Quotulatiousness

May 28, 2023

Musical copyrights – crazy as they are now – were far worse in history

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Europe, France, History, Law, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Gioia outlines just how the concept of musical copyrights produced even more distortions in the past than they do today:

Assignments of copyrights photostat copies by mollyali (CC BY-NC 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/5JbsPE

People tell me it was never this bad before. But they’re wrong. The music copyright situation was even crazier 500 years ago.

The Italians took the lead in this, and it all started with Ottaviano Petrucci gaining a patent from the Venetian Senate for publishing polyphonic music with a printing press back in 1498. Andrea Antico secured a similar privilege from Pope Leo X, which covered the Papal States.

It’s hard to imagine a Pope making decisions on music IP, but that was how the game was played back then. In 1516, Pope Leo actually took away Petrucci’s monopoly on organ music, and gave it to Antico instead. You had to please the pontiff to publish pieces for the pipes.

Over time, this practice spread elsewhere. In a famous case, the composer Lully was granted total control over all operas performed in France. He died a very wealthy man — with five houses in Paris and two in the country. His estate was valued at 800,000 livres—some 500 times the salary of a typical court musician.

But the most extreme case of music copyright comes from Elizabethan England. Here the Queen gave William Byrd and Thomas Tallis a patent covering all music publishing for a period of 21 years. Not only did the two composers secure a monopoly over English music, but they also could prevent retailers or other entrepreneurs in the country from selling “songs made and printed in any foreign country.”

If anybody violated this patent, the fine was 40 shillings. And the music itself was seized and given to Tallis and Byrd. They probably had quite a nice private library of scores by the time the patent expired.

But that’s not all. Byrd and Tallis’s stranglehold on music was so extreme it even covered the printing of blank music paper. That meant that other composers had to pay Tallis and Byrd even before they had written down a single note. Not even the Marvin Gaye estate makes those kinds of demands.

Tallis died a decade after the patent was granted—putting Byrd in sole charge of English music. I’d like to tell you that he exercised his monopoly with a fair and open mind—especially because I so greatly esteem Byrd’s music, and also I’d like to think that composers are better at arts management than profit-driven businesses. But the flourishing of music publishing in England after the expiration of the patent — when, for a brief spell, anybody could issue scores — makes clear that Byrd did more to constrain than empower other composers.

May 26, 2023

The introduction of BBC Verify proves that Ben Rhodes was correct

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Chris Bray on the BBC’s new effort to provide NPCs and would-be NPCs with the “correct” narratives:

I’ve spent a lot of time talking about things like this, breaking down the difference between what media and political figures perform and what they actually know and do, but it begins to feel like I’m telling you that another lump of shit is a lump of shit. “Chew it carefully, and you’ll see that this, too, has the distinct flavor of fecal matter.” It’s important to notice propaganda, and to say that hey, that’s propaganda!, but let’s not be tedious about it.

In other news, I was reminded this week about the Ben Rhodes interview in which he shrugged and told the New York Times that OF COURSE the Obama administration lied to the news media about the terms of the nuclear deal with Iran — because why on earth wouldn’t you lie to journalists, who have no ability to figure out that you’re lying? Actual quote from a person who worked in the White House:

    All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus. Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.

Specifically, I was reminded of the image of 27 year-old journalists who literally know nothing because of this:

Paging Ben Rhodes: BBC has empowered an actual 27 year-old to tell the world what it may be permitted to perceive as truth. Marianna Spring has no discernible training or experience in law, history, economics, or science, but she’s been on television for, like, several years, now, so. She is the arbiter. Fall into line, everyone.

Overwhelmed by stupidity and falsehood, baffled by the social psychosis of major institutions, I need to spend a few days thinking about how I want to handle the growing schism between observable reality and, how can one say this, the metastasizing Marianna Springness of the world. We’re battered by madness, or rather by what seems to be a calculated effort to inculcate madness, all day and every day. Florida is a terrorist state, it’s very dangerous for people like me, I just went there for spring break. What can I say about that? What’s worth saying? So I’m going to take a few days to recalibrate and figure out a plan for the immediate future. I don’t think very often, but man, when I do, I really go for it.

