Tea at Trianon: No More Nice

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, August 16, 2014

No More Nice

Niceness has been replaced with vulgar display. From The Spectator:

Niceness is also under assault from the raucous guffawing now being heard from women on talk shows. Big, loud, forced laughs, like men at a stag party intent on proving how comfortable they feel in the in-group. Nothing irritates a woman more than overhearing this kind of male laughter in public places because it ‘sounds dirty’, but frantically competitive women are even willing to irritate themselves. There is nothing they won’t do to get rid of niceness, which explains why the subject of bullying has become almost overnight the latest bandwagon in the endless parade of American cultural crises. Why the sudden fascination? Bullying is male in that it is a search for hierarchy; it is also American in that it is a twisted plea for leadership to bring order out of our run-amok equality; but best of all, it is a niceness-ridder that can’t be beat. The next guffaws you hear will come from ‘Women and Bullying’, a news special in which the all-female panel regale us with confessions of what they did to other girls at school and what the other girls did to them because — wait for it — ‘Women bully too!’

Niceness is also under assault from the raucous guffawing now being heard from women on talk shows. Big, loud, forced laughs, like men at a stag party intent on proving how comfortable they feel in the in-group. Nothing irritates a woman more than overhearing this kind of male laughter in public places because it ‘sounds dirty’, but frantically competitive women are even willing to irritate themselves. There is nothing they won’t do to get rid of niceness, which explains why the subject of bullying has become almost overnight the latest bandwagon in the endless parade of American cultural crises. Why the sudden fascination? Bullying is male in that it is a search for hierarchy; it is also American in that it is a twisted plea for leadership to bring order out of our run-amok equality; but best of all, it is a niceness-ridder that can’t be beat. The next guffaws you hear will come from ‘Women and Bullying’, a news special in which the all-female panel regale us with confessions of what they did to other girls at school and what the other girls did to them because — wait for it — ‘Women bully too!’ (Read more.)