Tea at Trianon: Disco Hedonism

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

Monday, March 17, 2025

Disco Hedonism

From Tierney's Real News:

If you haven’t read Chapter 1 yet - Abort Abort - you can do that here. Here’s Chapter 2.
After my abortion, I started working harder at a new advertising agency - which was a much larger firm than my first job. I was hired by the Media Director because of my experience with the Telmar system - that I mentioned earlier.
At that time I was pretty much the only person in the Twin Cities who was trained on the Telmar system - so I had that going for me.
My boss was a male this time - a tiny Arabic man named Ahmed. He was recently hired by the agency owners (Larry & Leonard) from a large, famous New York advertising agency and was allegedly brought to Minneapolis to help make the Twin Cities more sophisticated and turn it into a hub for advertising agencies.
There were NO men in the media department except for Ahmed - the Director. There were 2 female supervisors (Becky & Bonnie) and I was just a research lackey.
Ahmed asked me to attend a Telmar conference in New York and I was thrilled. I had never been to New York and never even flown on a commercial plane. Ahmed told me that he planned to be in New York BEFORE the conference and AFTER the conference because he was meeting with people from his OLD firm in New York to seek their advice and counsel.
Ahmed also told me that he had booked me at the conference already - and had asked the HR department to take care of my air travel and hotel reservations, at the Waldorf Astoria, where he was staying and where the conference was being held. The head of HR, a female, said it was taken care of and gave me my plane tickets. Ahmed said I should take a cab from the airport to the hotel and he would help me get checked in. I was 22 years old and had been married a very short time. (Read more.)