Update: John Ellwood has more at The Conservative Woman:

TCW Defending Freedom has received the following press release from the BBC announcing the launch of BBC Vilify.

THE exponential growth of manipulated and distorted news reports and video means that seeing is no longer believing. Our dwindling number of consumers tell us they can no longer trust that the video in their news feeds is genuine. This is why we at the BBC must urgently begin to show and share the work we do behind the scenes, to check and vilify truthful but inconvenient information to ensure that it does not appear on our platforms.

To this end we have brought together journalists and expert talent from across the BBC. They including our analysis editor Ros Atkins, disinformation specialist Marianna Spring and their teams. In all, BBC Vilify comprises about 60 highly paid journalists who will form a specialised operation with a range of forensic investigative skills and open-source intelligence (Osint) capabilities at their fingertips. Key sources will include the Guardian, Washington Post, World Economic Forum and CNN.

BBC Vilify will fact-check disinformation and analyse data to explain complex stories and ensure that our ability to manipulate and propagandise is not impaired.

“Losing my Religion” – Bardcore (Medieval Style)

Filed under: Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Algal the Bard
Published 17 Feb 2023

Song composed by R.E.M.

Instruments: Lute-guitar, zitherette, recorder and drums.
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May 25, 2023

Victoria’s housing market is Canada’s housing market in microcosm

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Elizabeth Nickson explains some of the driving factors for ever-rising housing prices in Canada:

“Victoria, BC” by abdallahh is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

A friend of mine is building four high-rise condo and rental towers in Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia, where I live. It is a charming city, founded in the 1840s, its core an almost classic English village around which a modern city was slowly built. Not so slow now. It’s the warmest, prettiest city in Canada, surrounded on three sides by ocean, and retirees are flooding the place. Young families are choosing the city to raise their children because it is still small, relatively crime-free and filled with charming neighborhoods.

Here is a view from the marketplace by someone who borrowed $150 million to build housing for the newcomers:

    Green energy policies have added maybe $700 a month to the cost of a one bedroom rental unit. It takes over two years to get approval for a rental building in Victoria. Then, another year after initial approval to final approval. That adds another sum. Maybe $300? So rents in theory could be $1000 a month less. That is $1,000 that could go to piano lessons, hockey gear. Private school? And so on. Then Justin let in ONE MILLION people last year into Canada. All unvetted. Canada builds various amounts of housing each year. But 275,000 units is a reasonable average. One million people require 350,000 or so housing units. You want to see upward price pressure on rents? You have not seen anything yet

In fact, “we are two to three million houses short”, says Wendell Cox of Demographia, which has been tracking housing affordability for 25 years across the world. Canada’s two principal cities, Toronto and Vancouver, are among the top four most unaffordable cities in the world, Hong Kong and Sydney being the other two. In my region, everywhere you look, we have tent cities and trailers parked by the side of the road; our economy has been strangled by Covid, debt, inflation, and regulatory madness, so like nearly everywhere, we have a substantial complement of the desperate, despite living among a stunning abundance of resources and talent. Throw in the sharp rise in interest rates and the solution moves from difficult to impossible.

Despite the almost preposterous costs added by “green” energy, “green” land use is the greater reason housing is so constrained in every western democracy. Here’s the crux of the matter: construction costs are only 20 percent lower in a smaller city, but the land in a smaller city would run $90K, while in Toronto or Vancouver or San Francisco or Dublin, it would be upwards of one million dollars.

A green belt is wrapped around every major and minor city. They are called Urban Containment Zones. Much of that land is conserved, in principle to save agricultural land, but in Canada, as elsewhere, urban areas only use 2.5 percent of arable land. World Economic Forum/U.N. rules concerning land use have been adopted by every western democracy, and these rules are disseminated across the world through planning associations. The planner cult is messianic. It hates sprawl, suburbs and cars and while the obvious solution is to build on green belts, the PR unleashed against the idea is vituperative in the extreme. Ontario premier Rob Ford has managed to swap out some green belt land, and is building 50,000 new houses. The press’s reaction against the plan has been vicious, accusing Ford of bribery and paying off his funders.

