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Reader Comments on an article in The Guardian about Prince Harry and his wife Meghan stepping back from royal duties:
^ Good luck to them.
Extraordinary fuss being made by the tabloid press who have effectively hounded them out of the country.
^ Those that are up in arms about all this are the very same people who hound and hassle them mercilessly. I'd be gone as well.
^ Ms Markle seems to have confused "Royalty" with "celebrity".......
They are two different things. Perhaps she thought that being Royal was an entree to being an "A-List Celebrity"?
Not the first American divorcee to make that mistake.
^ This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards....
^ Bollocks
^ There is no longer any difference between them whatsoever.
^ Yes there is..
Royalty is about duty
Celebrity is about "ME!ME!ME"
^ People want to be entertained. Hence the election of Trump and [Boris] Johnson.
Politics, royalty, business, it's all just performance.
I thought that one of the reasons the Sussexes wanted to
"step back / down / out / call-it-what-you-like"
was because of the constant intrusion of the media into their lives, no doubt started when Harry was a child experiencing his mother's hounding by the press and subsequent violent death.
But whatever they do, it won't be hiding away and getting "normal" jobs. They'll still be celebrities, and making their money from that celebrity. And with celebrity comes press and media focus. There's no having your cake and eating it.
If you want to profit from your celebrity status, you are also signing up for the negative aspects of it, and having your life plastered over the papers, including the bad bits.
Deal with it. Most people don't have such an opportunity to choose which way they make their millions.
^ I don't have millions or even million, but I wouldn't exchange my life for their millions and goldfish lifestyle. I doubt that all the money in the world compensates for being "owned" by the British tabloids.
^ I think they will always be 'celebrities' - aka, being subjected to continuous gutter press hounding and intrusion - whether they welcome that or not. I doubt they will ever be allowed to have a choice about this.
^ I would not want that lifestyle either but it appears that they still want the benefits of celebrity without paying the price of it.
^ They don't need to have a goldfish lifestyle, they could just knuckle down and lead a simple media boring life but they court being in the limelight with their celeb friends, sometimes for good causes but it's their choice otherwise. Now they wish to have it all ways, best of both worlds and all income.
^ Right. With 30 million pounds of my own, and suffering from constant press scrutiny and criticism, I would have been deliriously happy to leave the whole mouldering mess behind. HRHs and all. Just exchanging one puerile circus for another doesn't seem to be the answer.
^ Yes. Kate being as dull as ditchwater example.
Give the media nothing but a smile and a wave. They can get their column inches out of that.
^ I don't think Meghan will escape the tabloids.
Di didn't and she even divorced Charles, dying abroad with photographers in pursuit.
^ The tabloids need their blood.
^ Allegedly Diana was the one courting the tabloids!
^ The UK press won't want to rough it in the Canadian bush.
^ For crying out loud, this nonsense has even infected The Guardian's Jenkins and Jones now!
This national obsession with these irrelevant mannequins is all part of the same snivelling deference that leads to us still electing to PM, in the 21st Century, Old Etonian knobheads.
Cor blimey Sir, spare me a tanner Sir, oh gawd bless you Sir, you're a proper gent Sir!
^ You can't escape it. Went for a coffee with a friend to find a woman holding court and the whole place discussing Harry & Meghan as if they were having a gossip about family friends and actually know anything about them other than media sources. "It's the poor Queen I feel sorry for" said one woman to which there was much tutting and agreement.
My loud FFS got me some really dirty looks.
^ Some evidence, other than the horseshite written in the Daily Heil? You've just imagined there is a story here? Same divide and rule garbage which the billionaire media barons constantly inflict on the public as a diversion. Argue with each other in some manufactured culture war instead of looking at the powerful elite subverting democracy and robbing us blind.
^ Unbelievable that in the C21st this has been accorded more space even in the left leaning Daily Mirror, as well as the rest, than Brexit, the general election, the Labour leadership battle, the seedy, evasive, truth avoiding manoeuvres of Johnson in his private and public life, and Trump's Iranian exploits. I ask you, what other country in the world..... England, a nation of infants.....
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All this Iran stuff -- a New York Times article said yesterday that the advisers who are still left, working with Pres. Trump, presented him with a list of options -- killing Suleimani was one of the options, and a spokesman said advisers were "flabbergasted" when Trump chose the murder option.
My first thought was -- you could avoid being flabbergasted by not including an inflammatory killing as one of the options. Just leave that one out, and show him the other options.
