Both were Rappers. Both were assassinated. Tupac by opposing members during the East West Rapper wars. Lincoln during the North South confrontation.

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I really hate rap music, but that's a pretty funny joke.

And I heard Lincoln also cut some rap under the name 'Five Spot'

I am going to turn this funny post around and ask a serious question. Over the years, in dealing with student groups at the museum, I have asked them to name people who have been assassinated. Tupac, John Lennon, the Latino singer that I can't remember the name of, and several others in the entertainment field are always mentioned, and I have let it slide.

My question is: Do such celebrities' murders count as assassinations? I always thought that assassinations applied to people who were murdered for their political or social causes. While some of these people espouse certain causes, do they rank as assassination material. Not that I'm advocating anything, but people like Michael Moore and Dennis Rodman come to mind because they do appear to have a socio-political agenda.

What is your take on this question?

Ahh, Laurie, this is something that has nagged me for years. I don't know how the different dictionaries define it, but I've always considered assassination to be the murder of a political figure. Or if not necessarily a political figure, the murder was committed for political reasons. I'm certainly no expert, but I cringe every time I read about somebody being assassinated when there was no connection to politics at all. I may be wrong, but if so it's going to be a hard habit to break.

And I believe the Latina singer you mentioned was Selena.

Laurie, thanks for posting this question! I love etymology so I've checked the origin of this word. It's (I think) fascinating:

The word assassin is believed to derive from the word Hashshashin (Arabic: ħashshāshīyīn - Assassins), and shares its etymological roots with hashish (Arabic: ashīsh - grass). It referred to a group of Nizari Shia Arabs who worked against various Persian targets.

Founded by Arabian Hassan-i Sabbah, the Assassins were active in Iran and Syria from the 8th to the 14th century. It was a secret society of deadly assassins, which was built in a hierarchical format. The group killed members of the Persian and Christian Crusader élite for political and religious reasons.

Although it is believed that Assassins were under the influence of hashish during their killings or during their indoctrination, it's not proven that drug-taking was the key feature behind the name.

The literal interpretation of the term in referring to the Nizaris (as hashish consuming intoxicated assassins) is rooted in the fantasies and imagination of medieval Westerners. The term spreaded through military encounters between the Nizaris and the Crusaders, whose chroniclers adopted the term and disseminated it across Europe. In 1603 the first Western publication on the topic of the Assassins was authored by a court official for King Henry IV and was mainly based on the narratives of Marco Polo from his visits to the Near East. He failed to explain the etymology of the term "assassin".

The earliest known literary use of the word "assassination" is in Macbeth (1605).

(10-12-2013 05:33 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  The earliest known literary use of the word "assassination" is in Macbeth (1605).

It's odd (or maybe not) how many times Macbeth comes up in the assassination story. John Wilkes Booth quotes Macbeth when he wrote to Dr. Stuart, "The sauce in [to] meat is ceremony; meeting were bare without it." Fanny Seward wrote, "I have supped full on horrors" to describe assassination night in her diary which is interesting because the quote should be "I have supped full with horrors."

The following is from "Lincoln, Macbeth, and the Moral Imagination."

"Lincoln was drawn to Macbeth’s lines about sleep. In April 1865, after a visit to the headquarters of the army at City Point, Virginia, Lincoln returned to Washington aboard the steamer River Queen with Senators Sumner and James Harlan and a young French nobleman, the Marquis de Chambrun. For several hours Lincoln read passages from Macbeth aloud to the party.35 Chambrun and Sumner remembered that Lincoln dwelt particularly on Macbeth’s lines about Duncan, which he read over twice:
'Duncan is in his grave;
After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him further. . . .'"

http://www.nhinet.org/beran.htm

Coupled with Lincoln's dream of awakening, going downstairs in the White House to learn that the President was dead, and his recurring dreams of boats floating away, it would almost seem as if Mr. Lincoln was able to prophesy his own death. There is also a thesis written by retired professor, Dr. John Andrews, in which the claim is made that Shakespeare killed Abraham Lincoln.

For years there were those who contended that Tupac was not dead. I dont know if there is an element who still believes so. Were there those who didnt believe Lincoln was not really deceased?

Linda, as for Lincoln, Macbeth and dreams - when A. L. told about the dream of the president who had died in the White House and that afterwards he had opened the Bible at the chapter of Jacob's dream, he said:"...somehow the thing has got possession of me, and, like Banquo's ghost, it will not down."

(10-13-2013 04:57 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Linda, as for Lincoln, Macbeth and dreams - when A. L. told about the dream of the president who had died in this White House and that afterwards he opened the Bible at the chapter of Jacob's dream, he said:"...somehow the thing has got possession of me, and, like Banquo's ghost, it will not down."

Thanks, Eva. I looked it up and strangely enough the ghost of Banquo, whom Macbeth has arranged to have murdered, enters the play and sits in Macbeth's seat (Macbeth is talking at the door with the murderers) directly after the "sauce to meat is ceremony line" that Booth quotes in his diary.

Dave Taylor posted another Macbeth quote in the "Notes on Booth's Diary" thread that he started today. Booth is comparing himself to Macbeth but Macbeth killed King Duncan for his (Macbeth's) own ambition, not because Duncan was a tyrant.

This is a quote from Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 7 in which Macbeth states:

"They have tied me to a stake. I cannot fly,
But, bearlike, I must fight the course. What’s he
That was not born of woman? Such a one
Am I to fear, or none"

http://www.nhinet.org/beran.htm

That is quite a profound article that Linda posted a link to above. I had to read it more than once to begin to grasp the depth of it.

The gist of it, as I read it, is that Lincoln refused to compromise on the territorial slavery issue because he knew it would create a crisis that would jeopardize the Union, so he could then be the one to save the Union and thereby satisfy his lifelong ambition for glory as a national hero, while all along publicly claiming that his number one goal was to preserve the Union.

Wow.

The problem I have with that is this. Lincoln had observed in his house divided speech on June 16, 1858, that the Union could not continue to exist half slave and half free. So his stated reason for opposing the spread of slavery in the territories was consistent with his stated number one goal of preserving the Union. He was not willing to compromise on territorial slavery (and likely the South also was not), because it was not in the best interests of the Union, aside from any moral reservations he had about it.

Slavery in the territories would also mean more political power for the South, due to the additional 3/5ths of a vote per slave allotted to slaveholders as the territories became states. As a Republican and former Whig, Lincoln was in favor of industrializing the country, a Northern goal. What he did not count on was the length of the war and the extent of loss of life. That had to weigh on his conscience and cause him to second guess his refusal to even attempt any compromise on territorial slavery. If moral opposition to slavery had been his number one reason for not being willing to compromise on it, he might have been able to justify the loss of life as divine retribution for the sin of slavery. But was wresting political power from the South, or even his glorious ambition of keeping the Union intact, worth so great a loss of life? And that was his primary goal, at least in the beginning of his presidency, and not the abolition of slavery per se.