Yet, there is a ten-year waiting list for public housing in Toronto. British Columbia, like all regions run by the Left, is committed to subsidized housing. But there is a five-year waitlist for any current family housing, and rents for a one bedroom, are almost exactly $1,000 less than in the private sector, meaning that without the green-energy rules, which are ridiculous in such a cold country, private-sector housing could accommodate the less privileged without any cost to the taxpayer, who as it is now pays twice.

Further, the buildings assigned to low-income housing are built to lower standards. There is a happy dancing peasant communitarian aspect to these complexes, but that can degrade very quickly, as Chicago, Detroit, London, have proved. Almost all such complexes end in drug trafficking, single motherhood and kids running wild. The most recent B.C. government failed its promise to build more by 75 percent and its administering agency was found to be corrupt.

QotD: How long does “celebrity” last?

Filed under: History, Media, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The first warning sign was when they renamed Bob Hope Airport.

Back in the 1940s, Bob Hope was the most popular comedian in the world. He was a radio star. He was a movie star. He would later become a TV star at NBC.

When Hope died in 2003, it made perfect sense to name the Burbank airport after him. After all, his longtime employer NBC was the best known company in Burbank, and Bob Hope had spent a half-century on the network — usually at the top of the ratings.

So the local airport got renamed.

But the only thing that lasts forever in pop culture is the fact that nothing last forever. By 2017, Bob Hope was only a dim memory at NBC, and young passengers flying to SoCal had no idea who he was. So they changed the name to the Hollywood Burbank Airport.

By coincidence this happened almost exactly 80 years after Hope rose to fame — when Paramount signed him to star in the film The Big Broadcast of 1938. In that hit movie, he sang his charming theme song “Thanks for the Memories” — which he kept singing until the end of the 20th century. Not long ago, everybody knew that song.

But then the memories ran dry.

I’ve long believed that 80 years is a typical span of pop culture fame for superstars. I’m referring to the biggest names — the lesser stars burn out in 80 months or 80 weeks or 80 days. But the top draws retain their fame for the entire lifetime of their youngest fans — and given current life expectancies of the US audience, that can’t be much more than 80 years.

We already see the price of Elvis Presley memorabilia starting to drop. The recent Elvis biopic might slow the erosion, but will never bring back the King’s red hot fame of the 1950s. By my measure, Elvismania will be officially dead in the year 2034. That will be the 80th anniversary of his first hit single “That’s All Right”. Almost none of his original audience will still be around to celebrate the anniversary, and that can’t bode well, even for the nostalgia crowd.

Some reputations do flourish after 80 years, but only because the entertainers somehow found an audience outside of pop culture. Louis Armstrong was famous as an entertainer during his lifetime, but enjoys posthumous renown as an artistic and cultural figure. Back in the 1920s, Rudy Vallée sold more records than Armstrong, but never made the transition outside of pop culture.

Ted Gioia, “How Long Does Pop Culture Stardom Last?”, The Honest Broker, 2023-02-23.

May 23, 2023

QotD: Cavalry operations in Rings of Power versus cavalry operations in history

Filed under: History, Media, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Now before I lay into this, fair is fair: Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings had a real habit of having the horses almost always move at the trot or the canter when they ought to have been walking (horses have four “gaits” – patterns of moving – which, in escalating speed are the walk, the trot, the canter and the gallop). Horses can walk or trot for long periods, but canters and gallops can only be maintained in short bursts before the horse wears itself out. So for instance when Théoden leads the Rohirrim from Edoras in Return of the King the horses are walking in the city but by the time they’re in column out of the city the whole column is moving at a canter (interestingly, you can hear the three-beat pattern of the canter in the foley, which is some attention to detail), which is not realistic – they have a long way to go and they won’t be able to maintain this gait the whole way – but fits the forward momentum of the scene. Likewise most of the horses look to be at a canter when his army leaves Dunharrow for Gondor; again this is a bit silly, but on roughly the level of silly of having Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli pursue a band of orcs by jogging for three days and nights without rest.

