Meghan Markle

[AC Benus]

4 hours ago, Zombie said:

...another country’s 150 year old out-of-date musical comedy...

 

Zombie dear, we should sit down sometime and review how relevant Gilbert remains on the stage. There is no satire in popular entertainment to beat the spectrum of his 'out-of-date' brilliance. Take Utopia, Ltd. for example. It's about a tropical paradise where everyone is equal, and crime and banks are unheard of, and then they fall victim to English bluster about the  British superiority as a race, culture and "system", bringing misery and heartache down upon the people. Now, if that's not apt metaphor for what brought about Britex, nothing is  

As for culture, if one wants to see a performance of the stage work of Arne, Climenti, Ethel Smyth, Balfe and a host of other British composers, one has to travel overseas. (fortunately for us...you do a good job at keeping Benjamin Britten all to yourself...) It's the same in France, and in America - always the imported seeds gets the careful germination while the native blooms are neglected.      

Edited April 30, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

11 hours ago, Zombie said:

Ah, an American outsider’s offensively stereotypical view of an ancient culture.

Maybe.

The Mikado was never written, performed or intended for an American audience, let alone to be performed in America through the cultural lens of contemporary American society and the myriad of multicultural issues currently in play in the US.  No, it was written, performed and intended to be performed as a comic satire on Britain, British politics and British institutions. It is a nineteenth century piece of frothy light comedy entertainment written for an English Victorian audience.

There has been a long established English satirical tradition of oblique self-mocking by setting characters in a different time and/or place at least since Shakespeare, when to do otherwise could have severely impacted on life expectancy...

G&S were less concerned about losing their heads than selling lots of tickets to audiences all over the country and getting them to enjoy the satire regardless of individual politics - which would have been difficult, perhaps impossible, had the setting been in Victorian England.

Actually, Mikado was premiered on the rooftop garden of Tony Faust's restaurant in Saint Louis. Sullivan was traveling to California to pick up his orphaned nephew from San Fransisco, and on the way back, allowed a friend of his to stage the first showing of the score. Sullivan had it with him because they always premiered their work in America. Two weeks after it was staged in Saint Louis, it opened in New York. 

[AC Benus]

14 hours ago, BrunswickSq said:

I recommend the operetta The Mikado, in particular the functionary Pooh-bah.

hehe, "...And Chief Rabbi..."

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Zombie said:

Of course you have every right to be offended by anything you choose to be offended by.

The question, here, is what are you choosing to take offence about? Some American musical theatre’s interpretation of another country’s 150 year old out-of-date musical comedy? Or why America has any interest in British cultural entertainment like G&S when, unlike Shakespeare which has universal themes, Gilbert’s writing has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to anything American?

And I’m puzzled why you struck out your own word “ancient”.

Offense is not always something we choose. There are times when things are so inherently offensive you have no choice, but to be offended.

And I struck out ‘ancient’ because the original reference was to Japan, but you changed it to England which is a much, much younger realm, by making all those references to your own country.

[Zombie]

37 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

Must have been written by an Englishman (and yes, obviously a man wrote such crap ). But when the crown-subjects of the UK finally get a Constitution and full 'citizenship' in the for of a Bill of Rights (or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) to protect them from snobs, Lords, potentates, and corporations, then we can talk about the topic again.  

The United States, being a relatively new nation, adopted and adapted much of its legal framework from the legal framework that had already been developed in England over centuries of internal strife and civil wars - why try to invent the wheel from scratch?

So England already had its Bill of Rights, a key constitutional document safeguarding individual freedoms and passed into law in 1689 a century before the United States.

And before that, the Habeas Corpus Act, 1679, setting out legal protections for the individual against the State.

And before that, the Petition of Right, in 1628, which set out various other protections for the individual against the State.

And before, that Magna Carta... blah blah

And ALL of these English laws protecting individual freedoms were of significant influence to the framers of the United States Constitution.

So please don’t misrepresent the United States as the fount of individual freedoms.

It isn’t. 
 

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by Zombie

[Zombie]

31 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

Zombie dear, we should sit down sometime and review how relevant Gilbert remains on the stage. There is no satire in popular entertainment to beat the spectrum of his 'out-of-date' brilliance. Take Utopia, Ltd. for example. It's about a tropical paradise where everyone is equal, and crime and banks are unheard of, and then they fall victim to English bluster about the  British superiority as a race, culture and "system", bringing misery and heartache down upon the people. Now, if that's not apt metaphor for what brought about Britex, nothing is  

As for culture, if one wants to see a performance of the stage work of Arne, Climenti, Ethel Smyth, Balfe and a host of other British composers, one has to travel it overseas. (fortunately for us...you do a good job at keeping Benjamin Britten all to yourself...) It's the same in France, and in America - always the imported seeds gets the careful germination while the native blooms are neglected.      

Yes, you do have a point. Another example is Henry Purcell - I believe the US has a special day set aside in his honour, while in his home country most citizens probably think Purcell is a washing powder...

 

 

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by Zombie

[Zombie]

15 minutes ago, droughtquake said:

Offense is not always something we choose. There are times when things are so inherently offensive you have no choice, but to be offended.

And I struck out ‘ancient’ because the original reference was to Japan, but you changed it to England which is a much, much younger realm, by making all those references to your own country.

No, I meant Japan as in your original sentence.

Offense is an emotion. It is usually taken not given.

The post you took offence over had no malicious intent. You chose to take offence.

Children generally can’t control their emotions, but adults generally can.

The whole issue of offence is an important subject that should perhaps be discussed in a dedicated thread, not here. Sadly, it will probably have to be in The Pit
 

 

[AC Benus]

1 hour ago, Zombie said:

The United States, being a relatively new nation, adopted and adapted much of its legal framework from the legal framework that had already been developed in England over centuries of internal strife and civil wars - why try to invent the wheel from scratch?

