Tea at Trianon: Broadway Sacrifices a Classic

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

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Broadway Sacrifices a Classic

From The American Thinker:

Sorkin’s dirtying the waters of Finch’s legacy is deliberate. In an essay for New York, he describes the search for Finch’s fatal flaw, discovering it in what we all considered a virtue up until, approximately, the minute Donald Trump took the oath of the presidency. Finch’s problem, Sorkin observers, is that he “believes in the fundamental goodness in everyone, even homicidal white supremacists. He believes … that there are fine people on both sides?”

The horror! Harper Lee’s creation is nothing but our doddering president apologizing for neo-Nazis! Who knew?

With the moral ambiguity of a rock, Sorkin rejects swaddling “the book in bubble wrap and transfer it gently to a stage.” Instead, he’s created a critical literacy student’s take on “Mockingbird.”

Sorkin’s iteration of an American classic will appeal to woke Manhattanites who mock blinkered southerners from the comfort of their prohibitively expensive high-rise apartments. But, it really only amounts to lazy moralizing. Sorkin thinks empathy has limits, that consideration extends only to the non-racist or prejudicial. That Finch could defend a black man in the segregationist Deep South while still believing in the humanity of his neighbors is unconscionable. Far better for Finch and family to high-tail it out of Maycomb and settle somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon.

Life doesn’t work like that, as anyone who doesn’t rest easy on a cushion of wealth can attest to. We don’t choose our family; we rarely get to choose the people we’re raised around. Yet we’re bound by obligation to love and respect them regardless of their views.

As for superimposing modern values on the past, the entire business, which seems to have taken root in many universities, is myopic. It is sanctimony disguised as wisdom. From Rudyard Kipling to Thomas Jefferson, the bright lights of the West, and of humanity in general, are being dimmed because of perceived moral failings. Contextual consideration is dropped. The struggles that were present in the subject’s time are forgotten about. An entire life -- accomplishments, courage, ideas, and reputation -- is dismissed because a person didn’t check off the proper woke boxes circa 2018. (Read more.)