By contrast [in Rings of Power], the Númenóreans rush to the battle at a full gallop, apparently the whole way or at the very least for hours through the morning. Horses will be vary, but generally two to three miles is the maximum distance most horses can gallop before fatigue sets in (for most horses this distance is going to be shorter), which they’re going to cover in about six minutes. The gallop is a very fast (25-30mph), very short sprint, yet Galadriel has this whole formation at full gallop even before she can see their destination. And I just want to remember here the absurdity that these horsemen do not even know there is a battle to ride to; for all they know this is a basic scouting effort (which might be better accomplished slowly and without wearing down all of the horses). Théoden at least has the excuse that he’s on the clock and knows it!

The way we are then shown the cavalry arriving is very confusing to me. The speed of their arrival makes at least some sense. We have already established that both Arondir and Adar are incompetent commanders so the fact that they have set no scouts or lookouts checks out. Pre-modern and early-modern cavalry could effectively out-ride news of their coming, and so show up unexpectedly in places with very little warning. Not this little warning, mind you – the time from the first sound of hoof-falls (heard by Elves – the orcs evidently hear nothing) to the cavalry deluging the village is just about fifteen seconds; horses move fast but they do not move that fast (at full gallop a horse might cover 150-200 meters in those fifteen seconds and the orcs would absolutely hear them coming before they saw them). But the idea in general that the Númenórean cavalry could appear as if out of nowhere to the orcs checks out – that was one of the major advantages of cavalry operations.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: The Nitpicks of Power, Part III: That Númenórean Charge”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2023-02-03.

May 22, 2023

Dire Straits – “Sultans Of Swing” (Old Grey Whistle Test, 16th May 1978)

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Dire Straits
Published 21 Oct 2022

Dire Straits performing “Sultans Of Swing” in their first ever TV performance live on BBC’s The Old Grey Whistle Test in May, 1978. This performance took place three days before the UK release of their debut single of the same name.
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May 19, 2023

They made a MOVIE about the discovery of Richard III’s remains!!!

Filed under: Britain, History, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Vlogging Through History
Published 16 Sept 2022

Here’s a fantastic hour-long breakdown of the entire search and discovery process – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsTyG…
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May 16, 2023

QotD: Ah-nuld

Filed under: Media, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Look at all the remakes — not reboots — of Schwarzenegger films since the turn of the century. They have to lard on all kinds of extraneous bullshit to disguise the fact that they’re recycled Arnold movies. There have been upteen Predator movies, for instance … that all focus on the alien (but it’s the humans — specifically, Arnold — who’s the real predator. Dude. Mind … blown). I can’t be the only one who noticed that Liam Neeson’s Taken franchise is just Commando with a different accent … can I? Or that the Bourne Identity films look an awful lot like Total Recall, minus Mars and the three boobs? Then look at all the actual attempted reboots: Conan the Barbarian. Total Recall itself. And the whatever-you-call-thems that are both remakes and reboots of Schwarzenegger movies, where Schwarzenegger is still in them but isn’t the star: the latest Terminator movies, for instance, not to mention also-rans like The Expendables franchise.

The reason you can’t make an “Arnold movie” without Arnold Schwarzenegger, the man, in a starring role isn’t because he’s such an indispensable thespian. It’s because Schwarzenegger doesn’t have an ironic bone in his body. Even when he’s doing comedy (and I think we can all admit, now that he’s in his 70s and effectively long retired, that he could be quite funny), he’s deadly serious. No matter how ludicrous the situation, he’s always 100% in it. No scriptwriter in the 1980s ever felt it necessary to explain how this enormous Austrian bodybuilder ended up being a colonel in the US Special Forces, or a small-town sheriff in Bumfuck, Idaho, or a New York cop, or a CIA agent, or whatever else. He just went with it, and because he did, we did.

In other words, buying a ticket to a Schwarzenegger flick was — like attending a rasslin’ show — an agreement to step outside of ourselves for two hours. We know The Undertaker isn’t a vampire (or whatever), just like we know there’s no possible sequence of events that ever could’ve happened in the real world that would end with an Austrian bodybuilder as a mattress salesman in Minneapolis. So why bother trying to “explain” it? We all agreed, when we bought the ticket, to put “the real world” aside and enter another. In this world, the spectacle’s world, there are vampires who can body slam and bodybuilders who save the world from Satan.