So England already had its Bill of Rights, a key constitutional document safeguarding individual freedoms and passed into law in 1689 a century before the United States.

And before that, the Habeas Corpus Act, 1679, setting out legal protections for the individual against the State.

And before that, the Petition of Right, in 1628, which set out various other protections for the individual against the State.

And before, that Magna Carta... blah blah

And ALL of these English laws protecting individual freedoms were of significant influence to the framers of the United States Constitution.

So please don’t misrepresent the United States as the fount of individual freedoms.

It isn’t. 
 

 

Oh, so all the CCTV cameras will be going, because the subjects are so well legally protected. It's about time.

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by AC Benus

[AC Benus]

1 hour ago, Zombie said:

And before that, the Habeas Corpus Act, 1679, setting out legal protections for the individual against the State.

And before that, the Petition of Right, in 1628, which set out various other protections for the individual against the State.

And before, that Magna Carta... blah blah

 

Naturally, I have to assume, you know these statues were designed protect to "people" (meaning lords) from the rabble and crown. Of course you would have to know this, right?

As for the 1689 Act, please name it so I can look it up. Concerning for the actual Constitution that protects ordinary Americans, it was based on the Iroquois Constitution and the great Indian nation of five tribes in the North East, as written about by Washington himself. 

https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/democracy-and-iroquois-constitution

As for English Common Law, yes, sadly, we were burdened with that at the beginning, including the hanging Gay people, so...thanks for that

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by AC Benus

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, AC Benus said:

Oh, so all the CCTV cameras will be going, because the subjects are so well legally protected. It's about time.

But how would Torchwood be able to track suspects as they race around Cardiff????
;–)

Spoiler

Yes, I know Torchwood is fiction. Cardiff is in Wales, not England. And it’s impossible to hack into the cameras to get a live feed as well as jump from camera to camera to figure out, in real time, where the suspect is going.

But U.N.I.T. is real, right?

;–)

[Zombie]

5 hours ago, AC Benus said:

Oh, so all the CCTV cameras will be going, because the subjects are so well legally protected. It's about time.

 

Ah yes, the joys of using 18th century law to regulate 21st century technology. Well good luck with that - it must make US lawyers very happy. 

 

Here in musty fusty old UK - which apparently has never had a Bill of Rights despite inconvenient documentary evidence to the contrary - we prefer to update our laws to keep up to date with the times.

 

Now of course this is all very interesting, but maybe we should pay more attention to GA rules and move potentially contentious discussions like this to The Pit?

 

 

Edited April 30, 2020 by Zombie

[Zombie]

11 hours ago, AC Benus said:

Naturally, I have to assume, you know these statues were designed protect to "people" (meaning lords) from the rabble and crown. Of course you would have to know this, right?

As for the 1689 Act, please name it so I can look it up. Concerning for the actual Constitution that protects ordinary Americans, it was based on the Iroquois Constitution and the great Indian nation of five tribes in the North East, as written about by Washington himself. 

https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/democracy-and-iroquois-constitution

As for English Common Law, yes, sadly, we were burdened with that at the beginning, including the hanging Gay people, so...thanks for that

 

Not sure what your point is. The English legal system - on which most of the US legal system is based - has evolved over nearly 900 years.

It seems somewhat unreasonable to chastise a historic process of evolution and development of a legal system over the centuries that, with a few trips along the way, has more or less been kept up to date with political and societal changes over that time. I’m not aware of any legal system that sprang into being in the 12th century, fully formed and ready for the 21st century. Even the US Constitution has needed several amendments during the course of a mere 250 years...

Sorry to correct you, but the US still uses the English common law system.

 

Edit to add

Just noticed you asked for the name of the 1689 Act so you can “look it up”. Well I did give it, but I’ll repeat it - it’s the Bill of Rights. Your founding fathers couldn’t think up a better name so they copied it and used it as the model for the US version

https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/parliamentaryauthority/revolution/collections1/collections-glorious-revolution/billofrights/

If you want to pursue this interesting discussion I again suggest it should be moved to The Pit. This is not the right forum

 

 

 

Edited May 1, 2020 by Zombie

[Talo Segura]

22 hours ago, AC Benus said:

Must have been written by an Englishman (and yes, obviously a man wrote such crap ).

The list ranking of democratic countries is compiled by a branch of The Economist, a UK financial journal. The branch is called the Economic Intelligence Unit, and collects and analyses data, basically a series of questions, sixty, to determine how democratic a country truly is. I would imagine the EIU is a team of people of both sexes. You probably don't believe what you're saying, that it's crap, but I can't tell if you are serious or joking. Anyhow, by clicking the Wiki links you can read everything about the EIU and how they establish their rankings, as well as what is meant by a flawed democracy. I know that there is a widely held belief that the USA is the cradle of democracy, that it epitomises democracy, the reality doesn't quite match up.

Edited May 1, 2020 by Talo Segura

[wildone]

Looks like Meghan has lost most of the points of law that she was basing her case on. Without those being allowed in court, should she just drop it?

https://ca.yahoo.com/style/meghan-markle-high-court-ruling-mail-on-sunday-111327084.html

Quote

In the ruling, Mr Justice Warby said the parts of Meghan’s case which should be struck out include allegations “the defendant acted dishonestly, and in bad faith”, and “deliberately dug up or stirred up conflict between the claimant and her father”.

Claims she was distressed by an “obvious agenda of publishing intrusive or offensive stories about [her] intended to portray her in a false and damaging light” are also struck out.

Mr Justice Warby said the argument presented by the duchess’s team of dishonesty was “not essential” to her case of breach of copyright, and that it was “inadequately pleaded”.