Welcome to the weekend edition of The Mark Steyn Show, with Mark's latest update on the Summer of Stupid, Kamala's mob endorsement, the Jerry Falwell Jr Police Academy, farewell to a not so sweet season, Britannia silenced, music for the nude beach, and much more.
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"That song has its knockers...!". That statement piqued my arousal. What exactly do you mean?
Hi Mark, thanks so much for the shout out about the Real and Truly Important stories of the day.
As noted by Matt Walsh: "When you make a hero out of George Floyd instead of David Dorn, you get more George Floyds and fewer David Dorns."
As a forensic aside, the police body-cam evidence seems just as incriminating, including the damning audio from bystanders in the minutes before and after Floyd loses consciousness. The experts in this case seem to disagree on whether the fentanyl levels were "normal" (and therefore tolerated) given his serious opioid habit.
Security guards in city A&E departments deal with people in this state - and worse - all the time: subduing and restraining combative and often violent individuals who are half passed-out on drugs and alcohol would have to be one of the worst jobs imaginable, but it generally doesn't involve a knee to the neck in this manner. Perhaps more so in the case of someone who says he can't breathe. And if he does pass out, it's probably a good idea to release the knee - at the very least. Especially if there are witnesses present.
Identity politics to the extreme is what we have here or rather racial identity. The left has transcribed to the radicals "what it means to be black". They see BLM and what they're doing in Portland and other cities as like what was done in the 60s and is somehow their charge to do this for their "people". They even are told that if you're black, socialist views of property go into play. The property they see even though isn't theirs they can take if they want and they can destroy it if they so desire because they're owed. Other examples of this can be seen but the strange thing is this. The same people who are now condemning the police as systemically racist are the same ones who praised them when they refused to help out ICE. If systemic racism exists it's in the policies that the police have to enforce in these Dem run cities like Oakland who don't arrest illegals and enforce the new normal.
Imagine the backlash against good, law-abiding Americans if the media were to make a hero out of the young man from the Portland area who was part of a prayer patriot group along with some others who went to the scene of the riots in the downtown and was shot in the chest and killed just walking down the street.
I saw the piece just before I went to sleep last night and started my prayers for peace in our country, family members with sickness and fellow Steyn clubbers. I woke up to see a video with someone heard to be shouting, "We have another Trumper, here!"
Your earlier comment this week suggesting how we may choose to stay at home as the virus winds down and becomes history comes a little closer to reality. How many people will dare to wear anything that suggests they are either a Trump supporter, a prayer person, or anti abortion advocate from now on while walking about our towns and cities?
"If systemic racism exists it's in the policies that the police have to enforce in these Dem run cities..."
Exactly right, Brian.
The situation in Democrat-run cities is alarming, Fran.
Not good for the polls, as Don Lemon noted. Never mind the dead conservatives.
We have a Democrat as mayor in our town and the city council is all Dees, but somehow, knock on wood, the most disturbances we've seen so far have been a few BLM protesters marching through the Saturday morning farmers market making some noise. Our D mayor is also a small business owner. He's all in for the green deal but he has one foot set solidly with local businesses and supports law enforcement.
A friend of mine who sells her jewelry at the market says the manager of the market followed the obnoxious protesters to one of the side street exits with her pistol visible on her hip. A city police officer escorted the protesters out on his bike to their cars. They are not welcome at the market because these merchants, regular folks, usually seniors, who have no other source of income, sell their fresh produce and homemade items as a matter of necessity. Albuquerque is a whole other story and we almost never travel there.
Our Governor kept the market shut down more than half of the summer and all of the spring, even though it was an open air market and the booths have plenty of distance between each space. We have a punishing Guv. She shut down the economy here since mid March and has not ever relied on science to determine which counties or which businesses could safely conduct business. We've had very few cases in the south but she kept us in a vice like lockdown like most of the rest of the state. Many small restaurants aren't coming back.
She did quarantine a rural city in the Native Tribal lands, Grants or Gallup. One of those, Grants, I think, had a feisty mayor who refused to follow her orders. I never heard any more about it. He was one of those men with a chest. Those tribal areas nearby have their own set of laws and curfews so I guess while Guv had some legal right to impose a quarantine those tribes still control access to some of the paved roads leading to a national monument we were hoping to visit this Fall. We'll wait it out like everyone else.