Those are the givens. It doesn’t matter how ludicrous they are, so long as you don’t break your own rules.

Severian, “Rasslin'”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-07-26.

May 15, 2023

Paul Wells – “Unworkable and swiftly-disavowed tinpot dictatorship is, statistically, one of the least damaging forms of tinpot dictatorship”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Paul Wells follows up last week’s rather disturbing report that the Liberal Party’s big gathering in Ottawa extruded a resolution to get “The Government” to work toward forcing journalists (and those peasant bloggers like Paul Wells) to only publish things that the sources informing it could be “traced” by that same authority:

Last Friday I wrote about a policy resolution at the big Liberal Party of Canada national convention that was, in my opinion, bad. This was the resolution that would have the party “request the government explore options” to “hold on-line information sources accountable” by requiring that they “limit publication only to material whose sources can be traced”.

How do you limit publication to traceable sources? I have to assume you clear the sources. “This resolution has no meaning,” wrote I, “unless it means I would be required to clear my posts through the federal government, before publication, so the ‘traceability’ of my sources could be verified.”

Some people disagreed, but I had a hard time getting them to describe what it could mean if it wasn’t what I thought. I was careful to note that party conventions aren’t binding on governments. Commenters sympathetic to the Trudeau government latched onto all the this-might-mean-nothing language, the stuff about “request” and “explore options.” At their convention, a tiny minority of registered Liberal delegates attended a “policy workshop” at which nothing was debated. Amid considerable confusion about where these resolutions were in the party’s own process — Althia Raj covered it on Twitter; go look if you like — this resolution became party policy with no discussion at all. That was on Saturday.

On Tuesday, Justin Trudeau went before reporters and said no Liberal government would ever implement this Liberal policy. Other cabinet ministers followed suit, and one MP who didn’t benefit from the counsel of the Monday-morning issues-management call had a rougher time executing the U-turn.

Look, I think the amount of self-inflicted ballistic damage to the government’s own foot here is minor. Unworkable and swiftly-disavowed tinpot dictatorship is, statistically, one of the least damaging forms of tinpot dictatorship.

But I want to let everyone in on a secret of my journalism, and indeed of most journalism: Criticism of politicians is often advice to politicians. I actually don’t spend a lot of time hoping governments and opposition parties will keep pursuing self-destructive and country-destructive choices indefinitely. I always hope a bit of mockery, especially pre-emptive mockery, will help inform their choices. If it stings when Wells writes it, it might sting worse when everyone is saying it.

Ministers of the Crown who didn’t need to wait for the Monday-morning issues-management meeting to tell them what to think could have spent the weekend thinking for themselves. They might even have invited their own staffs, riding executives, and Liberals at large to think for themselves. A dozen or so hardy souls, out of 3,500 registered delegates, might then have showed up to the policy workshop willing to debate.

“Uh, Paragraph Two looks hinky. How would a government enforce that?”

“Well, it doesn’t apply to reputable journalists.”

“Great, thanks. Remind me who decides who’s reputable? Any thought on who’ll be making those calls once we’re no longer in government?”

Maybe somebody would have added a friendly amendment. “For greater clarity, nothing in this paragraph impinges …”

I can even imagine a cabinet minister showing up for those floor debates and influencing the party’s direction single-handed. I’ve seen it happen in other parties. But I had Liberal friends over the weekend explain to me that no such thing ever happens. Fine, it’s your funeral. Basically we’re watching a party choose between two different models of public-policy deliberation:

OPTION 1: Smart people think and talk.

OPTION 2: Everybody in the party defends rickety thinking until it blows up in their faces.

I’m not kidding when I tell you most people in political communications would defend Option 2. We’re living in a time that values message over thinking. But folks can’t say I didn’t warn them.

Would Canadian voters welcome a new “actually centrist” political party?

