HereAndGone2
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User ID: 4074
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
There's a difference between "the bald-headed eagle is a symbol of the American nation" and "the Ferengi symbolise Yankee traders". I'm with Tolkien in that interview: no duh the White Tree symbolises Gondor, the way the Union Jack symbolises Great Britain or Uncle Sam symbolises America. That's straightforward representation.
Symbolism of the type he meant is different, it is that "The five wizards are the five senses" and then everyone argues over is Gandalf sight or hearing. That's not what he meant, and if the interviewer thought he was being ever so clever, I have to say no he wasn't.
People were going "well obviously the One Ring is the atomic bomb" and he had to explain "I invented this before ever anyone even heard of atomic bombs". That's the facile, surface reading of "symbolism" that he hated. Lewis meant Aslan to symbolise Jesus in a direct parallel, but Tolkien (despite earnest commentators) did not mean "Gandalf is Jesus, they both died and were resurrected".
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Seeing as I'm off on a Tolkien tangent, and with the third season of Rings of Power lurking out there in post-production, here are some of his comments about the proposed film version of LOTR:
1957 letters to Rayner Unwin
(1)
You will receive on Monday the copy of the ‘Story Line’ or synopsis of the proposed film version of The Lord of the Rings. I could not get it off yesterday …
The ‘Story Line’ is (as might be expected) on a much lower level of art and perceptiveness than the pictorial material. It is in some points bad, and unacceptable, but is not irremediable, if the author of it (a certain Morton Grady Zimmerman) is open to criticism and direction. The ending is badly muffed. Though a lot of time is said to have gone into it, it reads like a production of haste, after a single reading, & without further reference to text. (My criticisms are not directed to the orc-idiom in which it is written, but to the effect which, it appears to me, the directions would have in a visual presentation – not to mention dialogue.) Mr Ackerman’s line of talk was that a big object to the group was ‘pleasing the author’. I have indicated to him that will not be easy.
Quite crudely: displeasing the author requires a cash equivalent! Only the prospect of a very large financial profit would make me swallow some of the things in this script! But I had the impression that there is not much ‘money’ in this proposition. In that case they had better be a bit more artistic!
An abridgement by selection with some good picture-work would be pleasant, & perhaps worth a good deal in publicity; but the present script is rather a compression with resultant over-crowding and confusion, blurring of climaxes, and general degradation: a pull-back towards more conventional ‘fairy-stories’. People gallop about on Eagles at the least provocation; Lórien becomes a fairycastle with ‘delicate minarets’, and all that sort of thing.
But I am quite prepared to play ball, if they are open to advice – and if you decide that the thing is genuine, and worthwhile.
(2)
Ackerman. What a letter! Just like the man, when I met him. But I came to the conclusion then that he was, in spite of his style, a genuine enthusiast … Cobb and Lackey obviously have real talent … and the comparison of Cobb with Rackham is just. Also Cobb’s taste and style seems on the whole to fit the L. R. better than I should have thought possible. I should say that he can be sinister without great distortions. He is certain to prove less good on anything noble or admirable (we all are, and Americans specially). But in any case, the visual art is not of such a superlative order that it could carry the stupidities and vulgarities of the script. And I am afraid we must take a stand there, as you have very clearly indicated: either the script-writer must be humble and co-operative, or his ‘visual’ colleagues must go unpublished.
...My chief criticism of the project, so far, is this. There is an internal dislocation. The chief and special talent of the group obviously lies, and will lie, in the scenic, & pictorial. The script-writer should consider this. On the contrary, he wants feverish action, and simply cuts out parts in which climate and scenery are the chief interest, such as ‘The Ring goes South’ or ‘The Great River’. Whereas the distant view and approach of the 3 sinister mountains, or the unrolling of the Anduin, would be just the things this group would do admirably.
However, we shall see. Grateful as I am, & should be, for the abundance of people who profess enjoyment of The Lord of the Rings, I wish that the commonest reaction of admirers was not the desire to tinker with it! However, a good deal of alteration is inevitable in a change of medium. But the Zimmerman alterations are the wrong way round. In a visual form marvels, like flying on eagles, want reducing not increasing.
(3) 1958 letter
Of course, I will get busy on this at once, now that Easter is over, and the Dutch incense is dissipated. Thank you for the copy of the Story-line, which I will go through again.