We have a brother-in-law (and nephew) with a successful small business in Portland. We talked to him a couple nights ago. Politics is a sore subject at family gatherings but he said they desperately need a new mayor. They never go downtown. You know this is affecting everyone. You can see it in their faces. There's real pain that they can't hide even if they don't want to reveal their political party. This is their home and some have known Portland as their home for generations.
Mark, I dearly hope you will mend fully and quickly. What would we do without you? The shows are so witty and thoughtful —and critical to fighting this culture war. It's a nod to your analysis that the comments are so civilized and erudite. I've read many smart posts by others where the comment stream devolves into ugly food fights. Never on yours. Hear, hear, club members, and once again, bravo Mark.
And now the statue of John A. Macdonald in Dorchester Square in Montreal has been pulled down and decapitated by Antifa thugs calling for the defunding of the police. I'm beginning to agree with them as the wanker cops arrested no one and this staue has been repeatedly vandalized with paint.
Montreal's mayor deplores the incident but wants the statue to be accompanied by some historical updating and would like to see statues representing more modern figures put up.
That was a gorgeous monument if it's the one I visited near Mary Queen of the World Cathedral when I went to Montreal to see the Mark Steyn Live Christmas Show last Fall. I walked from the hotel to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts the morning after the show and took photos of that monument and the one dedicated to the fallen Canadian soldiers in the South African war. I forget the plaza names but those are two of the monuments I photographed as well as the monument across from the Notre Dame Cathedral. What a travesty!
Actually was in Place du Canada which is just south of Dorchester Square. There are several monuments in Dorchester Square including one for Sir Wilfrid Laurier and another for the Boer War soldiers.
Mark....I hope your injury is not serious. Take it easy, and allow yourself some time to mend.
I wonder to what extent the rioters are egged on by being able to post their behaviour on social media. If their devices could be rendered inoperable during their rampage, would their behaviour change?
I have seen serious analyses of both the Floyd and the Kenosha incidents. There will be strong legal defenses available to the defendants in these cases. The outcome of these cases could tear the country apart.
Another thoughtful show, even with its somewhat bleak tone.
So where do we go from here?
If culture is preeminent, and the left owns culture, yet storytelling is fundamentally conservative, as a wise man says, how do we resolve this contradiction and move forward? Where does a thoughtful conservative with a thoughtful message go to be heard? In short,
Where do we go from here?
My very first question to make it on to a Steyn QA (which I dearly miss, btw) was about the conservative themes that are actually being told in various Hollywood media: good versus evil in Harry Potter, the Avengers movies that tackle, at least in some fashion, right versus wrong, the many movies that actually espouse libertarian themes, even if the writer doesn't seem to be attempting to do that, etc. I was perhaps justifiably chided a bit for my naive view, analogized to National Review's list of rock songs that are conservative themed.
So where do we go from here?
I rarely get into debates with others anymore, as few seem capable of dispassionate debate, preferring name calling and emoting. But on those rare occasions, what I like to do is ask questions. For instance, when someone attempts to silence debate, I'll simply say, so you don't believe in free speech? Or perhaps a gentle jibe, such as when someone wishes ill upon a conservative, I'll just say, how tolerant of you....
I had an online argument about a decade ago on a golf site, of all places, with a liberal friend. We were arguing abortion, and he stated, I don't believe in absolutes. So I said, ok, when is slavery ok? How about genocide? He couldn't really answer. The truth is, he believed in an absolute with regard to abortion, he was just on the other side, believing in the absolute right to "choice". (He doesn't relieve in many other choices, being a leftist, just that one.)
So where do we go from here? I'm eager to hear others' views on the road ahead.
It's a good question for Mark's Mailbox, George. And there are some suggestions via Tal Bachman's great column (and the comments).
The education hiatus - in the year of Covid - sounds like a chance to turn the tables.
I agree with you Mark on the CGI thing. It's become more important than the actual story. Like going to a concert who has a band that can't play a damn note but the pyrotechnics and laser show they put on are all the rage. Take the movie Avatar. No one went to it because they were interested in the plot. Just as you got a Playboy magazine for the nudes and not the articles you see the latest sci-fi flick just to see the latest advancements the studio has made to get you to pay attention to their work than the acting or the story itself.
