Tag: J. K. Rowling

British MP Jeremy Hunt, whose surname is as perfect an example of Cockney rhyming slang as you could find.

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A bad month for the Iron Lady and the suffragette

There is never a good time to be a statue in England. You are out in all weathers, for a start, and on the rare days the Sun does shine pigeons seize the opportunity to take a dump on your head. But you do usually get to hang around on your pedestal or plinth for a few decades, or even centuries, before you are abused by humans. That, like much in the old country, is changing, and 2020 shall henceforth be known as the year of the great toppling. But the last month has seen attacks on statues of two famous English women, proving equality is alive and well. (more…)

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This is the first installment of Mark Gullick’s monthly roundup of the news from the United Kingdom, which we plan to publish during the last week of each month henceforth.

Sometimes I look at the old country and wonder how we ever got an empire organized without tripping over our own shoelaces. (more…)

J. K. Rowling, who earned praise for getting herself cancelled this year by refusing to back down from her normal views on genitalia and gender.

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We can be heroes just for one day. — David Bowie

Hans, are we the baddies? — Mitchell and Webb sketch featuring Nazi soldiers

As European and Commonwealth countries act like faithful servants to the autocratic global coup currently taking place, my own home country of England has fallen into step like a good foot-soldier. The government, nominally Conservative but actually a sort of Green Socialist elite oligarchy, has gone full Bezmenov, contradicting itself on a daily basis about COVID and preventing its people from seeing dying loved ones while it parties maskless indoors. (more…)

Arthur Rackham, Alberich and the Rhine Maidens, 1910-1911

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Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —
Lingering in the golden gleam —
Life, what is it but a dream?

— Lewis Carroll,  Alice Through the Looking Glass  (more…)

Joseph Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery, circa 1766

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I believe that optimism is a sucker’s game. Motivation is for losers. If you cannot find motivation within yourself no amount of cheerleading will make you succeed. Optimism is the enemy of reality, and reality is the only path to truth. Likewise, the dire pessimism expressed by so many on the Dissident Right is a constraint on the perception of reality. (more…)

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Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the latest installment in the ever-expanding Wizarding World franchise and the second film of the Fantastic Beasts series. Much like Peter Jackson’s bloated Hobbit trilogy, the Fantastic Beasts franchise is an unapologetic cash grab and will sprawl across five films, approaching the length of the original Harry Potter series.

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With her Harry Potter series of books and later movies, British author J. K. Rowling has obviously struck a chord in the psyche of white audiences. Despite her work being throughly saturated with social justice messaging, the fundamental premises of the story are an expression of more traditional, “elitist,” and even “racist” attitudes which white populations continue to hold on some level. (more…)