Comic Books and Forward Motion
OK, so I’ve been doing a little research in honor of the last full day of our inaugural Film Fight, and I just stumbled upon an interesting bit of trivia. We all know about the Lincoln-Douglas debates that took place all over Illinois in 1858. They’re famous for the eloquence and logical elegance displayed by both Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, and for the fact that they helped raise Lincoln’s national profile, thereby granting him the prominence he needed to run for president two years later. That we all knew. But I bet you didn’t know this:
Stephen Douglas won the Senate race that year by forcing Lincoln – future defender of liberty, crusader against tyranny, genius of democracy, savior of the union – at their fifth and final debate in Quincy, Ill., to watch … in its entirety … Limahl’s video for his song “Never Ending Story.” Shocking, right? And cruel. One of the ablest minds of his generation, Lincoln was reduced to a quaking bowl of intellectual jelly on that ramshackle stage in Quincy. And as a consequence, he didn’t go the Senate that year, returning instead to his home in Springfield to convalesce for two years, during which time the union began to splinter, animosities grew, opinions hardened, and the seeds of rebellion and civil war were sown. If it weren’t for Lincoln’s brilliant use of A-Ha’s “Take On Me” during the presidential campaign of 1860, surely the United States would have collapsed and liberty as we know it would have been lost … meaning I wouldn’t enjoy the rights I do now to illegally download Russ Meyer movies and indulge my habit for prescription pain-killers.
That’s how close, Kim, Limahl and his teased mullet came to destroying everything you and I hold dear. And yet you insisted on embedding that video.
I’m disappointed.