Brian, it's a good time to revisit the old epic movies. We just rented Ben Hur which was before CGI and the scenes during the naval battle and chariot race were riveting. The other one I want to see is The Vikings and The Ten Commandments.
I don't mind CGI when used in the right way. Star Trek wasn't that way in the old days. I don't like the green screen films and would rather have it just be a CGI cartoon straight up. CGI was ground breaking in the day but once you mainstream it and feel that you can't do without it or people won't be interested in your story if you don't have it is what is disheartening about it.
I do like animation but lately, since we've been stuck at home with our geriatric dogs (nothing to do with Wuhan Flu) we've been trying to see whatever films Kathy Shaidle recommends that are available. Or maybe a film will come up in another commentary by Mark in his shows or someone mentions a favorite film. We're watching The Dirty Dozen now.
We need to read more books more since they're better than the actual movies I hear. I don't mind having visuals of the world I'm looking at but there's something special about imagining the world for ourselves and feeling part of it when immersed in one.
True, very true, but when there are a lot of responsibilities and distractions and you get to be my age approaching the Medicare age it's very good to be able to enjoy both. It's healthier than being a drug addict. Besides both of us work physically hard (when I'm not commenting) during the day so watching an old film is a nice way to do something to relax that we can enjoy together. The dogs all pile up around us in the room, too. It's really the one thing we can do as a family. That and watch Tucker.
You paint a wonderful picture, F. "The dogs all pile up around us in the room, too. It's really the one thing we can do as a family. That and watch Tucker." Evenings go like that here too, 'though at times perhaps with a more hectic aspect than your pooches would find restful. My best beloved, she who must be obeyed, otherwise known as my red-hot little chili berry, is a very participative viewer, and when I join in we're pretty well spent when we turn in. On the other hand, if the films are boring or improbable, I'm prone to relapse into a book or even to nap. Your dogs might be comfortable with that. The absence of viewing quality does not in any way mitigate the participation of the tree upon which the fruit of my desire is hung, however. She gives everything 100%.
S., you sure do have a way with words.
Here in So. NM we say "red hot chile." Chile is red or green but chili is a beef and bean stew. So, the joke around here is, after hellos, the second acquaintance question is "red or green"? Although nowadays, it may be Biden or Trump if people felt free to speak their mind. As it is, we don't say either name.
Prior to the last presidential election we had very few Trump lawn signs on lawns. Weirdly, I felt this was a sign that DJT had more supporters than detractors because nobody wanted the other neighbors to know they leaned that way.
One sign that has me feeling slightly optimistic is that the American business owners of Mexican-Spanish descent I meet around here don't hesitate to tell me they are behind Trump all the way.
Sadly for us, the beef and bean stew is available here only in cans. That last observation of yours on the other hand is indeed very cheering.
You'll have to bring your wife to New Mexico, Texas or Louisiana (actually any county fair, USA) someday and almost any season of the year with the exception of Phoenix in 115 d heat they have mass cook-offs devoted solely to showing off one's best family beef and beans chili recipe.
Southwest Airlines seems to advertise in their in-flight magazines where the best cook offs. Maybe Cincinnati and Nashville, too. Used to be Chicago had the huge annual outdoor culinary fairs but wouldn't want to go there anytime soon. I hope the political and social sickness in this country ends soon. That airlines always used to have the motto: You're now free to move around the country!
I can't wait until that's true again. I've been banking a lot of at-home hours for the last forty years and I was planning on my sunset years to start my galavanting across the country and globe. Alas, a good time presently not to be had at all.
Glad you made it to the end of the show without need of the iron lung, Mark; Andrew Cuomo has a spare ventilator if you need one. Seriously though, in Berlin - similar to other European cities where Covid burned through months ago - it's more lockdown than looting, and the big protest there a few hours ago was mostly peaceful (for real) with a very mixed crowd.
"We are expecting 1 million+ people protesting Bill Gates' bio security agenda, rise of authoritarian surveillance state + Pharma sponsored coup d'etat against liberal democracy." RFK Jr. sounds less crazy than people on Twitter shrieking about the dangers of HCQ, and the need to stay locked down until there's a vaccine. Pity he didn't explicitly mention the WHO (Wuhan Health Organisation) and WEF.
