might say) and with rugged-gangly good looks.
In case you were wondering,Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincolnhas already been optioned for film. The director is Spielberg and the star is that " towering sequoia of sex " Liam Neeson, playing the original lob cabin Republican. We kid. This Lincoln is an Absolute 0 on the Kinsey scale.
(Goodwin finds no evidence he was gay, unlike C.A. Tripp, author of The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, published earlier this year.)
Uh oh. You know what that means: Four more years of George Bush.--MICHAEL WEISS
Getting Intimate with Lincoln [USA Today]
Was Lincoln Bisexual? [Vanity Fair]