Tea at Trianon: Remembering Judith Reisman

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, April 29, 2021

Remembering Judith Reisman

From The Washington Times:

Somewhere in the pits of Hades, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner probably is celebrating as best he can. Perhaps the porn magnate will be allowed a spritzer of hot vinegar. Or maybe he gave his life to the Lord moments before he died in 2017 and isn’t in the netherworld. Nobody knows the state of anyone else’s soul except God. Anyway, Mr. Hefner’s greatest earthly foe has died. Judith Reisman, Ph.D., passed away on April 9, two days short of her 86th birthday. Details are murky, but she reportedly was found at her office desk.

Mrs. Reisman should be far better known for her work than she is at present. She exposed legendary sex researcher Alfred C. Kinsey as a predatory fraud in her 1990 book with Ed Eichel, “Kinsey, Sex and Fraud,” and compiled a study showing how Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler magazines had frequently used child porn imagery. Her work exposing Kinsey and the porn mags ignited an anti-pornography movement that led to President Reagan announcing the launch in May 1985 of what became known as the Meese Commission on Pornography. The ensuing report was well done, but it was viciously assailed. (Read more.)