The pathetic behaviour of the bbc has nearly replaced Covid as the go to topic of conversation over here. On the plus side as I write this the Amazon download charts show 4 versions of Land of Hope and Glory in the top 5 accompanied by a single Rule Britannia. Sadly the bbc will continue to laugh at us and the pathetic "conservative" government will tutt tutt.......and that's about it.
Sadly the British have no one to turn to. Your debating partner, Nigel Farage, was the only hope but once he was persuaded to virtually concede the election to the duplicitous Boris the game was up. I understand a number of patriots, with the biker community strongly represented, will show up at the Royal Albert Hall in a fortnights time to sing lustily where appropriate but other than cause the widely derided Met Police to rediscover their mojo I don't see it accomplishing anything.
On a lighter note I found The girl without a top to be rather charming.
Mark, protests are given wide latitude under the First Amendment, much too wide. The First Amendment guarantees the right of the people to peaceably assemble to petition the government for redress of grievances. Government would do well to articulate what peaceable assembly is and is not. Yes, to orderly assemble in public spaces, but no to blocking streets or on private property. Also, the purpose should be to petition government. As such, there is no right to yell at or harass fellow citizens. Actions not consistent with peaceful protest must be dealt with. Without clear boundaries, the "broken window" theory prevails and mayhem, violence and destruction follow.
Yes,summer of stupidity. Couldn't put it better myself.
Mark: First up I pray your injury is quickly resolved, and God heal! Next, what to respond to in all of the areas you addressed? The 1500s poem about the seasons moved me to tears 500 years after it was written. Later, your weekend report was multi-layered as usual.
If I could sum up humanity, it would be to say that, in the entire existence of the human race, nothing has changed. It's always been about sex, money, power, and the ethereal hope that more meaning exists for the existence of the individual.
Mark, you referred to the "mostly peaceful" protests. Am thinking that some of the cities hosting them are on the verge of "mostly peacefulling" themselves right into oblivion, as following each so-called protest there's a little less city and a little more ruins and rubble (oh yes, and fewer law-abiding citizens who want to hang around to see how things play out). By the same method of rationalization the Enola Gay H-bomb run over Hiroshima could also have been described as a "mostly peaceful" plane flight, as only one of the crew members actually dropped the bomb from the plane.
Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were mostly peaceful cities for the month of August 1945 except for a day or two.
Should the USA come to internal blows.... Cavaliers and Roundheads mode... maybe those that prevail... "on the RIGHT side of history"... can steal another Englsh song to accompany the present one and change "Britannia" to "America". Can't let a good song fade from misuse. Both the UK and USA face daunting enemies from within. Nothing like being called "an enemy of the state" by the enemies of the state.
I've seen warfare in the Pacific described as months of boredom punctuated with minutes of terror.
It was just a plain old A-bomb. The. H bomb came along after the war. Not that it makes any difference if you're under it.
Frankly, it is a little hard for me to listen to these shows. The analysis of civilizational decadence I don't necessarily disagree with, but is there any redemptive lining? The progress of civilization is assumed to be, it would seem, whether the ruling and intellectual classes are decadent or virtuous. My general view of history is that the ruling and intellectual classes, with some exceptions, have a high degree of decadence most of the time. But does that define civilization? In the end, maybe the ruling classes don't matter much at all. Are ordinary people not part of civilization? Is a beautiful sonnet even possible or meaningful outside of the context of a largely invisible and unappreciated civilization that already exists? The sonnet didn't create the civilization. Were all the fairly ordinary people brought out to tell extraordinary stories at the RNC merely props and mannequins? Where does civilization really reside? The mob, the media, and the intelligensia are loud, but civilization, it would seem, is often quiet. I'm not ready to commit hara-kiri yet. These stories still move. We are not all miserable cynics.
