Tea at Trianon: Performance Journalism

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

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Performance Journalism

From Townhall:

CNN’s Jim Acosta has become the favorite punching bag for the right. He and his network is a constant target for President Trump. He’s tried to fight the administration, every time he gets slapped down. Trump told him directly during one press spray in the Oval Office to get out. Even the White House staff knows how to deal with Jim. Senior Adviser Stephen Miller took him to the woodshed during a presser about the Trump White House’s changes to our immigration policy concerning green card applications last year. From North Korea to the recent rally in Tampa, Florida, Acosta is being trashed. He then gets his television hot, where he laments how he feels like he isn’t in America anymore when people heckle him. Not everyone is receptive to this form of “performance journalism.” Former CNN producer Steve Krakauer called his antics embarrassing, while former MSNBC host Dave Shuster pretty much told Acosta to cut it out. Acosta had tweeted he was sad that Press Secretary Sarah Sanders didn’t declare that the press wasn’t the enemy of the people after the Tampa rally. Shuster more or less said suck it up, buttercup. (Read more.)