CIVIL WAR WEEK! The Lincoln Assassination Thwarted: Some Possible Scenarios
Booth pulls trigger, small banner with the word “BANG” unrolls from barrel, Lincoln tells Booth he’s been punked
Booth mistakenly enters wrong theater box, shoots unfortunate Groupon participant
Mary Lincoln disarms Booth with roundhouse kick but accidentally connects with her husband’s forehead, knocks him out cold, shrugs, continues to watch play; Booth just kind of slinks away
Lincoln sticks finger in barrel as Booth fires, gun explodes, Booth’s face is comically stained black
Lincoln catches bullet in teeth, audience bursts into applause
Booth shoots Lincoln with Super Soaker, Lincoln retaliates with pee-filled balloon
Lincoln says “I’m rubber, you’re glue” as Booth pulls trigger, bullet bounces back and hits Booth in nuts
Booth silently takes aim at Lincoln but gives himself away when he begins to choke on a Raisinet that went down wrong
Booth fires at Lincoln, misses, and is caught in a net that falls from the ceiling of the President’s Box; Shaggy and Scooby peel off Booth’s mask to reveal that it’s really just Old Man Witherspoon
Booth takes aim, but suddenly Lincoln’s exact double emerges from behind a partition, stands back-to-back with Lincoln, and they spin around rapidly, throwing everyone into confusion as to which is the real president
Booth takes aim, Lincoln says “Look out behind you!,” Booth says “Nice try!,” Booth is attacked from behind by a panther
Booth sneaks up behind Lincoln, puts him in a headlock, gives him a Dutch rub, tells him to say “I am a Yankee queer,” Lincoln refuses, Booth gives him a noogie, Lincoln finally says it, Booth releases him, Lincoln tells Booth he’s a real jerk, smoothes hair back down
japecake 
exceptional recount of the events… now if only I had a place to go watch the re-enactment =)
Ken Burns really dropped the ball on this … though Oliver Stone has shown some interest.
So Mrs. Lincoln, other than that, how was the play?
Too much Cats, not enough big cats.
I knew Groupon was a bad idea.
The deep discounts are killing businesses. Ford’s Theater almost went broke on Sweeney Todd Lincoln.
You gotta watch out for those theater panthers.
This could be a great tv show. Kinda like Spy vs Spy but with Lincoln and Booth.
Potomac Shore, featuring the strangely coiffed DJ Jeffy D [aka Jefferson Davis], and Lincoln as the abs-baring, hoopskirts-chasing “The Emancipator.”
That panther picture is priceless. Oh, Booth, you smug mustachioed bastard. And now I realize I should replace my taser with an empty balloon, it’ll serve double-duty for when I’m out with the kids and there’s no bathroom around.
Taser? Out with the kids?
“If you two don’t stop it right now, I’m gonna shock you into next Tuesday!”
I don’t know, I’m thinking that Lincoln set the whole thing up because he didn’t want to see the rest of the play.
It’s true. He was missing the Pawn Stars marathon on the History Channel.
You know, in the ‘multiverse’ model of the cosmos, where there’s a reality for every action and reaction, every single one of these has actually occurred.
In one of them, the blog “Jake Cape” has just written a scenario in which Booth shoots Lincoln, jumps on stage and shouts Virginia’s state motto. Everyone laughs. Dismisses as fanciful and absurd.
Sick Sampras Tyrannosaurus.
This historical revisionism is an outrage. Funny as hell, perhaps, but an outrage nonetheless.
This historical revisionism is an outrage.
Not as bad as the Tea Party, though. They claim that Booth was an illegal immigrant, and that the assassination was Lincoln’s own damn fault, on account of his lax border-security policy.
NEWS FLASH Railsplitter Gets Split !
Excellent post! If stuff like that made it into the history books instead of the dry, dusty faacts then a lot more kids would do better on their history finals!
So true. I also recommend re-enactments of the great battles using Barbies and ketchup.
Any one of these scenarios occurring in real life wouldve made The Birth of a Nation a much better film.
If you really want to see some off-the-charts-crazy films about slavery and/or the Civil War, rent the indescribably strange and unsettling Mandingo (1975), in which, among other things, James Mason tries to cure his rheumatism by using a black youth as a footstool, as well as one of Clint Eastwood’s nuttiest films, The Beguiled (1971), in which Clint, as an injured Union soldier, is held as a kind of sex slave in a Southern girls’ boarding school. I can’t think of a more entertaining double bill from Netflix.
I love the thought of all those High School essays being written based on internet research that lead them here. Incidentally, I wrote a play called “Yes, but how was the play, Mrs Lincoln?” It has nt been fantastically successful. Shocking or what?
On the upside, no one has been assassinated during one of my plays. Yet.
Once a sophomore somewhere footnotes their term paper with the phrase “bullet bounces back and hits Booth in nuts,” I’ll know that all of my work will have been worthwhile. As to your other comments … there’s that scene in Francis Ford Coppola’s production of the Sound of Music, where the question “How do we solve a problem like Maria?” is answered once and for all in an ambush at a tollbooth.
Here we go again: another attempt to revise history! I don’t even think Lincoln was at the play. The whole thing was a conspiracy and Old Abe is still in the Witness Protection Program, Nursing Home Division…
Funny post and pictures!
Well, you’re partly correct: he was at a performance that night, but it was Las Vegas, and it was Nudes on Ice.