Nudity is an interesting commentary on society. Biblically speaking, nudity is an image of spiritual impotence, of defenselessness and weakness in the face of temptation. Being clothed is an image of spiritual strength and vitality. A society focused on nudity is spiritually decadent. So Muslims and their hijabs must be be really vigorous, right? Their manifest perversions and brutalization of women are nothing less than a form of grotesque nudity. Nudity may seem like a raucous good time but it is, nonetheless, very "revealing" of serious deficiencies. Certainly it reveals a society without any healthy sense of shame.
Mark, I am obliged, Sir, to defend the honor of the original Star Wars movie of 1977 against certain aspersions you cast. Those aspersions are amply justified regarding the atrocious sequels but quite defamatory as to the original. I hold you, first, to your own standard, that the first step in a good heroic movie is an ordinary chap who is forced to rise to the occasion. Luke Skywalker starts the film as a young yokel who wants only to get off his uncle's farm and go away to school like his friends. Han Solo is a small time, cynical smuggler deep in debt to an off-screen crime boss. Even the droids, R2D2 and C3PO are remarkably unremarkable robots in a universe that thinks little of their kind. And yet, Luke soon finds himself clutching in his arms a princess dressed in white, who he rescues by swinging them both from a rope across a gaping chasm. By itself, that scene was a brilliant burning flash of cultural light for a country that had just lost in Vietnam; seen a President resign; suffered inflation, recession, and a gasoline crisis; and that was stumbling into the comic nightmare of the Carter years. Like so much of the original movie, that save-the-princess scene evoked the best swashbuckling tales of the 1930s, or even the Prisoner of Zenda. In a similar vein, the villainous Darth Vader was pure evil in the original, in a culture that had stopped believing in evil. Indeed, even "the Force" had a subtlety in the original, to the point that the words near the end, "Use the Force, Luke" had a meaning almost equivalent to "Trust in God, Luke." And did I mention the sword fights? Those were perhaps the first sword fights that Hollywood had made in decades. The original film had a delightful, innocent sense of humor, and it was not a big budget affair for the time. (Google reports $11 million). So Sir, I must insist you think again about your aspersions against this beloved tale, or I may be obliged to send you an even longer missive.
Fab #56 -- you used your breath strategically.
I took two of my grandsons shooting today. You should have seen the looks on their politically impressionable faces when I told them that if Joe Biden is elected he will come to take my guns. Sometimes you can outflank popular culture if your timing is right.
Being a native Texan, I was schooled in
gun safety and marksmanship from the time I was a child. Everyone in my family caries. On more than one occasion we have saved lives and deterred predators
, weather human or animal.
The gun grabbers will never succeed. Law-abiding American citizens will never give up their guns, because when the state is the only weapons owner,the people lose.
Whilst I agree with your sentiment, suppose a dozen heavily armed cops turn up, what are you going to do?
The poster of Britannia and the lion. So sad to see what's become of proud patriotic symbols. Rule Britannia used to stir the hearts of the people. Still stirs mine, but it's become a vehicle for a kitschy sendup the last night of Proms. Same thing with the American Eagle, John Bull, Uncle Sam, the Star Spangled Banner. It's come to where there's no "there" there.
When I was a child, there was said to be a nudist colony somewhere down the hill, towards the Mersey. Even at the time, I reckon that I thought that being a nudist ten miles east of Liverpool, at any time of year, was showing excessive devotion to the cause.
Back in 1954 I was into nudism occasionally. The cloth diapers didn't fit that well.
I thought the principal accusation against the Earl of Surrey was his self-aggrandising coat of arms, which made great play of his Plantagenet antecedents. Henry VIII could entirely plausibly claim descent from way before 1066. The problem was that one crucial twig in the family tree was Katherine Swynford, Geoffrey Chaucer's sister-in-law. Although she ended up as the third wife of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III, the children whom she bore him were all born while she was his mistress.
Henry Howard was also descended from the Plantagenets by the female line. The Howards themselves had no distinguished pedigree. They were acquisitive landowners who managed to cultivate not only their land, but also their Yorkist connections, during the English upheavals of the Fifteenth Century. John Howard managed to inherit, via his wife, the title and estates of the extinct Mowbray (see Shakespeare's "Richard II") Dukes of Norfolk and then to snaffle the lands of the Lancastrian de Vere Earls of Oxford.
