Birthday of a Saviour

Excerpt from The Partly Cloudy Patriot

The page above contains the full text of the first essay in Sarah Vowell's excellent book of essays, The Partly Cloudy Patriot. The essay is about her visit to Gettysburg, and it meditates on the meaning and importance of the Gettysburg Address. Since the man who delivered that address turns 195 today, I thought it appropriate that we consider a bit of his finest work. My favorite sentence in Vowell's essay, by the way, is the last one. It's a great payoff.

Unfortunately, I must mingle my respects for Lincoln with a pronouncement that has been developing for weeks now: The West Wing is no longer a great show. The clunky dialogue, ridiculous plots, and preaching have become intolerable. Josh doesn't sound like Josh anymore. Leo sounds like a moron: "There's a new member of the club." Jed delivers lectures in the Oval Office on how important his decisions are, and even the great Dule Hill is reduced to sounding like he'd rather be reading a menu than the lines he's been given. Toby saves social security one week and the next he's got to freak out about a nuclear explosion and toss a softball about the U.N. to Leo so Leo can explain, for John Wells, why the U.S. was justified in going to Iraq--the U.N. just wants to whine and moan but they really expect us to act unilaterally. The commentary on actual political events used to be sly and clever. Now it's obvious and sounds silly.

Feel free to prove me wrong. The show hasn't been giving you much to work with, though...