I am entirely ignorant of the process of producing an ‘animated picture’ from a book, and of the jargon connected with it. Could you let me know exactly what is a ‘story-line’, and its function in the process?
It is not necessary (or advisable) for me to waste time on mere expressions if these are simply directions to picture-producers. But this document, as it stands, is sufficient to give me grave anxiety about the actual dialogue that (I suppose) will be used. I should say Zimmerman, the constructor of this s-l, is quite incapable of excerpting or adapting the ‘spoken words’ of the book. He is hasty, insensitive, and impertinent.
He does not read books. It seems to me evident that he has skimmed through the L.R. at a great pace, and then constructed his s.l. from partly confused memories, and with the minimum of references back to the original. Thus he gets most of the names wrong in form – not occasionally by casual error but fixedly (always Borimor for Boromir); or he misapplies them: Radagast becomes an Eagle. The introduction of characters and the indications of what they are to say have little or no reference to the book. Bombadil comes in with ‘a gentle laugh’! …
I feel very unhappy about the extreme silliness and incompetence of Z and his complete lack of respect for the original (it seems wilfully wrong without discernible technical reasons at nearly every point). But I need, and shall soon need very much indeed, money, and I am conscious of your rights and interests; so that I shall endeavour to restrain myself, and avoid all avoidable offence. I will send you my remarks, particular and general, as soon as I can; and of course nothing will go to Ackerman except through you and with at least your assent.
(4) 1958 letter to Forrest Ackerman with commentary on the film treatment
If Z and/or others do so, they may be irritated or aggrieved by the tone of many of my criticisms. If so, I am sorry (though not surprised). But I would ask them to make an effort of imagination sufficient to understand the irritation (and on occasion the resentment) of an author, who finds, increasingly as he proceeds, his work treated as it would seem carelessly in general, in places recklessly, and with no evident signs of any appreciation of what it is all about …
The canons of narrative art in any medium cannot be wholly different; and the failure of poor films is often precisely in exaggeration, and in the intrusion of unwarranted matter owing to not perceiving where the core of the original lies.
Z … has intruded a ‘fairy castle’ and a great many Eagles, not to mention incantations, blue lights, and some irrelevant magic (such as the floating body of Faramir). He has cut the parts of the story upon which its characteristic and peculiar tone principally depends, showing a preference for fights; and he has made no serious attempt to represent the heart of the tale adequately: the journey of the Ringbearers. The last and most important part of this has, and it is not too strong a word, simply been murdered.
Bonus "why didn't the Eagles just fly the company to Mordor?" answer
Here we meet the first intrusion of the Eagles. I think they are a major mistake of Z, and without warrant.
The Eagles are a dangerous ‘machine’. I have used them sparingly, and that is the absolute limit of their credibility or usefulness. The alighting of a Great Eagle of the Misty Mountains in the Shire is absurd; it also makes the later capture of G. by Saruman incredible, and spoils the account of his escape. (One of Z’s chief faults is his tendency to anticipate scenes or devices used later, thereby flattening the tale out.) Radagast is not an Eaglename, but a wizard’s name; several eagle-names are supplied in the book. These points are to me important.
...At the bottom of the page, the Eagles are again introduced. I feel this to be a wholly unacceptable tampering with the tale. ‘Nine Walkers’ and they immediately go up in the air! The intrusion achieves nothing but incredibility, and the staling of the device of the Eagles when at last they are really needed. It is well within the powers of pictures to suggest, relatively briefly, a long and arduous journey, in secrecy, on foot, with the three ominous mountains getting nearer.
Just imagine what he would have thought of McKay and Payne's shrunken distances so Khazad-dum is only a stroll away from Eregion! Or the magic teleporting so people cover vast distances in hours not days! Or, of course, the layout of the Numenorean ships where they can stow all the horses, troops, supplies, etc. below in the vast, TARDIS like holds.
To get back to Tolkien, here is his explanation of where the word came from and early thoughts on The Problem of Orcs:
(1) Various letters of 1954
Orcs (the word is as far as I am concerned actually derived from Old English orc ‘demon’, but only because of its phonetic suitability) are nowhere clearly stated to be of any particular origin. But since they are servants of the Dark Power, and later of Sauron, neither of whom could, or would, produce living things, they must be ‘corruptions’. They are not based on direct experience of mine; but owe, I suppose, a good deal to the goblin tradition (goblin is used as a translation in The Hobbit, where orc only occurs once, I think), especially as it appears in George MacDonald, except for the soft feet which I never believed in. The name has the form orch (pl. yrch) in Sindarin and uruk in the Black Speech.
