Prince Andrew stripped of military titles and duties
I don't really know what his duties actually were, but whatever they were, he no longer has them. Nor does he have his military titles any longer.
This, of course, because he's been sued by Virginia Giuffre who alleges that he sexually abused her, when she was a minor, age 17, and part of the creepy sexual net that Jeffrey Epstein had going.
By all accounts, Giuffre lead a horrific early life, having been a sexual abuse victim before that period even. Following prior horrors at age 14, she was reunited with her father, who worked at Mar-A-Lago. . . yes that Mar-A-Lago. She was found there by Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein's procurer. She claims she was supplied by Epstein to Prince Andrew.
We should be careful not to assume that Giuffre is telling the truth. Her story has changed over time, and she also claims that Epstein supplied her to Alan Dershowitz, which I find unlikely for some reason. Anyhow, she does show up in a photo with the Prince, and the fact that he wasn't able to get the lawsuit she's filed in New York dismissed was apparently the last straw for the Royal Family.
Anyhow, this story is interesting for a couple of reasons.
One thing is, I think, that it shows the Royal Family, indeed all Royal Families, just need to go. They're beyond being an anachronism. What purpose do they really serve? Wrapping the whole thing up with the UK, which itself is becoming a bit frayed at the margins, upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II seems like a fitting and dignified ending to an institution that, frankly, has frequently been undignified.
On that, followers of certain lines of thought on Reddit will frequently find really radical traditionalist arguing for the return of monarchy pretty much everywhere, often stating that it establishes as set of (Christian) values for a nation. Apparently, such people are wholly ignorant of real monarchies.
If Prince Andrew did bed Virginia Giuffre, and I don't know that he did, it would have been wrong on every level, but it would have been pretty much par for the course for the male members of royal families throughout history. Finding a King, for example, that didn't have courtesans in addition to a wife is, well, difficult. The upper classes always knew this. The peasantry didn't, all the time, except when they did, and then they tended not to care too much, as monarchy was relatively irrelevant to their real lives.
Other creepy groomers
I've never heard of Sondra Theodore, but apparently she was one of Hugh Hefner's various concubines, oops, um, prostitutes, . . . um, oh, uh "girlfriends". That's right, girlfriends.
Oh heck, concubines.
It's sort of the Epstein story, and sort of not. Basically, he started . . . well. . .when she was 19. He was 50.
That's creepy, but she was an adult. She can't really complain that much, as basically, well, she was prostituting herself to Hefner, like many others. She was an adult, albeit a young one, which Giuffre was not.
It does get creepier, however, as apparently Hefner, one of the architects of the destruction of the moral society, used her as a procurer for additional concubines. . um, prostitutes, or whatever, um bedmates, for her perversions.
Should we feel sorry for her?
As a human, certainly. Indeed, we should pray for her redemption, which hopefully has arrived. And, in the Catholic tradition and moral thought, even for Hefner's, which in no way reduces the path of destroyed lives, and indeed destroyed souls, he left in his disgusting wake. We may be in a period of reckoning, but we have a long ways to go before Hefner's damaging legacy is in the historical dustbin, as opposed to Hefner himself, who is, and his instrument of destruction, the print edition of Playboy.
Speaking of self-promotion through photographic concubinage. . .
Kylie Jenner reaches 300,000,000 viewers on Instagram
That's a lot of views.
They aren't viewing her for her vast intellect, although I don't doubt that she has one.
More particularly, that's a lot of cheesecake views. Jenner is, really, a modern pinup and a famous one.
At least she isn't 17.
Or 19.
But the image she portrays isn't exactly of a mature women either, now is it.
This cast of characters
May we say it?
Ooo, ick.
Hefner, Trump, Cosby, Prince Andrew.
Blech.
All men with reprehensible relationships with women to some degree, although in fairness Prince Andrew, at least so far, has the least icky, assuming the latest accusations do not prove to be true.
And all celebrated and powerful, and to some degree, save for Andrew, still celebrated.
The Train Robbers
Thieves are robbing Union Pacific trains in Los Angeles to such an extent that . . .
the railroad is considering ceasing to serve the city.
News footage shows the rail line littered with the packages of thousands of stolen items.
Let's admit it, Los Angeles is simply beyond repair.
California darned near is. The Golden State, after decades of financial problems and after decades of unrestrained population growth, ended up just where you'd think a locality featuring those things would.
Los Angeles, as we recognize it, dates back to a Catholic mission founded there in 1771, which was founded by St. Junipero Serra. Like all things moral, he's under attack in California today, which is part of the reason that California in general is the titanic mess it is. In 1841 it was made the capital of Alta California. It was one of California's premier cities for decades.
