Ironic Deception

In an interesting article on the history of "photoshopping," the New York Times says that one of the classic photos of Abraham Lincoln is actually the great emancipator's head grafted onto the body of John C. Calhoun!  Calhoun, of course, was the great proponent of slavery calling it not a necessary evil but a "positive good."

The article doesn't say, but surely the compositor was sending a message with his ironic deception.

LincolnCalhoun

FYI, this caught my eye because the first article that Tyler and I ever co-authored was on Calhoun's constitutional theory.  No link, but here's the reference: Tabarrok, A., and T. Cowen. 1992. The Public Choice Theory of John C. Calhoun. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 148 (4):655-74.

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