When I used to sell advertising, I would have two or three different advertising plans (X number of ads for the year, at such-and-such price, and an outline of how and when they might use the commercials to the best advantage of their business). The largest money investment got the customer the best per-ad rate, etc. ... I didn't include an option that said "I'm not buying any advertising, screw off."
Of course they could always say that anyway, but -- you know -- don't hand them over the option. Don't suggest your worst-case scenario.
Is it worth it to kill this one guy and now it may go nuclear and the planet and all people on it will be destroyed?
Last night I was listening to You Tube videos, trying to learn what is happening and why.
You can watch any of these videos -- I don't know if they come up if you type them on Google, but they will if you type them on You Tube.
Why the U.S. Military Targeted Qassem Soleimani
Full Warner: America Has To Be Strong But Also Smart
Petraeus Says U.S. had Lost the Element of Deterrence
Col. Wilkerson Speaks Out Against the March To War
------------------------ It was pointed out by several commentators that in 2011 Donald Trump said Pres. Obama would "start a war with Iran to win the 2012 election."
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"Assassination is the extreme form of censorship."
~ George Bernard Shaw
There is a new Netflix movie that I want to discuss, but I have to wait until I know what I want to say about it, or think about it.
One thing about Netflix, and I guess I've said this before -- they are like, "No censorship, so that means we can say or show whatever we want to."
And then my question becomes, "But why do you want to show -- that ??!"
(I'm telling you, if I watch one more series or movie on Netflix and have to see somebody throw up, I'm writin' a letter....)
I'm against censorship, too -- but that doesn't mean we can't refrain from saying or showing ugly or gross stuff.
You can tell a story without shock value.
Some people like "Sons of Anarchy." After hearing its action described to me, I think, "What would fans of that show think of "Dr. Foster" (from the BBC, but it's on Netflix) -- I got all consumed in the drama of that, but -- there are no eyes being gouged out...
Sometimes the characters look sad or deeply worried or suspicious, and sometimes they get into a Lexus (Lexuses-? Lexii-?) and drive away rather quickly.
Oooooooohh...
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I saw Jerry Lewis come on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1984 (on the you tube with "m" in front of it). Mr. Lewis danced and fell -- or almost fell -- and his dancing was somewhat like Michael Jackson's moonwalk -- his shoes sliding as if he can't stop them, but of course it's all choreographed -- quite an active, coordinated comic -- anything to entertain...
He would have been 58 years old that year, I think. He talked about his new heart-healthy diet: Johnny Carson asked him, "What did you have to give up?"
Answer: "Toast and coffee in the morning."
"What do you eat instead of that?"
Jerry Lewis answered, "Salad.
And then later on in the day I have some chicken."
Carson says, "That's all?"
He says, Yes, and he never felt better.
----------------- Google says he'd have cut calories even a little further if he had replaced the chicken with turkey.
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Go on You Tube and type in,
I cannot come to the banquet
and Play...
I cannot come.
I cannot come to the banquet,
Don't trouble me now.
I have married a wife; I have bought me a cow.
I have fields and commitments -- that cost a pretty sum.
Pray, hold me excused, I cannot come.
A certain man held a feast on his fine estate in town.
He laid a festive table, and wore a wedding gown.
He sent invitations to his neighbours far and wide.
But when the meal was ready, each of them replied:
I cannot come.
I cannot come to the banquet,
Don't trouble me now.
I have married a wife; I have bought me a cow.
I have fields and commitments -- that cost a pretty sum.
Pray, hold me excused, I cannot come.
The master rose up in anger, called his servants by name,
Said: "Go into the town, fetch the blind and the lame,
Fetch the peasant and the pauper, for this I have willed,
My banquet must be crowded, and my table must be filled!"
I cannot come!
I cannot come to the banquet,
Don't trouble me now.
I have married a wife; I have bought me a cow.
I have fields and commitments -- that cost a pretty sum.
Pray, hold me excused, I cannot come.
When all the poor had assembled, there was still room to spare,
So the master demanded: "Go search everywhere,
To the highways and the byways, and force them to come in.
My table must be filled before the banquet can begin."
(I cannot come.)
I cannot come to the banquet,
Don't trouble me now.
I have married a wife; I have bought me a cow.
I have fields and commitments -- that cost a pretty sum.
Pray, hold me excused, I cannot come.
Now, God has written a lesson for the rest of mankind,
If we're slow in responding, he may leave us behind.
He's preparing a banquet for that great and glorious day --
When the Lord and Master calls us, be certain not to say:
I cannot come.
(I cannot come!)
