letter to New Yorker

Anthony Lane's review of "Lincoln" misses the powerful social import of the film. The film is, as David Denby points out in his much better review of the film on your blog, momentous. Tony Kushner has beautifully framed one of the great moments of U.S. history within our own. Seeing this film released simultaneously with Obama's second term feels like kismet. The fact that this movie was written by a gay playwright underscores the parallels between what is happening with gay rights now and what happening with racial equality then. The fact that Obama stood up in support of gay marriage has a potency similar to Lincoln's anti-slavery support. As 50 Cent, perhaps the biggest and baddest of the largely anti-gay hip hop world, said, "If the President is endorsing that, then who am I to go the other way?"