(2)
Your preference of goblins to orcs involves a large question and a matter of taste, and perhaps historical pedantry on my part. Personally I prefer Orcs (since these creatures are not ‘goblins’, not even the goblins of George MacDonald, which they do to some extent resemble). Also I now deeply regret having used Elves, though this is a word in ancestry and original meaning suitable enough. But the disastrous debasement of this word, in which Shakespeare played an unforgiveable part, has really overloaded it with regrettable tones, which are too much to overcome. I hope in the Appendices to Vol. III to be able to include a note ‘On translation’ in which the matter of equivalences and my uses may be made clearly. My difficulty has been that, since I have tried to present a kind of legendary and history of a ‘forgotten epoch’, all the specific terms were in a foreign language, and no precise equivalents exist in English
(3) Draft of unsent letter
Treebeard does not say that the Dark Lord ‘created’ Trolls and Orcs. He says he ‘made’ them in counterfeit of certain creatures pre-existing. There is, to me, a wide gulf between the two statements, so wide that Treebeard’s statement could (in my world) have possibly been true. It is not true actually of the Orcs – who are fundamentally a race of ‘rational incarnate’ creatures, though horribly corrupted, if no more so than many Men to be met today. ...But if they ‘fell’, as the Diabolus Morgoth did, and started making things ‘for himself, to be their Lord’, these would then ‘be’, even if Morgoth broke the supreme ban against making other ‘rational’ creatures like Elves or Men. They would at least ‘be’ real physical realities in the physical world, however evil they might prove, even ‘mocking’ the Children of God. They would be Morgoth’s greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote ‘irredeemably bad’; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making – necessary to their actual existence – even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God’s and ultimately good.) But whether they could have ‘souls’ or ‘spirits’ seems a different question; and since in my myth at any rate I do not conceive of the making of souls or spirits, things of an equal order if not an equal power to the Valar, as a possible ‘delegation’, I have represented at least the Orcs as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodelling and corrupting them, not making them. That God would ‘tolerate’ that, seems no worse theology than the toleration of the calculated dehumanizing of Men by tyrants that goes on today.
(4)
Some reviewers have called the whole thing simple-minded, just a plain fight between Good and Evil, with all the good just good, and the bad just bad. ...But in any case this is a tale about a war, and if war is allowed (at least as a topic and a setting) it is not much good complaining that all the people on one side are against those on the other. Not that I have made even this issue quite so simple: there are Saruman, and Denethor, and Boromir; and there are treacheries and strife even among the Orcs.
(5) Notes on 1956 review by Auden of LOTR
Denethor despised lesser men, and one may be sure did not distinguish between orcs and the allies of Mordor. If he had survived as victor, even without use of the Ring, he would have taken a long stride towards becoming himself a tyrant, and the terms and treatment he accorded to the deluded peoples of east and south would have been cruel and vengeful.
(6) Letter of 1957
There is no ‘symbolism’ or conscious allegory in my story. Allegory of the sort ‘five wizards = five senses’ is wholly foreign to my way of thinking. There were five wizards and that is just a unique part of history. To ask if the Orcs ‘are’ Communists is to me as sensible as asking if Communists are Orcs.
And this is where we get the "racist Tolkien!" stuff from:
(7) 1958 letter to Forrest Ackerman about his proposed film treatment of LOTR (I will never not be tickled by the idea that Forry and his entourage turned up on Tolkien's doorstep full of misguided enthusiasm to do an animated version)
Why does Z put beaks and feathers on Orcs!? (Orcs is not a form of Auks.) The Orcs are definitely stated to be corruptions of the ‘human’ form seen in Elves and Men. They are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.
(Z is screenwriter Morton Grady Zimmerman. And Tolkien's criticisms of him seem even more applicable to McKay and Payne)
(8) Draft of unsent letter, 1958
The Fall or corruption, therefore, of all things in it and all inhabitants of it, was a possibility if not inevitable. Trees may ‘go bad’ as in the Old Forest; Elves may turn into Orcs, and if this required the special perversive malice of Morgoth, still Elves themselves could do evil deeds.
