Gaspari criticizes comparison between Lula and Lincoln and pushes Barbosa towards the Planalto Palace.
In his column this Sunday, the journalist points out inaccuracies in the references that the former Brazilian president made to Abraham Lincoln; in another part of the column he talks about the five-minute standing ovation that Joaquim Barbosa received in Trancoso.
247 - For several years, attacking former president Lula has been one of the favorite pastimes of leading columnists in the Brazilian press. Another increasingly common pastime is praising the president of the Supreme Federal Court, Joaquim Barbosa, who yesterday received a very harsh – and unprecedented – statement signed by the presidents of three magistrates' associations (read hereThis Sunday, Elio Gaspari does both: he mocks Lula and tries to push Joaquim Barbosa towards the Presidential Palace.
ABRAHAM LULA DA SILVA
Our Guide lives in his own story. He already said that Napoleon went to China and that Oswaldo Cruz discovered the yellow fever vaccine. Comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln, he informed us that "I am reading" the Brazilian edition of Doris Kearns Goodwin's book and "I am impressed by how the press attacked Lincoln in 1860, just like they attacked me."
Where he read that is unknown. In 1860, Lincoln was an underdog in the Republican Party nomination race and benefited from the activities of two journalists/businessmen involved in politics. (Later, both quarreled with him because they didn't want the end of slavery, but that's another story.) During this period, Lincoln was spared, and in the book Lula said he was reading, there are two press references to Lincoln, both complimentary. He followed the convention results from a newspaper's newsroom.
During the campaign and the Civil War, things got heated, and Southern newspapers, as well as Northern Democrats, called him semi-literate, an "uneducated terrorist," but that was the game being played. The Republican press extolled his humble origins, his simplicity, and his abstinence from smoking and alcohol (pages 75 and 76).
In one thing Our Guide is entirely right: allies and adversaries alike underestimated that awkward lawyer who liked to tell stories.
BOOS AND APPLAUSE
During one of the concerts at the "Music in Trancoso" festival, there was a brief moment of booing when the presence of the Minister of Culture, Marta Suplicy, was announced; she was in the area reserved for authorities. Nothing unusual so far, since the audience at that beach is not exactly on welfare.
Shortly afterwards, the presence of Minister Joaquim Barbosa, who was in the stands, was announced. He received a standing ovation from over a thousand people for several minutes. He earned more applause than Tchaikovsky's five pieces.