Wodehouse goes Weimar
Friday July 6, 2007
I say, did Pongo Twistleton know this rabbit, what? Jeeves, Jeeves, where are you when the old boys need you? From the obit: Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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he cultivated an air of sophisticated complexity by appearing in women's clothes, set off by lipstick and fishnet stockings. This aura of dangerous "glamour"
Cross dressing suddenly has "an air of sophisticated complexity" ? Or "glamour" even? Since when?
Don't get me wrong, cross dressing has a long if somewhat difficult history, and in my opinion there's nothing much wrong with it if that's all there is to it (which obviously wasn't the case here), but "sophisticated complexity?" It's almost the oldest show in town.
RIP, Count. (He can't really be a count, Germany abolished titles long ago.)
At least he died gruntled.
I think "gilded aimlessness" is one of the most inspired phrases I've read in a long time. But then, right now in the middle of Waugh's *Brideshead Revisted*, and that phrase describes Sebastian perfectly.
I think "gilded aimlessness" is one of the most inspired phrases I've read in a long time. But then, right now in the middle of Waugh's *Brideshead Revisted*, and that phrase describes Sebastian perfectly.
Heh. I'm in the middle of the ITV mini-series of the same (highly recommended, btw, if you like the book) and that's exactly who I thought of too!
(He can't really be a count, Germany abolished titles long ago.)
Technically the titles weren't abolished, just any claim to a special legal status that went with them. I recall writing a report in college about the functioning of NATO, and discovered to my surprise that at the time, the German ambassador was Baron von Richthofen (aka the Red Baron's grand-nephew.)
Technically the titles weren't abolished, just any claim to a special legal status that went with them.
Oh. Is that anything like what the orthopaedic surgeon told me about my knee, that the cartilage will never heal but all the symptoms will go away? :)
"Gilded aimlessness"--now that seems like a worthwhile goal for anyone. All aims do is get you in trouble and they aren't a lot of fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9jPKkqI7n0
What's a "Third" ? Is that a BA equivalent?
Kim M
I love old P.G. too. And Terry Pratchett is his closest modern equivalent. Dry and sly and wise-eyed.
You guys might find this interesting.
http://www.drones.com/orwell.html
Great, just what the GLBT community needed in their corner, a gay male version of Paris Hilton... I truly, truly hope that nobody here believes that all of the GLBT community is like this. As hard as it is to believe, some of us honestly just want to live our lives without thrusting our lifestyles into the public arena. As I have told my friends, if we, as a group, want to demand that the government "stay out of our bedrooms", then we, as a group, must also demand that those who wish to display their private desires in public to "stay in the bedroom", as well.
Oh, and I mean that the GLBT community, not just everybody. Just as you said about that it requires Muslims, not non-Muslims, to reform Islam, it's going to take the members of the GLBT community to reform the GLBT community from what appears as a group of, I hate to say it, selfish hedonists, into a group of people, complete and complex, whose sexual orientation is merely at the other end of the spectrum.
Please don't take this comment to mean that I believe being gay is like a religion, though. It was just an appropriate analogy, given the recent article published by Rod. Frighteningly, I find I'm agreeing with him a little more each day.
Oh I donno, I_Like_Dragyn, we heterosexuals haven't "reformed" our way out of Paris Hilton, Brittney Spears, on and on, so I wouldn't expect the entire GLBT community to suddenly lack nut cases. Why should you, alone among human groups, lack nut cases?
I know tons of GLBT people who are anything but selfish hedonists. That's just a stereotype, and a grossly inaccurate one.
Sophisticated people know that "Count" Bismark isn't any more representative than, say, the British royal family.
Well that's certainly a relief to know. But from what I tend to see, whenever there is a minority - whether it is religious, racial, or sexual, it is sometimes easier to use specific instances as related to the whole. Let's use the example of the percentage of GLBT people, typically expressed in the statement 1 in 10. And let's just say that Von Bismark is the one bad seed of the GLBT community and Paris Hilton is the bad seed for the heterosexual community. It's easier to say that 1 out of 10 is more representative that 1 out of 90.
Still, the acts of an individual should not, in and of themselves, be representative of anybody. Your words are comforting, Susan, and perhaps I was acting a bit preemptively in my desire to smother what could have turned into one of those arguments of "Hey look what those crazy gays do", though looking at it, it was written rather objectively, and I have always had a tendency of slight paranoia.
Maybe Von Bismark is simply weird, sexual orientation aside.
[What's a "Third" ? Is that a BA equivalent?]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_undergraduate_degree_classification
Ah yes, I_Like_Dragyn, one Bismark, one Hilton. But we have MANY nut cases over here on our side. :)
But if you do figure out how to eliminate nut cases from a population of any size at all - short of just shooting them, I mean - please don't hesitate to tell us all, I can think of a lot of groups which could profit by such information.
Is it just me, or does the closing line of the obit...well, go without saying?
Okay, let's ask PBS to bring back the Jeeves and Wooster series with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Frye (sp?)!
As Bugs Bunny would say,
"Jeez, what a maroon..."
Tolerance in this blog is admirable, on some other christian sites gay organizations are regarded as satanic and appearing of homosexual lifestyle defenders usually produces a scandal.
Thanks, masha, we appreciate the complement, and regret that this attitude seems to be so rare.
We do try to be adults here, not always with success of course. But we get along reasonably well.
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