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Tasha Kheiriddin on the possibility of yet another political party contesting that mythical centrist voting bloc in Canadian elections:

By now, you have probably heard of Centre Ice Canadians. The group was co-founded a year ago by former two-time Conservative leadership candidate Rick Peterson. It made its debut as Centre Ice Conservatives, during the Conservative leadership process, holding a policy conference in Edmonton, followed by similar events in Halifax and Toronto. It published numerous op-eds and got the Canada Pension Plan to disinvest from funds profiting from slave labour in China. It positioned itself as a home for the politically homeless, chiefly Red Tories and Blue Liberals, who felt that neither of their parties were listening to their ideas.

Last week, Centre Ice announced that it would explore the possibility of registering as a political party. It did this following both an external opinion survey of 2000 Canadians, which found that 32% of those polled would likely consider voting for a centrist party in the next election, and a callout to its roughly 2000 supporters, which saw most respondents approve of the concept.

A working group headed by Peterson and New Brunswick MLA Dominic Cardy is now investigating the idea, including a draft constitution, fundraising and a new name, until September 20, at which point Centre Ice will formally decide whether it goes down that road. Observers posit that it could “disrupt the political system”, evoking memories of the Reform Party which did the same thing thirty years ago.

[…]

There’s another saying which management seems to have overlooked: “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”. Leaders traditionally neutralized their opponents by keeping them busy and giving them reason to be loyal. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney made a place for former rival Joe Clark; Stephen Harper brought Peter MacKay into cabinet. In the Liberal camp, Jean Chretien had Paul Martin helm the Finance Portfolio; Trudeau gave Marc Garneau Transport and then Foreign Affairs.

That type of thing hasn’t happened in the current scorched earth climate. Animated by Twitter, where we’ve all said things we regret, it has instead produced a toxic purity test that excommunicates anyone who challenges the party line or criticizes the leader. Only the worthy are allowed in the tent.

That applies equally to the Liberals, who draw lines in the sand for their faithful on all manner of issues from abortion to gun control to internet regulation. Which is why the Centre Ice movement isn’t just about the Conservatives. Many of the people signing up on the organization’s website aren’t members of any party, but they would like to be. But they don’t like the climate of fear in either of the main parties.

They want to be able to express an opinion without being trolled. They want a place that eschews groupthink for group discussion. Whether such a party can exist in today’s politics, or whether it could make any headway in an election, is an open question.

What isn’t in question is that both federal parties have become polarized to their respective ends of the political spectrum: wokeism and populism. That is more unusual for the Liberals than for the Tories – the Liberals were traditionally the party of the centre, derided as the “mushy middle” for their ability to morph into whatever voters wanted at the time, as well as conflating their brand with the image of Canada (tolerant, multicultural, bilingual) in a way the Conservatives did not manage to do.

“Donald Trump is, as a performer, in a class of his own. From the second the show began, he was in command: withering, funny, sharp, powerful.”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

I didn’t watch the CNN broadcast that Andrew Sullivan is reluctantly praising here — he still hates and fears Donald Trump, but he has to acknowledge the man’s abilities:

The reason so many are freaking out about CNN’s astonishing ad for the Trump re-election campaign this week is that he was on tip-top form. Donald Trump is, as a performer, in a class of his own. From the second the show began, he was in command: withering, funny, sharp, powerful. He may be one of the most effective and pathological demagogues I’ve ever encountered: capable of lying with staggering sincerity, of making up stories with panache: shameless, and indefatigable.

Now think of Joe Biden, peace be upon him. He can barely get a sentence out without a mumble, a slur, or a confused expression. He seems frail and distant. In a direct contrast between the two old men, there will surely be some voters — and maybe many — who simply back the man who seems capable of doing the job vigorously for four more years. There hasn’t been this kind of contrast since Clinton-Dole (and Dole in 1996 was sharp AF) and Reagan-Mondale (it took Reagan’s debate genius to destroy the concern). Trump, in stark contrast, bulldozed the host Kaitlan Collins, who was far more in charge of facts and details than Biden will ever be.

