Tea at Trianon: The Facts are True, the News is Fake

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

Monday, March 20, 2017

The Facts are True, the News is Fake

From Incerto:

It is impossible for anyone to write a perfectly rationally argued document without a segment that, out of context, can be transformed by some dishonest copywriter to appear totally absurd and lend itself to sensationalization, so politicians, charlatans and, more disturbingly, journalists hunt for these segments. “Give me a few lines written by any man and I will find enough to get him hung” goes the saying attributed to Richelieu, Voltaire, Talleyrand, a vicious censor during the French revolution phase of terror, and a few others. As Donald Trump said “The facts are true, the news is fake” –ironically at a press conference in which he suffered the same selective reporting as my RSA event. (Read more.)

julygirl said...: And, currently, with high tech expertise they can parse his statements, cut and paste to create something that is not a real statement. During the campaign I would run into people who claimed Trump had made statements declaring this or that....I would challenge them on it but they insisted they heard it coming right from his mouth. It was then I realized it had been a cut and paste fake news item. This sort of thing has caused actual fear in people who have been made to believe Trump is going to take actions against them based on some twisted news release.; March 21, 2017 at 6:38:00 PM EDT
elena maria vidal said...: Yes, press is following the blueprint mapped out by the Robespierre, and later by Hitler, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.; March 21, 2017 at 6:56:00 PM EDT