That last bit sort of came back to bite them, because the Earl of Oxford, a competent soldier, effectively commanded the Tudor army at the Battle of Bosworth, in 1485, while John Howard, by then the first Duke of Norfolk in the new line, largely commanded that of Richard III. Howard did not survive the battle. Bizarrely, Henry Howard the poet was married to a member of the de Vere family. There is little indication that it was a love match.
Henry Howard paid the price for being an utterly insufferable snob. Being descended from Edward I was not unusual in Tudor England **, although most descendants would have struggled to prove their lineage. Anyone with an ounce of sense would have realised that Henry VIII was paranoid and had devoted much of his reign to liquidating potential rivals in the family tree. Henry was known to be ailing, at the start of 1547. By setting out his stall as a potential heir to the throne, Howard was unambiguously committing treason, simply by envisioning the death of the monarch.
**. It has been calculated that it is statistically certain that a significant fraction of the English population must be descended from Edward III. Anyone so descended is necessarily a descendant of Edward I and of many generations of earlier royalty.
I agree that the Earl of Surrey was certainly a very reckless man as well as being a typically dissolute aristo and an enormous snob. I don't really like his poetry either, but it's hard not to feel a bit sorry for him. Both he and his father the Duke of Norfolk had dates with the headsman that January but only poor old Surrey kept his, the death of Henry VIII having saved his (far worse in my opinion) father's skin. Norfolk lived for another decade or so and died in his bed.
Regarding pretensions to the throne, many other noblemen executed earlier than Surrey all had better claims than Henry VIII did, who had virtually no real claim at all. Henry VII dated his reign from the day before Bosworth, meaning he claimed the crown on his own ancestral rights, which were pretty thin. The Beauforts were illegitimate, ditto for the Tudors who had no claim to the throne in any case. No wonder he, and his son Henry VIII, set about chopping off the heads of all those who had a better claim to the crown than they did. Surrey was not the last one to be dispatched by the Tudors either.
As to the woes of various 'conservative' figures in the media, Steve Bannon etc, it seems to me that the lone, principled fight is the only option available nowadays, the left having almost completed their long march through the institutions. The standard bearer of this approach is the great conservative columnist and author Peter Hitchens. His blog, and his Twitter feed which has been required reading for me throughout this pandemic, are both great examples of a true conservative fighting his corner and exposing all the leftie nonsense that we are assailed with on a daily basis. He saw right through Tony Blair from the beginning as well as his ideological heirs David Cameron and Boris ( or Al as he rightly calls him) Johnson. I probably shouldn't promote another writer on here but anyone who has never read him before really should start even though he doesn't like Trump. All the best to you Mark, stay safe and well :)
"The Beauforts were illegitimate, ditto for the Tudors who had no claim to the throne in any case."
The Tudors had no real claim to the throne (Richard III didn't, either), but the Tudors weren't illegitimate per se. The first Beauforts were illegitimate by birth. Henry Tudor was illegitimate only by virtue of being descended from the Beauforts, but not otherwise. After the carnage of the Wars of the Roses, the Tudors could probably have asked why the dregs of the Plantagenet dynasty had any better right to rule than they did.
The thing about the Earl of Surrey was that he could easily have survived the reign of Henry VIII, by not being so stupid. I do agree that his father was far more worthy of an appointment with the axeman: a vile individual, who sought to profit from relatives' promotion to royalty, but slipped away, when the association became inconvenient. That Duke of Norfolk did die in his bed, but after quite a few years in the Tower of London.
His younger son, executed under Elizabeth, showed that stupidity among the self-styled aristocracy is not all that rare. .
Hey there Owen! On the legitimacy of the Tudors, wasn't there doubt as to whether Owen Tudor was actually ever married to Catherine of Valois? As I understand it, the marriage only came to light after Catherine died, it caused a huge scandal, and Owen Tudor was pretty much a marked man after that. Their sons, Edmund and Jasper, were always very loyal Lancastrians and Jasper was tireless in his support of his nephew Henry VII. Richard III's claim seems a pretty good one to me, he was a legitimate male descended from a senior line of Edward III albeit a female one, but then Henry Tudor's claim was predicated upon a female line too. Seeing as Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was probably bigamous, and their children therefore ruled out, Richard was the next in line after his brother's death, George of Clarence's offspring having been disbarred due to their father's attainder. It was complicated stuff back then!