(9) Letter of 1965
[Auden had asked Tolkien if the notion of the Orcs, an entire race that was irredeemably wicked, was not heretical.] With regard to The Lord of the Rings, I cannot claim to be a sufficient theologian to say whether my notion of orcs is heretical or not. I don’t feel under any obligation to make my story fit with formalized Christian theology, though I actually intended it to be consonant with Christian thought and belief, which is asserted somewhere, Book Five, page 190, where Frodo asserts that the orcs are not evil in origin. We believe that, I suppose, of all human kinds and sorts and breeds, though some appear, both as individuals and groups to be, by us at any rate, unredeemable
Bonus note on origin of "warg": (10) Letter to Gene Wolfe (yes, that Gene Wolfe) 1966
Orc I derived from Anglo-Saxon, a word meaning a demon, usually supposed to be derived from the Latin Orcus – Hell. But I doubt this, though the matter is too involved to set out here. Warg is simple. It is an old word for wolf, which also had the sense of an outlaw or hunted criminal. This is its usual sense in surviving texts. I adopted the word had a good sound for the meaning, as a name for this particular brand of demonic wolf in the story.
I have to give his description of Forry turning up, it's too good to leave out:
(11) Letter of 1957:
It may amuse you to hear that (unsolicited) I suddenly found myself the winner of the International Fantasy Award, presented (as it says) ‘as a fitting climax to the Fifteenth World Science Fiction Convention’. What it boiled down to was a lunch at the Criterion yesterday with speeches, and the handing over of an absurd ‘trophy’. A massive metal ‘model’ of an upended Space-rocket (combined with a Ronson lighter). But the speeches were far more intelligent, especially that of the introducer: Clemence Dane, a massive woman of almost Sitwellian presence. Sir Stanley himself was present. Not having any immediate use for the trophy (save publicity=sales=cash) I deposited it in the window of 40 Museum Street. A back-wash from the Convention was a visit from an American film-agent (one of the adjudicating panel) who drove out all the way in a taxi from London to see me last week, filling 76 S[andfield] with strange men and stranger women – I thought the taxi would never stop disgorging. But this Mr Ackerman brought some really astonishingly good pictures (Rackham rather than Disney) and some remarkable colour photographs. They have apparently toured America shooting mountain and desert scenes that seem to fit the story. The Story Line or Scenario was, however, on a lower level. In fact bad. But it looks as if business might be done. Stanley U. & I have agreed on our policy: Art or Cash. Either very profitable terms indeed; or absolute author’s veto on objectionable features or alterations.
(12) Letter of 1957
I have today been visited by a Mr (Forrest J.) Ackerman, acting as an agent for three persons interested in filming The Lord of the Rings. In this work they have apparently been engaged for some six months … I have seen the specimen drawings of the artist (a Mr Cobb) and consider them admirable … I have with me the Story Line, which I will send you (on Friday I hope), when I have properly considered it. At a glance it shows a great deal more feeling for the story (in the terms of this sort of thing) than anything the BBC contrived.
("Cobb" was Roy Cobb, 19 year old cartoonist who was a junior artist at Walt Disney Studios)
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
You offered marriage with the strings attached so that she'd refuse it, but that way you could feel like you were doing her a favour instead of acting like a heel. You wanted her trotting around after you like a little dog, but you disliked her enough not to want anything serious. I do think she's better off without you, and you may be better off without her. A woman you dislike, feel contempt for, and can't ever respect but damn it she's a human female, you're a straight human male, your biology goes "bong!" around her, and you resent the hell out of that - that's not a situation that's good for anyone involved.
The Harry Potter goblins were a representation of Jews written by a Gentile.
The Harry Potter goblins are the gnomes of Zurich. I'm equally fed-up with people pointing and yelling about anti-Semitism because they so desperately want to be offended and wrap themselves in the mantle of persecuted martyrdom, or they so desperately need caricatures to feed the conspiracy theory about Jewish World Domination Plot.
The Grinch and Scrooge are metaphors for Jews written by Christians telling a story of their Conversion to Christianity through Christmas.
