The author of the email, Lewis Lehrman (second from left), receiving the 2005 National Humanities Medal

To my eight readers: I have some strange news. This afternoon I received an email from one Lewis Lehrman. Lehrman is the president founder of the Lincoln Institute, a non-profit dedicated to studying the 16th president. He has a degree from Yale and once ran for governor of New York state, losing by only 2 percent to Mario Cuomo. He has a website (notice the pop-up of Lehrman with Bush. Dude is proud). The email stems from a less-than-savory mention of Lincoln made in my last post. I’m assuming a Google News Alert or something similar led him to the post. Anyway, I’ll let the email do the talking:

Dear Mr. Chen:

I am writing on behalf of the Lincoln Institute. We are a non-profit organization dedicated to the study of President Abraham Lincoln’s impact on our country, as well as the preservation of his legacy.

It has come to our attention that your website (www.worldoftoday.wordpress.com) recently mentioned Abraham Lincoln in a disparaging manner. On March 27th, 2007 you wrote:

“Once, I had to leave a tour of the Whitehouse early because I was so disturbed by the image of Lincoln jacking off into a chamberpot while whistling “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, a polished mahogany crutch supporting his massive log.”

We realize your reference may be an attempt at humor, but it is also wrong. Abraham Lincoln’s political and wartime legacy transformed history. Without the leadership and resolve of our 16th president, separate slave and free states might today compete on the same continent; and the emergence of American liberal democracy, as we know it, would have been stillborn. To refer to Lincoln in such a denigrating manner as mentioned is not only belittling a great man responsible for the emancipation of millions of slaves and the economic prosperity of our nation; it is also belittling America.

In closing, I urge you to remove the offensive reference as soon as is convenient. Please feel free to visit the Institutes’s website (www.abrahamlincoln.org); there is much useful information there, should you ever decide to publish a helpful article on Abraham Lincoln.

Sincerely,

Lewis E. Lehrman

Founder, The Lincoln Institute

OK, what the hell? You would think a man like Lewis E. Lehrman would have something better to do than troll the Internet looking for people trash-talking his favorite Commander in Chief. I would count Lewis as my ninth blog reader, but I have a strange feeling that he won’t be subscribing to my feed anytime soon. Obviously, I will be working on a response. But for now: FUCK ABE LINCOLN.