And we thought Obama as Denzel Washington was bad. At right is how the president-elect was depicted in a truly pointless – TRULY! – post on the increasingly inconsistent Daily Beast. Writing in a piece titled "Why Barack Should Get a Beard," the usually great Jamie Malanowski decides it's because Lincoln, Obama's idol, had one, and because it would be easier to level with all the dictators and terrorists abroad who sport facial hair. Imagine, Malanowski says, how much better Obama might have gotten along with Hitler if he too had facial hair. Ha ha…ha?

Jesus, political humor really is dead, huh?

On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, his most famous piece of oration and surely one of the most famous speeches in American history.

Here in 2008, many have high hopes that President-elect Barack Obama will be able to walk into a country divided in much the same way as Lincoln's and mend our tears the way he did more than a century ago.

Today, let's remember both men as we hope for the future.

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Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, a document that supposedly gave slaves their freedom, on January 1, 1863. Since these were pre-Internet, pre-television, pre-black-people-being-allowed-to-read times, interested parties (read: slaves) in Texas didn't hear about this until Union soldiers strolled into Galveston on June 19, 1865, bearing really good news.

June 19, eventually shortened to Juneteenth, became an annual emancipation celebration in Texas, and slowly trickled into other states until it became a national (although unofficial, in most places) holiday. Today, it's celebrated across the country with marches, festivals, and barbecues. Happy Juneteenth!