Scrooge is a metaphor for Christianity. This is so wildly off the bat that you must never have read the book. Dickens popularised the secular Christmas. The three Ghosts are not Christian saints or representative figures, Scrooge never darkens the door of a church, and secular charity is about as religious as this new festive feasting and partying Christmastide gets. Tell me Mr. Fezziwig's ball is in fact midnight Mass, I dare you.
Dickens wrote Jewish characters who were offensive to Jewish readers. Scrooge is not Jewish.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Sorry guys, I do have to laugh at all the complaints about how easy women have it and how unfair it is that you (singular or plural) can't get your dicks wet.
It's not women's fault male sexuality is so easy (boobs! ass! young!), blame evolution or whatever is the current favourite punching bag.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
See, you don't want to marry her, and that's fine (and indeed may be the sane choice). But you do want to use her, and here is where I get off the bus and hop aboard the Dumb Bitch wagon.
Fucking her around just so you can feel superior and post about it on here is not cool, man. You're being honest about being what, in older times, would have been called a cad or a hound. But it's still shitty behaviour. And the worst thing is, this post drips with you wanting to look cool while you're doing it. You're louche, you're rakish, you are that artfully distressed character in an indie movie wearing sunglasses indoors and smoking cigarettes while everyone else is giving up tobacco or turning to vaping or nicotine patches. Yeah, you're mean and nasty, but don't you just look so Hunter S. Thompson while you're being that way?
It's easy to describe another person like you described her and I'm describing you in order to score Coolness Points for Hip Writing. It's not good for the soul, though.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Perhaps OP meant a different trollop 🤣
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Ah, but that's the fake tomb, you know? Not the real family tomb with the bones and His wife and kids and third cousins and aunts by marriage all with the names graven on the ossuary! The one good thing about the Avatar movies is that they distracted James Cameron from making more of these "really true truly real" documentaries.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Now you know what women have to put up with. For all you guys complaining about women not responding on dating apps, imagine our friend above times a hundred.
Abelard was castrated because he fucked around (literally, he got her pregnant) with the niece of a Very Important Guy who didn't appreciate that kind of hands-on approach to tutoring (today Abelard would be criticised for power imbalance, grooming, age gap - he was 36, she was 15-17 years of age, of his pupil). They engaged in a secret marriage in order to satisfy her uncle but kept it secret because if Abelard wanted to become a priest (to have a career in the church) clerical celibacy was becoming necessary.
Uncle was not happy about all this and took action:
Fulbert, infuriated that Heloise had been taken from his house and possibly believing that Abelard had disposed of her at Argenteuil in order to be rid of her, arranged for a band of men to break into Abelard's room one night and castrate him. In legal retribution for this vigilante attack, members of the band were punished, and Fulbert, scorned by the public, took temporary leave of his canon duties (he does not appear again in the Paris cartularies for several years).
End result is that Héloïse ends up in a convent and Abelard remains a monk, but cannot be ordained to the priesthood if he is castrated (there are rubrics around bastardy etc. and what disqualifies someone from the priesthood, including being a eunuch). This doesn't mean he can't continue to be wellknown, he already had a reputation as a theologian and was famous and continued to be, but since he couldn't be a priest this disbarred him from advancement to such offices as bishop, etc. but he did become abbot of a monastery, though his career continued to be controversial due to his alleged heretical teachings.
Truly a case of "fuck around and find out".
As for Kamala, certainly stories about her past were floating around for a long time (e.g. I saw it mentioned online that her nickname had been "Heels Up Harris") and it came to the point that Willie Brown had to issue a denial that he promoted her only because she was his girlfriend (and indeed, later she allegedly warned him off*). Being fair to Willy, yeah he pretty much did promote her because she was his girlfriend and that got her the start in political career, but he also promoted guys as well for being loyal to him. Old-school politician who rewarded his allies and loyalists when the fat spoils were to be divided upon gaining power.
I think the reason it didn't get play this time was (1) it was old news (2) the media and online media were working hard to squash any such distasteful racist and sexist attacks upon the Democratic Saviour From Evil Trump (remember all the havering over "how very dare you say she was border czar, she was no such thing, the Republicans are lying when they call her that"?)
