Ajax (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ajax) wrote,@ 2008-05-02 14:29:00 |
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| Current mood: |  amused |
| Current music: | Unida -- Slaylina |
| Entry tags: | history, humor, tnr talkback, tnr.com |
The Great Debates
I knew I was forgetting something! But this is actually better kept to a separate post anyway.
This morning I read at The Plank (one of The New Republic's blogs) that somebody (and perhaps several somebodies) at Fox News Channel is badly in need of a history lesson:
Fox News did a joking mockup of what the Lincoln-Douglas debates might look like today that evidently was more of a joke than intended. Evidently the folks at Fox imagine that Lincoln's opponent in the 1858 race for U.S. Senate was not Stephen A. Douglas, but rather abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass.The comments on the post are quite amusing, as people reminisce fondly about "the classic debate between beloved character actor George Kennedy and long-time Red Sox outfielder Trot Nixon," or the one featuring "Shawn Corey Carter (i.e., Jay-Z) vs. John Henninger Reagan (postmaster general of the Confederate States of America)."
On the plus side, at least the folks at Fox realized that Lincoln wasn't running against Kirk Douglas.
Perhaps my favorite was "the contentious election of 1824, pitting future 1960s/70s icons Cassius Clay, Reggie Jackson, and Don Adams."
I'm willing to bet my readers can do better, though. Have at it!
--- Ajax.
