Is anybody at CNN even a bit familiar with American history? I have to ask that because right at the start of episode 2 last night of their Race for the White House series, they made a glaring error in a map they presented. As the map was rolled out, narrator Kevin Spacey made clear it reflected the situation of the United States in the year 1858. One huge problem. The country was divided into free states of the north and slave states of the south as well as the new territories to the west. One very prominent state was incorrectly placed in the free states of the north...Missouri. Most definitely a slave state as anybody familiar with the Missouri Compromise of 1820 knows which allowed that state to enter the union as a slave state with its southern boundary of 36°30′ to mark the dividing line between free and slave in the western territories.
The narrator in the video below makes clear that the map is concurrent with the year 1858 at the time of the senate race in Illinois between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. And if you still can't figure it out, the video is dated with the year of that election...1858.
NARRATOR: The United States is on the brink of civil war. The dispute is about whether the new territory should become free states like the north or slave states like the south. Nowhere is the debate fiercer than in Ottawa, Illinois.
Despite this embarrassing error, your humble correspondent still has to give an overall thumbs up to this CNN series which analyzes critical presidential races. Last week it was Kennedy vs Nixon and yesterday was Lincoln vs Douglas. One amusing highlight revealed in the latest episode is despite claims by Democrats that vote fraud is incredibly rare, the campaign of Democrat Stephen Douglas had Irish workers enter Illinois on election day in 1858 to vote, grab a few free drinks in exchange, and leave the state right away. Oh, and the first episode on the previous Sunday revealed dirty tricks by the Kennedy campaign to help defeat Hubert Humphrey in the Wisconsin primary.
One jarring note from last night's show, in addition to its major map error, was the inclusion of Sidney Blumenthal as a Lincoln scholar for commentary. Yes, he has a Lincoln book due out soon but aren't there plenty of other less antagonizing Lincoln scholars out there?
Exit question: Did Sidney Blumenthal send the erroneous map to the CNN producers as an email attachment via a certain secret server stored in a bathroom and was it hacked by Guccifer?