*"Brown's romantic relationship with Alameda County deputy district attorney Kamala Harris preceded his appointment of Harris to two California state commissions in the mid-1990s. The San Francisco Chronicle called the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission patronage positions. When the appointments became a political issue in Harris's 2003 race for District Attorney, she responded: "Whether you agree or disagree with the system, I did the work". Brown's relationship with Harris gained renewed attention in early 2019 after she had become a U.S. senator and ran for president. Brown addressed the questions by publishing a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle titled "Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what?" He wrote that he may have "influenced" her career by appointing her to boards and supporting her run for District Attorney, but added that he had also influenced the careers of other politicians. Brown noted that the difference between Harris and other politicians he had helped was that "Harris is the only one who, after I helped her, sent word that I would be indicted if I 'so much as jaywalked' while she was D.A. That's politics for ya."
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
It's about as official as any of those "tomb of Jesus discovered" documentaries that were all the rage on the Discovery Channel years back. Possible blood sample taken from "I cut off this piece of material from the sofa in Hitler's bunker" eighty years ago, not stored in any way you could consider preservative of DNA samples, for clickbait documentary hosted by TV pop-sci host who apparently will appear for the opening of an envelope.
Yes, I'm convinced!
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
I sort of had comments on this, but my main take-away impression is: please stop trying to be a cut-rate The Last Psychiatrist.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
C'mon, this is uncharitable, isn't it? Shouldn't you know better?
Yeah, imagine confusing Trollope with Dickens who was prevailed upon successfully to change his depiction of fictional Jewish characters, from the criminal Fagin in "Oliver Twist" to the saintly Riah in "Our Mutual Friend" after a Jewish lady wrote to him.
Piers Morgan is a little bit complicated. He's middle-class, but not really upper middle-class. He's not as posh as he sounds, turns out he's half-Irish (so ironically both he and Fuentes were raised Catholic, at this stage I am starting to believe in the Papist World Domination Plot given how many in the public eye turn out unexpectedly to be "yeah Catholic background/raised Catholic") and only gets the double-barrelled name from his stepfather, who was a pub landlord:
Piers Morgan was born as Piers Stefan O'Meara in Guildford, Surrey, on 30 March 1965, the son of Vincent Eamonn O'Meara, an Irish dentist, and Gabrielle Georgina Sybille (née Oliver), an English woman who raised Morgan as a Catholic. A few months after his birth, the family moved to Newick, East Sussex. His father died when Morgan was 11 months old; his mother later married Glynne Pughe-Morgan, a Welsh pub landlord who later worked in the meat distribution business, and he took his stepfather's surname.
So while "Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan" sounds rather posh, he's not really. He's probably personally a liberal, but he worked for the Murdoch newspapers so publicly he pushed a somewhat down-market pro-Tory line and mostly adopts whatever will grab headlines, so that means controversial/clickbait takes, be that very to the left or very to the right, whichever sells best at the moment. Here's a typical example of him talking out of both sides of his mouth:
Morgan identified as a supporter of the Conservative Party in a 1994 interview, saying he was "still basically a Tory", but expressed admiration for the recently elected Labour Party leader Tony Blair, saying "he's not radical, speaks well and makes sense".
Seemingly he's voted for both Conservatives and Labour candidates, depending on whatever the phase of the moon at the time was (or something):
Morgan voted for the Animal Welfare Party in the 2015 general election due to his low opinion of all the main party leaders. He voted against Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum but voted for the Kensington Conservative candidate in the 2019 general election because of Boris Johnson's commitment to honour the result of the referendum. Morgan has also previously voted for the Labour Party. Following Labour's victory in the 2024 general election, he called leader Keir Starmer "a good, decent, hard-working, self-made man". In November 2024, he identified as a centrist, adding "woke liberals are too loony-left for me".
So he started his career in journalism working for the Murdoch press, which is working-class/down-market pro-Tory right-wing. The News of the World was a pure scandal sheet, in my childhood during the late 60s/70s it was vaguely disreputable, racy type of paper you wouldn't admit to reading but bought on Sundays for all the scandal-mongering:
The News of the World concentrated in particular on celebrity scoops, gossip and populist news. Its somewhat prurient focus on sex scandals gained it the nickname Screws of the World. In its last decade it had a reputation for exposing celebrities' drug use, sexual peccadilloes, or criminal acts, by using insiders and journalists in disguise to provide video or photographic evidence, and covert phone hacking in ongoing police investigations.