Expats and politics
Wyoming's politics have traditionally been unique. They've been conservative in a quasi libertarian way but not populist. The state had a strong, if minority, Democratic Party up until the 1990s. The ethos of the state tended to be "I don't care what you are doing as long as you don't ask me to approve of it".
Things have really changed.
The state's politics always tend to show some influence of recent migrants when they swing in, in numbers. Usually they swing back out, in numbers as well. It'll be interesting to see what happens as oil starts to wind down here, which it will, but at any rate, you would think we'd be seeing some result of that exodus now.
Of course, we're really not for a variety of reasons, one of which was COVID. While I hate to admit it, the pandemic brought in a population that sort of followed in the wake of and added to the strong southern influences that oil booms have tended to. This has brought in the new populist politics and it's taken over the local GOP.
Or maybe it's just the times.
The state has always featured a lot of near state immigration. You don't have to go too far to find people who are from the neighboring states. But it is the case that in recent years things have been different. You'll run into people who will proudly proclaim, "I'm from California and . . . " emphasizing how they left the state where they made their money and lives, and fled it to come here.
Economic boosters often fail to realize what this sort of thing can mean. People like to complain about what Colorado has become, for instances, but Colorado campaigned to become that.
One interesting undercurrent to this is that the state has experienced its third wave of Hispanic immigration, or fourth really. The first Hispanic immigrants came into the state from New Mexico in the 1840s to work for the Army as builders near Ft. Laramie. They stayed and farmed, but for some reason their farms on the Mexican Hills near there didn't establish a permanent population.
The second wave did, however, with that brining in a group of New Mexican Hispanics who worked in the rail industry and shepherding in from the 30s through the 50s. Their descendants are still here. The next group came in during the 70s during the first big wave of illegal immigration, although not all of them were illegal by any means. Many of them left, but some stayed. And then there's the current wave that has been going on for the past fifteen years or so.
This population is demographically significant, and there's no reason to believe that its Republican. It'd be a natural Democratic demographic, but the Wyoming Democratic Party has become so small that it tends to be populated only by WASP leftists anymore, who can't really seem to actually see Hispanic voters. They instead tend to imagine the entire world as if it's Greenwich Village for some reason. This will become obvious, again, when the Democrats finally start to nominate some candidates for the 2022 election, as they'll all be white, probably, and at least one of them will surely check all the current WASP Left boxes.
A smart Democratic Party would pick up where Lynette Grey Bull left off and try to test the field a bit with a candidate who reflects a broader base. Fremont County, due to the Reservation, retains a real Democratic Party. If that party reached out to the now statistically significant Hispanic community, which probably is a little scared with all the rhetoric it may be hearing from the more hard right elements of the GOP, it might be able to capture a surprising number of voters. The candidate would have to cross over to capture moderate Republicans as well, but the GOP might aid it in doing that. A party that claims Liz Cheney is a "RINO" is doing a good job of that already.
M&M's
The Mars candy of fame, which was battle born, has caused a flap by changing the footgear of its cute cartoon version of itself. Or at least the footgear of one of the cartoon figures.
Forrest Mars Sr. got the idea for M&M's from Smarties, a British candy that was popular in the Spanish Civil War for the same reason that M&M's are, their shell keeps them from being a gooey mess. The first big customer for the 1940 introduced candy was the U.S. Army.
At some point in the last few decades, the company introduced advertising that featured talking cartoon M&M's. A female M&M was among them, wearing go-go boots. Now she's going to wear tennis shoes, in an effort to update the character and be more inclusive.
Of course, in an era when everything is deemed to have a massive sexual and political meaning, this has caused a flap. It's been commented on by, who else, Tucker Carson.
Journalism?
I had to look up Tucker Carson to try to figure out why he's such a big deal. I still don't know, although his bio read is a little wild.
Journalism, and by that I mean journalism everywhere, has always had its personalities and wild characters, so much of the "decline in journalism" commentary is actually wrong. It's a return to its status quo ante. After all, it isn't as if the drawing that Frederic Remington submitted of a Spanish officer detaining a stripped Cuban woman was drawn from life.
In this, however, I think the Press has followed the same track as the law. By the early 20th Century the institution was disgusted with its own conduct, as the law was with it, and worked to reform itself. By the teens, it was already doing better than it had in the late 19th Century. By World War Two it very much was, and when television came on, and we had only three networks, the news was presented in a very dignified manner.
Well, cable television and then the internet ended that, and we returned to the days when you bought your journalism from somebody who you know is reliably likely to have a more extreme version of your own opinion. The Carson's and Maddow's are good examples of that. And it dovetails the decline in legal professionalism perfectly.
Pitty poor Carson Tucker, an individual with the same names, but in reverse order. He's a baseball layer with the Arizona Complex League Guardians.
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