{"id":92668,"date":"2024-05-26T23:21:40","date_gmt":"2024-05-27T06:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=92668"},"modified":"2024-05-26T23:21:40","modified_gmt":"2024-05-27T06:21:40","slug":"young-mr-lincoln","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2024\/05\/26\/young-mr-lincoln\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Mr. Lincoln"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A statue called <strong><em>The Young Lincoln<\/em><\/strong> can be seen in the rotunda of the <em>Los Angeles Spring Street Courthouse<\/em>, and it\u2019s getting quite a bit of renewed attention.&nbsp; It\u2019s an odd resurgence for a statue unveiled in 1941 and paid for by the <em>Federal Works Agency<\/em>.&nbsp; It is eight feet tall and made of Indiana limestone.&nbsp; The sculptor, <strong>James Lee Hansen<\/strong>, won the commission and was paid about $7K (roughly $125K by today\u2019s standards).&nbsp; It depicts a young Lincoln barefoot and shirtless with a well-defined physique, wearing jeans and with a thumb in one of the belt loops.&nbsp; I\u2019ve always thought this was the strapping young lawyer during those four years he lived with <strong>Joshua Speed<\/strong>, with whom he also shared a double bed.&nbsp; While I cannot confirm that as the inspiration, the artist has left us some insight.&nbsp; When asked why he had Lincoln half-naked, he said, \u201cFrom a sculpturing standpoint, it\u2019s better to show the body without any clothes.&nbsp; That\u2019s why I left \u2018em off.\u201d&nbsp; At the time of the unveiling, some claimed the torso bore a striking resemblance to Hansen himself.&nbsp; Modern critics have called it everything from pornographic to the embodiment of <strong>Gavin Newsom<\/strong>.&nbsp; But only <strong>Kimberly Guilfoyle <\/strong>knows for sure.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/colorbar1.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-568\" src=\"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/colorbar1.gif\" alt=\"colorbar1\" width=\"500\" height=\"1\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Speaking of politicians (and this is an awkward transition, no matter how you slice it), I\u2019ve successfully avoided writing about disgraced former representative <strong>George Santos<\/strong>.&nbsp; I didn\u2019t even tell you when he started doing <em>Cameo <\/em>videos as his drag persona <strong>Kitara<\/strong>.&nbsp; But I can now reveal that he\u2019s married to <strong>Matheus <\/strong>\u201cMatt\u201d <strong>Gerard<\/strong>.&nbsp; The most surprising part of this story is not that they met on <em>Grindr <\/em>(which he admits is \u201cpretty sad\u201d) \u2013 it\u2019s that they got married way back in 2021!&nbsp; Funny how nobody unearthed that piece of dish when they were investigating him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A statue called The Young Lincoln can be seen in the rotunda of the Los Angeles Spring Street Courthouse, and it\u2019s getting quite a bit of renewed attention.&nbsp; It\u2019s an odd resurgence for a statue unveiled in 1941 and paid for by the Federal Works Agency.&nbsp; It is eight feet tall and made of Indiana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92669,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92668\/revisions\/92669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}