Tea at Trianon: Massachusetts Soap Opera

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, April 7, 2018

Massachusetts Soap Opera

An old article on the tragedy of Chappaquiddick reprinted from The National Review:

The immediate reaction of the audience was predictable. That is not our present concern. Never mind what the spontaneous emotion-ridden response of the unguided masses is. What we want to know is the judgment rendered by the leaders and formers of opinion, who are usually so quick and voluble in their moral pronouncements about everything on Earth from apartheid to space programs. The archaic medium of print has made a considerably better showing than the electronic medium. Coverage has been full, more than full, and has in many cases been reasonably objective concerning facts and non-facts. But the reportage has tended to get lost in the mass of detail, and the commentaries have mostly swung this way and that and drowned clear judgment in a flood of portentous rhetoric. (Read more.)

The North Coast said...: Yes, Kennedy failed the test that night, and I'm not the only one who remembers. But local authorities, fearful of the most powerful family in the state of Massachusetts, failed as badly, in not conducting a more thorough inquest of this death, or levying the charges against Kennedy that this crime warranted- and leaving someone to die in the car you wrecked while you tarry for hours in seeking assistance, IS a crime.

What's worse is the response of the electorate in that state. Almost everywhere you go, there is at least one powerful, popular leader who can do no wrong in the eyes of his worshipers. No one can oppose them in an election, and their omissions and crimes just roll off them no matter how visible and flagrant they are. How well I know, as a witness to the careers of a number of Illinois politicians.; April 7, 2018 at 8:15:00 PM EDT