Morgan began to work as a freelance at The Sun in 1988, at this point dropping his double-barrelled name. He told Hunter Davies in December 1994 that he was personally recruited by Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie to work on the newspaper's show business column "Bizarre", his first high-profile post. Although he was not a fan of pop music, he was considered skilled at self-publicity and became the column's main writer.
...In January 1994, he became editor of the News of the World after being appointed to the job by Rupert Murdoch. ...In this period, the newspaper led with a series of scoops for which Morgan credited a highly efficient newsdesk and publicist Max Clifford.
Morgan then leaves the centre-right paper for a centre-left paper, claiming he resigned of his own accord but more a case of "jump before he was pushed":
Morgan left this post in 1995 ...The incident was reported to have contributed to Morgan's decision to leave for the Daily Mirror editorship.. Morgan's autobiography The Insider states that he left the News of the World for the Mirror of his own choice. It asserts he was an admirer of former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for most of her period of office, making the appointment surprising as the Mirror is a Labour-supporting title.
...[Is involved in several mini-scandals, including allegedly profiting from insider trading stock tips from business journalists for the Mirror, then] In the wake of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, Morgan was sacked as editor of the Daily Mirror "with immediate effect" on 14 May 2004, after refusing to apologise to Sly Bailey, then head of Trinity Mirror, for authorising the newspaper's publication of fake photographs.
He moved into television presenting, and has continued his chameleon-like style of being friends with/never heard of them (according as the wind blows) regarding various celebrities and public figures, e.g. "Morgan was briefly a friend of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex before she became the Duchess of Sussex, but said she cut him off early in her relationship with Prince Harry. He has been a regular critic of the couple since then, alleging they are hypocrites and claiming the Duchess is a social climber."
He wore out his welcome in UK media circles, hence the move to the USA. Mostly he has a good nose for controversy and isn't afraid (whether deliberately or not) to look like an idiot in his pursuit of headlines. Because he is such a chameleon, I would say not to take very seriously any stance he holds on any topic, since give him ten minutes and he'll swing to the opposite position if that's more tenable for public interest/attention.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
That he's even got a bishop involved is still a lot more attachment to the church than I would have expected. Imagine (let me pull someone's name out of thin air) Gavin Newsom getting a rap on the knuckles from his local bishop; although Gav was allegedly raised Catholic, I don't think I've heard bishops rapping Gav over the knuckles even the way Pelosi was rapped.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
It is entirely possible to be working and paid under the table while claiming social welfare benefits and you don't have to be an immigrant. Many criminals in Ireland have hundreds of thousands in cash and assets while claiming the dole, it turns out when the court case eventually makes its way to trial.
(Link one)
In 2017, CAB raided the home of Kenneth Carpenter and his partner, Elaine Byrne, and seized a €2,600 Chanel handbag, four high-end watches worth €100,000 and a Brown Thomas Platinum card that requires holders spend at least €5,000 a year instore. The couple's only legitimate declared income was Elaine Byrne's allowance as a lone parent.
An early social welfare target was James Gantley, a father-of-four who found his dole payments blocked by CAB in 1998. The court heard evidence of property transactions of more than €200,000, a villa in Spain and €94,000 in a biscuit tin. Mr Gantley, years later, pleaded guilty to "voicing" the ransom demand in a botched attempt to extort money from a delivery firm.
Earlier this year, gardai in Drogheda announced they planned to target feuding drugs trafficking gangs that have terrorised the Louth town by going after their social welfare payments.
Its most recent annual report showed that of the €5.6m CAB returned to the State last year, €323,000 arose from social welfare overpayments, while it also recovered €2.2m seized as the proceeds of crime and just over €3m in taxes.
Mr Ryan's thesis finds that between 1996 and 2006, CAB's social welfare activities has generated savings to the exchequer to the tune of €7,808,753.04 and received recovery payments of €4,066,136.36.
"Whilst considerably less than the financial income generated from forfeiture of assets it nonetheless represents a significant denial of cash flow to criminality from an area of the bureau that does not receive significant attention in wider academic or media discourse," it said.
The thesis, "The examination of how the methods employed by the Criminal Assets Bureau move Ireland in a new direction of crime control", was completed as part of Mr Ryan's doctoral studies at the University of Limerick.