Surrey was definitely his own worst enemy in many ways and his son, executed by order of Elizabeth I, wasn't a whole lot smarter. Despite being a Protestant, he had apparently conspired to marry Mary, Queen of Scots in something called the Ridolfi Plot although he always maintained his innocence, even after death. That's right, he was the resident ghost at Coutts Bank in London back in the early 1990s where he held several conversations with a medium about how bitter he still was at having being executed on false charges, even after 400 years had passed. The present Howard family (Fitzalan-Howards I think they became) had to hold a memorial service for him, after which he was mollified somewhat and he stopped hanging around the bank and scaring the office ladies there. Not that I believe in that kind of thing of course...
As mother to King Henry VI, Katherine de Valois was not supposed to remarry without the consent of the king's regency council. So the members of the council looked the other way when she married Owen Tudor - better to have her married to some nobody than to a nobleman who might make some claim to have custody of the boy king as his stepfather. It might be more accurate to say that Katherine and Owen were canonically married - since their vows were said to and blessed by a priest - but not married in the eyes of the state since her remarriage did not have the approval of the king and council. As for the Beauforts, John the Duke of Lancaster received a papal dispensation to marry his former mistress Katherine Swynford, which included legitimizing their children, who were in their teens and early 20's by then, canonically. The Duke then persuaded his nephew Richard II to secure an act of Parliament to legitimize them legally as well. When Lancaster's son by his first marriage seized the throne and became Henry IV, he had the Beauforts declared ineligible for the English crown but he did not de-legitimize them. The Tudors' claim to the throne came through the marriage of the eldest son of Queen Katherine and Owen Tudor to Margaret Beaufort, great-granddaughter to the Duke of Lancaster through his first-born Beaufort son and grandson - although it helped to have royal French ancestry as well.
I think I'm going a bit too far off-topic with Richard III's claim to the throne. I'll just have to disagree with you on that one. You're right, of course, about the 4th Duke being Henry Howard's son. (Regarding actual husbands of Mary Stuart, I am very, very, very distantly related to the last and worst (and that's saying something) of them, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell.)
The Howard's were replete with "distinguished" names, I'm shocked that you know so little about John Howard (1st Howard Duke of Norfolk), on his father's side the line goes back to Richard 1st Earl of Cornwall (2nd son of King John), and on his mother's side (Margaret de Mowbray) this is where the Norfolk title begins - her father was the 1st Mowbray duke of Norfolk and that came from HIS mother, Elizabeth de Segrave, daughter of Thomas of Brotherton's daughter (Margaret, duchess of Norfolk), if you have forgotten, Thomas is a son of Edward I - add in John Howard's grandmother Lady Elizabeth FitzAlan and you tap into the Bohun and Arundel estates, titles, vast inheritances not to mention a couple centuries of prominence ... this doesn't even begin to address the Neville connections! When the last male de Mowbray died in early 1476 his only heir was a young daughter, Anne, who was promptly married off to Richard of Shrewsbury in 1478, he was 4... the girl died by 1481 and her young husband would, by Parliamentary contrivance (Jan-Feb 1483) inherit everything, bypassing the legal heirs: William de Berkeley (his is a complicated story however) and the entirely NOT complicated one of Lord John Howard.
As for John de Vere, whatever his merits as a military powerhouse may have been he was also an irreconcilable malcontent - he had been restored to his father's title and lands by Edward IV, allowed to enter into them early, then abandoned all of it for rebellions, but turned "King's evidence" against co-conspirators in exchange for his own freedom from the Tower (they met a different fate), then turned to piracy in the Channel with his two brothers, hoping for help from king Louis XI to overthrow Edward IV, all while Edward IV pressured de Vere's widowed mother into turning over HER inheritance to his agents (eliminating any chance such funds went to de Vere's privateering), and finally seizing St Michael's Mount in Cornwall where de Vere was caught and spent the next 10 yrs in Hammes (Prison) - as to Bosworth, one could better credit the betrayal of William Stanley, French funds, mercenaries, ships, and the cosy arrangement between France's Anne de Beaujeu and Margaret Beaufort allowing free movement of spies, informers, agents, and messages between the exiles and the government than anything de Vere did.
