Tea at Trianon: The Era of Pretendians

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

Saturday, November 5, 2022

The Era of Pretendians

From American Greatness:

“Sacheen Littlefeather” even had the effrontery to lecture the audience at the 1973 Academy Awards about the maltreatment of American Indians—on behalf of Marlon Brando, who protested the awards that year by not showing up to accept his award for Best Actor in the timeless masterpiece, “The Godfather.” “Sacheen Littlefeather’s” other sibling, Trudy Orlandi, thinks the motive for playing Indian was profit. She “found it more prestigious to be an American Indian than it was to be Hispanic.” It’s hard for me to keep track of how liberals calculate which fake race hustle earns them the most money. The actress-activist’s sisters believe that “Deb”—which is what they called “Sacheen”—got her pretendian name from the Sacheen Ribbon Company, which “made the thread they used to make clothes as children.” “Sacheen”—who died earlier this month—lived long enough to get an apology from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the “treatment she received for refusing Brando’s Oscar for him.”
Another appropriator is Rachel Dolezal, a 100 percent white woman who “identified” as a black one—and became president of the NAACP—until she was forced to resign in the wake of revelations that she’s even less black than Warren is Native American. These events are all of a piece with Joe Biden’s recent claims, such as the one about his son having died in Iraq and—prior to that—of having been “sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community.”

Emphasis on “sort of.” (Read more.)