(Link two)
McInerney has convictions for drugs, theft, assault and passing counterfeit currency.
He bought the farmhouse and land at an auction for €233,000 in 2010 and paid a cash deposit of €23,300.
McInerney was on social welfare but claimed he got the money through the sale of another property, investments in Lanzarote, the sale of a Toyota Land Cruiser.
He also said that he had found "€5,000-€6,000" in another house he bought.
He said he got the cash deposit through a combination of "horse trading" money which was "under the counter" and two people, "Marie" and "Cha" he met for a loan of €156,000, but "didn't sign any forms at that meeting".
(Link three)
A father of five faces jail for unlawfully claiming almost €283,000 in social welfare payments uncovered following a Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) investigation.
Judge Keenan Johnson remarked on the irony that John McDonagh, 50, Dalton Park, Mullingar, Co Westmeath, has begun repaying the money using funds from his current social welfare payments.
At Mullingar Circuit Criminal Court on Thursday, he imposed sentences totalling six years, but suspended four and a half on the condition McDonagh does not reoffend in the next five years. The prison term was postdated to commence in July.
McDonagh pleaded guilty to theft in connection with the social welfare fraud, unlawfully claiming a total of €282,881 in the Jobseekers Allowance payments from July 2009 until August 2022.
Over the same period, his bank accounts showed he had other lodgements totalling €382,000.
There were €8,000 lodgements in the first year, but the annual figures increased to €85,000 before being detected when he claimed some of that money was from selling cars.
(Link four)
The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) seized more than €116 million worth of assets over 12 years with some €64.4 million transferred to the exchequer as a result of its work during the same period, according to new figures.
…This included €22,209,595 under proceeds of crime legislation, €38,021,925 in taxes and interest collected and €4,213,719 in social welfare recoveries.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Made an honest woman out of her/she made an honest man out of him and now they're having babies. Okay, the circumstances of how they met are terrible by my conservative religious morals but even I can't resist going "Awww" at the conclusion of this story.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
You made the joke before I could. This is oddly heart-warming and wholesome, if very strange; who knew true love began at orgies? Maybe Aella will be the solution to the TFR crisis! 😁
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
If he's a Catholic gay virgin and refraining from sex to be celibate and chaste in line with church teaching, you have now made my opinion of this person (whom I know nothing about) zoom way up.
By contrast, all I know of Pierce Morgan is that he well deserves the Private Eye nickname of Piers Moron and I am surprised anyone is watching/listening to his shows.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Difference is, if you read anything by Casanova, he seems to genuinely have liked women. The famous Don Juan, by contrast, in his fictional portrayal seems to have treated women as notches on his bedpost and to have regarded them with contempt.
Being able to end on friendly terms with your exes will save you from a lot of "they then went to their male relations and claimed he had violated them" vindictiveness, hence why he was able to live to be 73 😁
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
That was the obvious joke, please applaud me for avoiding it 😁
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
Ouch. Nine months? And that's enough to tank her teaching career. To be fair, if the 15 year old guys in her classes are all looking up Teacher's nude scenes that's not going to make for good discipline in the classroom.
These are the downsides people don't consider.
HereAndGone2
1mo ago
The problem is that porn and prostitution, like sports, are where you make a lot of money (if you make it) when you're young but you age out fast (I think for porn there's also the novelty problem, that the consumers want fresh content all the time).
So then you have to have something else to pivot to, when you're still in your 30s/40s (which is relatively young). And for porn actresses, the majority can't act (because that's not the talent they were hired for), so it's extremely hard to break into legitimate acting career.
And so, like the former sports star who blew through his fortune and now is no longer in demand, and who failed at running a business (it often happens, the Plan B of "I'll open my own sports shop/bar" does fall through) and didn't get a gig as a pundit, or a manager, the ex-porn star is left trying to squeeze the last drops of profit out of fading glory.
It's not so much to do with shame and stigma, as it is that nobody loves a fairy when she's forty.
I never knew Marley was a Jewish name. So what nationality or ethnic stereotype does the Dickensian name "M'Choakumchild" represent? If you need to point out to the audience for anti-Semitic stereotypes "No, look, this guy is meant to be Jewish, here's how and why", I think the stereotyping is not working - or maybe you might be wrong.
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