Oh dear, even Richard's arch enemy amongst academics, and a Victorian one at that, James Gairdner, wrote that Richard III was the only elected king (Gairdner was pre-WW1) that the English ever had, literally all Three Estates elected and offered him the throne - it didn't help that the Titulus Regius was destroyed after Bosworth - all copies were to be turned over on pain of imprisonment and to date I believe only one such copy did survive Henry Tudor's assault, I think it was the one George Buck located in the mid 1600's, long after the official version of the Tudor reign had been created and set in stone.
OMG - a real life Richard III groupie. The man was homicidal, but, half a millennium later, you support him?
Hi Beth, I've always wondered why Henry VII had all copies (bar one it turned out) of Titulus Regius not only destroyed but in fact he had the Act itself repealed without it being read, a quite unusual move. I suspect it was because it laid out the illegitimacy of Henry's wife, Elizabeth of York, which severely undermined Henry's hold on his new crown. He was looking to wipe all that out, which posed a new problem for him, because if Elizabeth was legitimate once more then so were her brothers! Hmm, best not say too much about that one. No wonder Henry had Elizabeth Woodville quietly shoved into a nunnery as soon as he decently could!
Your intellect, observations, become more ever prescient.
I'm struggling to work out what anyone at the Beebyanka thinks "Rule Britannia" has to do with even an idealised version of Black Lives Matter. The piece appeared originally in Thomas Arne's protean work, "Alfred," and the relevance of the naval theme is that Alfred was the King of Wessex who built a fleet capable of defeating Viking invaders at sea (well, Poole Harbour, anyway). Altogether, not many black lives involved, on either side.
The generic lefty pseudo-think reminds me, however, of something the late Leonard Bernstein said about a recording he made of Elgar's "Enigma Variations." I think Mark is quite a fan of Bernstein, but I'm afraid I think he was a monumental fraud. In this recording, Bernstein conducted the most famous variation, "Nimrod," absurdly slowly. When asked why, Bernstein claimed it was a protest against British imperialism; the British Empire had long gone, by that time. As far as I know, the furthest Elgar ever travelled was Italy and, although Britain once formed part of an Italian empire, Italy was never a part of the British one. In reality, Bernstein was just posturing, as he proved by destroying works by such infamous British imperialists as Sibelius, Tchaikovsky and Dvorak in exactly the same way.
Regarding the intimidation of diners by BLM, the nazis used to parade their flags through the streets and expect everyone to deliver the nazi salute. There is a famous photograph of one man in a crowd, refusing to salute. The BLM people and their fake anti-fascist allies clearly don't do irony, but is there really not one of them who has seen that photograph and understood its significance?
Correct me if I am wrong, Owen, but aren't the lyrics that Britons shall never be slaves again? This a a bad thing?
Agree about Bernstein. When music (including conducting) becomes political, it usually turns out badly. I'm sure Bernstein's posturing at the podium had a grand effect on his "feelings", but surely the music suffered. Aside from some of his Broadway tunes, there is only one composition I can listen to: the overture to Candide.
Some of the Woke claim to be traumatised just by hearing the word "slave", and of course anything that is "offensive" must be banned forever.
Come on man! Bernstein wrote the Theme to The Magnificent Seven, the greatest Western theme ever. It never fails to get your heart to beat faster even with all 12 sequels and TV series.
Were we ever so innocent that a girl without a top would leave enough surfboards scattered on the main to permit one to walk to Japan and distract a Soviet sub captain into running his craft into a pier? Perhaps. But when I went looking for the lyrics online, as I almost always do with a Song of the Week, I came up with "Girls on Top" instead, the chorus of which goes:
(Repeat chorus twice)
Ooh, ooh (the girls, let's keep the girl on top)
Ooh, ooh (the girls on top)
Let's keep the girls on top
Ooh, ooh
Let's keep the girls on top
Ooh ooh, (Let's keep the girls on top)
The girls on top
Ooh, ooh
Let's keep the girls on top
Ooh, ooh
Let's keep the girls on top.
One time through would seem more than enough. This kind of inanity makes "Girl Without a Top" sound like Cole Porter.
Fantasies are one thing, proclivities are a whole 'nother ball of wax.