Tea at Trianon: 'Groomers'

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, April 19, 2022

'Groomers'

From The Federalist:

It’s absolutely absurd. Conservatives aren’t abandoning their principles by abandoning needless throat-clearing about teachers’ alleged good faith and the left’s intentions. We all know the left’s intentions because they’ve made them perfectly clear. The most recent go-around started with them maliciously branding a bill protecting parents’ rights — which are an absolutely necessity for societal survival — as a bill that banned mention of the word “gay” in schools. It was a lie; the legislation seeks to keep leftist dogmas about gender identity and sexual orientation away from 5-9-year-old kids.
When the left lost and the bill got signed into law, furious executives at Florida-based Disney began ranting about their quests to inject sexual deviancy into children’s entertainment. In a video call leaked to investigative journalist Christopher Rufo, Disney executive Latoya Raveneau bragged about her “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” and attempts at “adding queerness” wherever she could in kids’ shows. Another employee talked openly about his attempts to “explor[e] queer stories” and introduce enough “gender non-conforming characters.” There was more where that came from. (Read more.)

From FrontPageMag:

“Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children," Walt Disney once said.
Walt’s unique strategy of building an entertainment empire for kids once made Disney a trusted source of family entertainment. That didn’t last long after Walt's death as Disney started releasing R-rated movies and adult television programming under the Touchstone label.
A decade later, Disney bought Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax. During the 90s, while Disney's more family friendly brand was releasing animated cartoons, Miramax featured Pulp Fiction, Trainspotting, and the Scream sequels. During this time Weinstein was accused of sexual harassment and assaults. Some of this was taking place even as Disney’s “family friendly” brand released The Hunchback of Notre Dame with its depiction of a lecherous Catholic villain praying before a cross while ranting about his lusts. This was what Disney had become.
In the new century the barrier between the two schizoid faces of Disney has come down.
Disney isn’t for kids anymore. Its movie business is dominated by Marvel blockbusters. Half of Disney+ subscribers, its big bet on the home streaming future, are adults with no children. ‘
What about the theme parks?
60% of Disneyland visitors were adults with no children. Only 36.7% of Disney World visitors had children under 18. The largest demographic for the theme parks, like the movies, are millennials. They are also members of the fandoms who are likeliest to spend money on licensed merchandise, and on toys and movie tie-ins that are Disney’s bread and butter.
And Disney is rapidly adapting with theme parks and resorts that emphasize its Marvel and Star Wars properties more than classic fare. Its Galactic Starcruiser hotel, aimed at Star Wars fans, costs $4,809 for two adults. Why bother with kid stuff when you can sell $13 beers?
Disney may have started out feeding the imaginations of children, but now its business model is acquiring intellectual properties with active fandoms and milking the adult fans for every cent.
Its political opposition to a Florida law barring teachers from pushing sexual issues on kindergarteners might be out of tune with the old family values Disney, but the company’s actual base, like that of virtually every entertainment corp in the country, is a narrow slice of upscale urban millennials with lots of disposable income and no families. Wokes are Disney’s base.
In 1966, the idea that a single adult would spend more money on Disney merchandise than a family of four would have seemed ridiculous. In 2022, it’s just the new normal. If you doubt that stop by a theme park and see how many of the adults with no children wearing every single piece of Disney merchandise on sale would love to lecture you about queer theory.
These are the people Disney caters to now. Not little girls who want to be princesses. That’s why its theme parks will no longer address little girls as princesses. That’s also why rides like Pirates of the Caribbean or Jungle Cruise are being revamped to be more politically correct. Disney’s new woke demographic is much pickier than even the pickiest child could be.
It’s also sexually creepy. (Read more.)

From The American Mind:

The 2020 Democratic platform endorsed the propagation of “medically accurate, LGBTQ+ inclusive, age-appropriate sex education” in Kindergarten. This has had predictable effects. Sexualizing childhood and sowing gender confusion destabilizes sexual identity among children, compromises childhood innocence, and prepares children to be advocates for future, even more revolutionary changes. That is the Democratic agenda that America voted for, and we are getting it, good and hard.

Across the country, libraries are stocking shelves with graphic children’s books promoting, among other things, kinky sex, sexual deviancy, and early sex among children. Many librarians are, no doubt, happy to push Love Makes a Family (targeting children under 4), or George, a novel about a transgender girl named Melissa whom everyone perceives to be a boy named Geo (for grades 3 through 6), or I am Jazz, the memoir of Jazz Jennings, whose genital mutilation and subsequent despair was the subject of an adulatory television program. (Read more.)