Tea at Trianon: Sorry, Rupert

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, November 17, 2022

Sorry, Rupert

From The National Pulse:

After Tuesday’s elections, entities owned and managed by Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan have lined up against President Donald J. Trump. There is now a “coordinated effort” across the New York Post, Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal against Trump.
The Post is running columns by longtime Trump hater John Podhoretz and gun grabber Piers Morgan bashing the 45th President. Podhoretz’s piece also lashes out at Blake Masters as an “election-denier,” and ludicrously asserts that we shouldn’t support candidates Mitch McConnell doesn’t like. Morgan, meanwhile, is urging Republicans to “dump Trump.” Unfortunately for him, Americans conservatives don’t tend to listen to foreigners that want to eradicate our Second Amendment.

Rupert Murdoch has long tried to use his media empire to swing elections. In 1992, his Sun tabloid infamously took credit for the Conservative Party victory in the election with the headline ‘It’s The Sun Wot Won It‘. They relentlessly tried, during the 2016 Republican primary, to prop up any Republican not named Donald Trump. It didn’t work. (Read more.)