Tea at Trianon: How the Media Loses

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

Thursday, October 5, 2017

How the Media Loses

From The American Thinker:

At least CNN and The Post offered some semblance of a timely correction. Despite Wired snarkily stating it would be updated with any new information, it took three full days to edit, with the disclaimer that “it has been corrected to remove any implication that Kushner was at fault for the error.” Unfortunately, the piece still includes cheap shots at Kushner, including conjectures of voter fraud, nepotism, and a “chronic inability to correctly fill out boxes.”
Meanwhile, First Lady Melania Trump donated ten Dr. Seuss books to an elementary school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, only to have them publicly rejected by librarian Liz Phipps Soeiro, who responded:

“And then there’s the matter of the books themselves. You may not be aware of this, but Dr. Seuss is a bit of a cliché, a tired and worn ambassador for children’s literature. As First Lady of the United States, you have an incredible platform with world-class resources at your fingertips. Just down the street you have access to a phenomenal children’s librarian: Dr. Carla Hayden, the current Librarian of Congress. I have no doubt Dr. Hayden would have given you some stellar recommendations. Another fact that many people are unaware of is that Dr. Seuss’s illustrations are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.”

Clearly, the story here is Dr. Seuss being racist, and the appropriateness of a sanctimonious, lecture-style letter to a sitting First Lady. However, one would never know this based on the reporting of AOL (via Yahoo). AOL only suggests Mrs. Trump “slammed” a librarian whose sole motivation was to supply more contemporary books to less advantaged children. (Read more.)