200 years ago today – February 12, 1809 – Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born. It’s a pretty auspicious day when the two most influential personalities of the nineteenth century are born nigh-simultaneously.
This exalted anniversary offers an instructive object lesson on “what’s wrong with our society?” Or at least “what’s wrong with our modern media?” The front page of the Washington Post has a short article about Darwin’s birth and influence. No mention of Lincoln. I could make an argument that Lincoln’s ideas were more internationally and historically influential than Darwin’s but I’ll give the poor, ignorant press a pass on that one.
I turn to the inside sections looking for mention of Lincoln’s birthday. On the front page of the Style section is a HUGE article on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the NAACP. There’s a small lede mentioning two Lincoln exhibits coinciding with the Bicentennial celebration but that’s it.
We’re all in agreement, then? Darwin’s theories are indisputable law and he makes the front page because after all this time in the Dark Ages we need to “restore science to its rightful place.” The founding anniversary of an increasingly dodgy front organization for race hucksters gets billed bigger than Lincoln. And Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of these United States, then man who saved the Union, freed the slaves, and gave the whole world a “new birth of freedom” merits only a passing comment on how pitiful the National Gallery’s exhibit is.
Buy more bullets.