I cannot come to the banquet,
Don't trouble me now.
I have married a wife; I have bought me a cow.
I have fields and commitments -- that cost a pretty sum.
Pray, hold me excused, I cannot come.
---------------------------------
a hymn by American Medical Mission Sister Miriam Therese Winter, based on the parable of the wedding banquet, from Matthew 22.
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------------------ [excerpt, Wikipedia] ------------- Highway 61 Revisited is the sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on August 30, 1965, by Columbia Records. Having until then recorded mostly acoustic music, Dylan used rock musicians as his backing band on every track of the album, except for the closing track, the 11-minute ballad "Desolation Row."
Critics have focused on the innovative way Dylan combined driving, blues-based music with the subtlety of poetry to create songs that captured the political and cultural chaos of contemporary America. Author Michael Gray has argued that, in an important sense, the 1960s "started" with this album.
Leading with the hit song "Like a Rolling Stone", the album features songs that Dylan has continued to perform live over his long career, including "Ballad of a Thin Man" and the title track.
He named the album after the major American highway which connected his birthplace of Duluth, Minnesota, to southern cities famed for their musical heritage, including St. Louis, Memphis, New Orleans, and the Delta blues area of Mississippi.
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--------------------- [excerpt] --------------- After Bernstein had finished, he reached Sloan by phone and read him the draft. Sloan confirmed virtually the entire story.
Bernstein added a few details, including an account of Liddy's "bad apple" speech to his colleagues on the Monday after the break-in.
Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt, James McCord
Woodward and Bernstein took the draft to Rosenfeld. At 44, Rosenfeld had been a foreign editor of the New York Herald Tribune and the Washington Post. Brash and tough at times, he is extremely skillful at locating holes in stories written by his reporters.
Since the week following the Watergate break-in, Rosenfeld had been the hard-sell artist, persuading Bradlee and the other senior editors (after satisfying himself) that the reporters had touched every base in their stories. From the day in 1970 when he moved from the foreign desk to become metropolitan editor, Rosenfeld's mission had been to raise the local staff from its second-class citizenship at the Post.
Seizing on the potential of the Watergate story, he had fought for it to remain with the metropolitan staff and had won -- resisting attempts by the national editors to take over.
Harry Rosenfeld
Rosenfeld runs the metropolitan staff, the Post's largest, like a football coach. He prods his players, letting them know that he has promised the front office results, pleading, yelling, cajoling, pacing, working his facial expressions for instant effects -- anger, satisfaction, concern.
He was born in pre-Nazi Berlin and came to New York City when he was ten. He made a successful effort to forget his German and speaks English without any trace of an accent. Rosenfeld went to work for the Herald Tribune after his graduation from Syracuse University and has always been an editor, never a reporter.
He was inclined to worry that too many reporters on the metropolitan staff were incompetent, and thought even the best reporters could be saved from self-destruction only by the skills of an editor.
His natural distrust of reporters was particularly acute on the Watergate story, where the risks were very great, and he was in the uncomfortable position of having to trust Bernstein and Woodward more than he had ever trusted any reporters.
Robert Redford as Bob Woodward; Jack Warden as Harry Rosenfeld in the movie version of All the President's Men
Aware that much of the story was out of his hands, he tried to exercise what control he could: he hovered around the reporters' typewriters as they wrote, passed them questions as they talked on the phone to sources, demanded to be briefed after they hung up or returned from a meeting.
Now, gulping down antacid tablets, Rosenfeld grilled Bernstein and Woodward to find out how solid this latest story was. He was reassured by Bernstein's conversation with the FBI agent. At least the FBI had the same allegations on paper. Rosenfeld always felt better when he knew that somewhere, no matter how inaccessible, there was a piece of paper that could support a story.
And it was a dangerous story. The Post was, in effect, making its own charges -- not only against the campaign officials, but also concerning the thoroughness of the FBI and grand-jury investigations. The charges were, in some ways, more serious than those handed down in the indictment, four days earlier.
His interrogation completed, Rosenfeld approved the story. Bernstein called CRP for its ritual comment. The notation "Insert Denial" was marked between paragraphs two and three -- right after the descriptions of Mardian and LaRue as the head housecleaners.
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All the President's Men, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. 1974. Simon & Schuster.
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...Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting --
"Which Side Are You On?"
And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them,
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row
Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the doorknob broke)
When you asked me how I was doing,
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters, no --
Not unless you mail them from --
Desolation Row
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Final two stanzas of "Desolation Row," the last song on Highway 61 Revisited album by Bob Dylan
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