exchange | Posted January 21, 2005 'Babe Lincoln' Stirs Things Up
We received many letters from readers offended by Robert Grossman's "Babe Lincoln" (Jan. 24). His cartoon was intended as a comment on the controversy stirred by C.A. Tripp's new book, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, in which Tripp argues that Lincoln was homosexual. We leave historians to debate Tripp's thesis, as we leave readers and Grossman to discuss the cartoon's significance below. We regret if the cartoon unintentionally offended anyone. --The Editors
Katonah, NY
Karl Rove himself couldn't have done a better job of conflating liberalism and adolescent vulgarity. Anyone trying The Nation as a result of having seen Katrina vanden Heuvel on mainstream TV might regret having done so when they see Robert Grossman's cartoon "Babe Lincoln."
THEODORE G. GOETZ
New York City
I was surprised to discover that the Nation editors don't seem to understand the difference between gender and sexuality. Robert Grossman's "Babe Lincoln" depicts the President decked out in nineteenth-century women's lingerie. The caption jokes that a "newly discovered daguerreotype lends support to theory in a recent book that the sixteenth president was gay." Kind of funny, maybe, but such a daguerreotype would in fact suggest that "Babe Lincoln" (pretty old hat, that) was a cross-dresser rather than a gay man.
IRA ELLIOTT
Bethesda, Md.
I'm having a problem understanding the "Babe Lincoln" cartoon. The drawing shows a recognizable Lincoln head atop a voluptuous Victorian postcard-porn female body. The text states that the "newly discovered" image lends credence to the suggestion that Lincoln was gay.
Was Lincoln transgendered--a male "trapped" in a female body? Or was he a transvestite, a man who likes to dress up in female clothing (but those cartoon breasts look pretty real, no padding there)? Could he actually have been a hermaphrodite with characteristics of both sexes (although I can't be sure what those pantaloons are really hiding)? Of course, none of these things necessarily equates with homosexuality.
I've been racking my brain trying to figure out how the cartoonist could have visually indicated "gayness" in some other less confusing way. Undoubtedly, however, it too would have been inaccurate and stereotypical. So, can you help me figure this out? Who's confused here--me, Lincoln or the cartoonist?
L.E. MARTINEZ
Dublin, Penn.
There may be risible aspects to the recent theory that Abe Lincoln had a homosexual past, but your cartoon is not funny. It's disturbing to find The Nation happily perpetuating the old stereotype of male homosexuality as being all about drag. None of that was in Tripp's book, so far as I know. What exactly is your point? Do cigar-chomping Nation editors really get a kick out of jokes about faggots who act like women? The cartoon isn't just stupid, it's insulting.
STEPHEN C. BANDY
New York City
As someone who's written dozens of articles for The Nation, including a number on gay issues, I must ask: Didn't you consider that running Robert Grossman's offensive cartoon-bad enough in itself-was made worse by the political context in which we live? We've just come through an election the Republicans won, in part, by bashing gay people over the head with odious stereotypes and discriminatory referendums. That makes running this cartoon, which pretends that a man who loves a man really wants to be a woman-the oldest canard in the world-even more insulting.
DOUG IRELAND
New York City
I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds your Abe Lincoln cartoon deeply and painfully insulting. What you mistake for humor is nothing more than virulent and blatant homophobic garbage, utterly unworthy of the 140-year-old magazine entrusted to your care. It's this kind of ignorant stereotyping that fuels and perpetuates hatred, disgust and violence against homosexuals. I'm embarrassed for you.
JOHN BERENDT
Los Angeles
Besides not being funny--a serious sin, as Oscar Wilde might have pointed out--the "Babe Lincoln" cartoon is fairly offensive in its knee-jerk association between "gay" and "woman in man's body" or whatever yuck-yuck image Robert Grossman intends. While I have no desire to defend Tripp's apparently fairly careless and tendentious "historical" argument, this sort of joke adds nothing of import to the issue raised by those claims. And the "Log Cabin Republicans take note" makes no sense at all, beyond the obvious fact that they (poor deluded souls) are gay Republicans.
This is, unfortunately, not an atypical lapse in taste.
LARRY GROSS, director Annenberg School of Communication
GROSSMAN REPLIES
New York City
When I read a review in the New York Times of C.A. Tripp's The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, the words "Babe Lincoln" suddenly ran through my mind, rendering me helpless. In the impoverished mental landscape of a cartoonist this is what passes for true inspiration. I knew that gay men were not necessarily effeminate, cross-dressers or bearded ladies but I couldn't let that prevent me from having my laugh. Better a cheap and infantile joke than no joke at all, or so I thought. Now I hereby apologize to anyone I have offended. I also want to thank the editors of The Nation for their playfulness and/or insensitivity in allowing my perky pin-up to get into print.
Somebody asked me about the ax in the picture. It was a contemporary symbol of Lincoln. Although now I've read that he may not ever have split any rails. Somehow I thought it would make my picture a little more edgy.
ROBERT GROSSMAN