Shamelessness has a huge appeal. It’s why we can’t see a production of Richard III without at some points egging on the child-murderer. And I confess that watching the deposition conducted by Robbie Kaplan, he got me. When Trump says to Kaplan, after dismissing Carroll as “not his type”, “You would not be my choice of mine either, to be honest with you. I hope you’re not insulted”, I LOLed. It was disgusting — but how could you not laugh at the effrontery?

At one point in the CNN show, Trump took the performance up a notch — sympathizing with E Jean Carroll’s husband:

    He was a newscaster, very nice man. She called him an ape, happens to be African-American. Called him an ape — the judge wouldn’t allow us to put that in. Her dog or her cat was named “Vagina”, the judge wouldn’t allow to put that in.

Sorry, but the way he delivered the word “vagina” was worthy of a good stand-up. And the affect — the lone ranger telling the truth while prissy elites tut-tut — channels a vast swathe of the public mood.

The issues are also turning Trump’s way. As Title 42 expires today, a huge influx of fraudulent “asylum” seekers is on the verge of overwhelming what border we have left — some with court dates as far away as 2027. Virtually none will be deported ever. A Marine veteran has been charged with manslaughter after manhandling an out-of-control black man on the subway: a trial that’s catnip for the right. People have vague memories of a pre-Covid economic boom and associate it with Trump. Ukraine will be an increasing headache for Biden, as horrible decisions loom at some point if Ukraine can’t win full liberation of their country.

Biden is tethered to Kamala Harris, who will be seen by many as a possible president by default if Biden kicks the bucket in a few years. And she is an even worse politician and manager than Hillary Clinton. The MSM has spent the last few months attempting to destroy the only viable alternative to Trump, DeSantis, because they’ve actually convinced themselves of a looming “Biden blowout“.

I say the emergency is still here; that Trump is more likely than not returning to the White House as of now; and the interlude of these few precious years when this monster wasn’t daily assaulting our constitution, sanity, and our sense of decency is over.

Get used to it; and strap yourselves in.

May 14, 2023

QotD: The original tabloid journalist

Filed under: Britain, History, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Tabloid journalism begins with W.T. Stead, who as editor of the Pall Mall Gazette in the 1880s brought news and scandal to the newly literate masses, transforming public culture and politics with it.

The son of a Congregationalist preacher, Stead grew up in a strict religious household in Northumberland, in a home where theatre was “the Devil’s chapel” and novels “the Devil’s Bible”. Taught to read by his father, the newsman’s nonconformism would inform his campaigns after he moved from the Northern Echo to the Gazette in London.

Stead was most of all famous for the first great newspaper investigation, in 1885, “The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon“, on the scandal of child prostitution. Stead had bought a girl called Eliza for £5, on the premise that she was to be taken to a brothel on the continent, using quite dubious methods that got him sent to jail for three months.

Despite this, the story succeeded – a national scandal which led to a change in the law, the age of consent raised from 13 to 16. The idea of English girls being trafficked into sex outraged and horrified the public, Stead’s story imprinted itself deeply into the public psyche, to the extent of influencing George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion — thus, Eliza Doolittle.

On the continent it helped to inspire a genre of vaguely pornographic literature about the sexual perversion rife in England, a fantasy that belied the fact that late Victorian London was not a nest of vice, relatively speaking. Most measures of squalor and child abuse had declined in the 19th century and a teenage girl by the end of the century was relatively safe, compared to a predecessor in almost any era; public moral outrage offered protection, even if it could be unforgiving for those same girls who transgressed.

Stead would become the most famous journalist of the era, so renowned that in 1912 he was invited to New York by the US President to attend a conference — and so booked a ticket on a famously unsinkable new liner. He was last seen helping women and children trying to get on to lifeboats, and, true to the chapel ethos of his parents, gave away his lifejacket. He was among the 1,500 who lost their lives on the Titanic.

Ed West, “Our Modern Babylon”, Wrong Side of History, 2023-02-11.

May 13, 2023

Arnold Ridley – “Private Charles Godfrey” – a real story from Dad’s Army

Filed under: Britain, History, Humour, Media, WW1, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The History Chap
Published 1 Feb 2023

The story of Arnold Ridley — Private Charles Godfrey — Dad’s Army

After my last video all about Lance Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army I have been inundated by requests for the real story of another character from the classic comedy series: Private Godfrey.

Private Charles Godfrey, played by Arnold Ridley, is an ageing and slightly doddery member of the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard platoon. His comrades are somewhat surprised and concerned when he announces that he was a conscientious objector during the First World War. However, thanks to his sister, the platoon learn his real (well, fictitious as it is a TV comedy show) story. Godfrey was indeed a conscientious objector but like many others he did volunteer to serve his country – just not to kill. Many men who felt likewise, joined the Army Medical Corps. Whilst not fighting they not only served their country and played a valuable role in the war effort but they also put themselves in harm’s way. Many of them became stretcher bearers, going out into no man’s land to fetch the wounded to safety. And many were decorated for their bravery.
William Coltman, became the most decorated NCO in the entire British army during the First World War … and he never fired a shot in anger!

I will be telling the story of William Coltman VC in the near future.

Private Charles Godfrey was awarded the Military Medal for bravery during the battle of the Somme.

What makes Godfrey’s character all the more fascinating is that his actor, Arnold Ridley, was no conscientious objector but a volunteer in World War One. he was severly injured at the battle of the Somme in 1916 and discharged the following year.

Indeed, his injuries would influence how he played his character in Dad’s Army.

After the war, Ridley became a play writer. Arnold Ridley penned over 30 pays, the most famous of which was The Ghost Train written in 1923.

At the outbreak of the Second World War he once more volunteered to serve his country. Following the battle of Boulogne in 1940, he was evacuated to Britain, having been injured, once more, he was again given a medical discharge.

For the rest of the war he worked for ENSA – the forces entertainment organisation — and was a member of his local Home Guard. He continued his acting career through the 1940’s and 50’s before landing the role of Private Charles Godfrey in Dads Army in 1968. He was ever-present until the show ended in 1977. By then he was 81 years old.

Arnold Ridley died in 1984 and is buried in Bath Abbey.
(more…)

QotD: The inherent absurdity of “Canadian content”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Lately some have reminded us of the inherent difficulties in defining Canadian content, especially where a work is the product of several collaborators. Is a movie Canadian by virtue of its actors? Director? Crew? Location? Theme? Even as applied to individuals: Should citizenship be the criterion? Birthplace? Residency? Subject matter?

But the real folly of CanCon is not that it is impractical, or prone to abuse, or even unnecessary, though it is all of those things. It is rather that it is nonsensical at its root, in its very purpose – again, so far as anyone can define it. Is the point, after all, artistic or political? But it cannot be artistic: there is no theory of aesthetics that prefers that Canadian artists should make Canadian art that teaches Canadians how Canadian they are.

It is, rather, a political project: the inculcation of national feeling in the public, for the purpose of creating a political community, separate and distinct from the colossus to the south. Without the Maginot Line of CanCon quotas, it is suggested, we would be overwhelmed: first the artists, then the country.

But note the assumptions built into this emotive appeal: that a separate nationality cannot be maintained without cultural difference; that our cultural differences with the Americans are both sufficient in themselves to justify our statehood and yet so fragile as to be washed away in an instant; that, left to their own choices, Canadians would unhesitatingly choose the products of an incomprehensibly alien culture over their own; and that, by virtue of this diet of foreignism, we would no longer be Who We Are as Canadians. Therefore we must not be left to our own choices.

Which is nonsense, because we would still be Who We Are, even in that hypothetical dystopian future: it might not be Who We Were, but so what? The Who We Are we are now at such pains to preserve is itself vastly different from Who We Were before.

And who, in the end are we? As the comedian Martin Short once put it: “we’re the people who watch a lot of American TV”. The wholesale ingestion of a foreign culture – albeit much of it made by expat Canadians – is an integral part of our distinct national identity, an irony that must forever elude our cultural nationalists.

Andrew Coyne, “The concept of CanCon is pure folly. That’s the problem at the heart of Bill C-11”, The Globe and Mail, 2023-02-08.

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