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Feb. 4th, 2013 03:52 am* The University of Leicester is declaring the body found in the car park to be Richard III's.
* I'm finding a lot of the Richard III coverage annoying. They are repeating the old Tudor claim about him having murdered the little Princes despite a majority of historians of the period thinking the Tudors did it rather later then retroactively claimed that he had done it. It's not provable unless they find the bodies again, but acting as if everyone believes everything the Tudors paid people to say is the sort of thing that makes me grind my teeth. Siumilarly, most historians have thought he had mild scoliosis and maybe a limp as the hunchbak and withered arm claims are much later and again by people paid by the Tudors. Such claims get more exagerated the further you get from the generation that knew him.
Why was Richard III so vilified anyway? 1. The same reason the aristocracy rose against him: He championed the legal rights of commoners over the new impositions of the nobles. No really. He sided with commoners over things like traditional rights to the commons and had a special court set up where commoners could sue their Lords over land disputes. He was in favor of progressive taxation. you know, the sorts of things nobles dispised. So they backed the Henry VII when he rebelled. 2. Henry VII was really big into propaganda. He used pageantry to build the idea of his legitimacy after the war. He also hired writers, poets, and pamphleteers to vilify the dead Richard and exaggerate ans spin Richard's traits that good be taken for negatives. They took his good looks and slight build and accused him of being weak, despite his proved physical and political courage. They took his limp and slightly crooked back and made him a hunchback. (I do not endorse ableism, but the prejudice of the time made any physical difference a strong negative and a sign of bad character). They turned him into a two dimensional villain to be hissed at and booed, adding more and more charges as memories dimmed and the generation that remembered him died off. Generations passed and Shakespeare made a play to please Henry VII's grand daughter based on the earlier propaganda and turned Richard III into one of the most memorable villains in English literature. The strong fair minded king his contemporaries knew and wrote about got buried by histories commissioned by the winners.
People like Richard the monster better than Richard the man, as the monster makes the better story and it's more fun to have aa black and white villain than a complex political reality. It still makes me all stabby seeing smug TV presenters pretend everyone only believes in the fictional monster and that the real man is something they only just discovered and haha, look at how stupid historians are for believing things they actually don't. Sigh. Seriously people, there's several generations of scholarship going the other way and you folks in the media alternately perpetuating the myths and mocking academics because you are to ignorant to know that hardly anyone in academia believes those myths is so not helping.
* The Escheresque "Logic" behind our drone strike program:
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* Rove vs. The Tea Party:
( Embed: )
* Recent Republican conspiracy theories about the President:
( Embed: )
* In honor of Rosa Park's hundredth birthday, I give you Rosa Parks in her own words:
( Embed: )
* "Researchers crack olfactory code for partner selection, synthesize first biologically effective perfume:" http://phys.org/news/2013-02-olfactory-code-partner-synthesise-biologically.html#jCp
* Unpacking the privilege of being conventionally attractive: http://www.ted.com/talks/cameron_russell_looks_aren_t_everything_believe_me_i_m_a_model.html?utm_source=twitter&source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ios-share
* "New Archbigot - same old story:" http://www.sparkindarkness.com/2013/02/new-archbigot-same-old-story.html
* On androcentrism and demonizing the feminine in advertising: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/02/03/men-go-on-guyets-because-girls-are-stupid/
* When Tibicina was here, she gifted me some Firefly themed teas. I promptly forgot them until I searched my pockets last night for something else. To my delight, there they were! I tested Inara tonight and it was love at first sip.
* A tragedy of the closet: http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=3917
* I'm finding a lot of the Richard III coverage annoying. They are repeating the old Tudor claim about him having murdered the little Princes despite a majority of historians of the period thinking the Tudors did it rather later then retroactively claimed that he had done it. It's not provable unless they find the bodies again, but acting as if everyone believes everything the Tudors paid people to say is the sort of thing that makes me grind my teeth. Siumilarly, most historians have thought he had mild scoliosis and maybe a limp as the hunchbak and withered arm claims are much later and again by people paid by the Tudors. Such claims get more exagerated the further you get from the generation that knew him.
Why was Richard III so vilified anyway? 1. The same reason the aristocracy rose against him: He championed the legal rights of commoners over the new impositions of the nobles. No really. He sided with commoners over things like traditional rights to the commons and had a special court set up where commoners could sue their Lords over land disputes. He was in favor of progressive taxation. you know, the sorts of things nobles dispised. So they backed the Henry VII when he rebelled. 2. Henry VII was really big into propaganda. He used pageantry to build the idea of his legitimacy after the war. He also hired writers, poets, and pamphleteers to vilify the dead Richard and exaggerate ans spin Richard's traits that good be taken for negatives. They took his good looks and slight build and accused him of being weak, despite his proved physical and political courage. They took his limp and slightly crooked back and made him a hunchback. (I do not endorse ableism, but the prejudice of the time made any physical difference a strong negative and a sign of bad character). They turned him into a two dimensional villain to be hissed at and booed, adding more and more charges as memories dimmed and the generation that remembered him died off. Generations passed and Shakespeare made a play to please Henry VII's grand daughter based on the earlier propaganda and turned Richard III into one of the most memorable villains in English literature. The strong fair minded king his contemporaries knew and wrote about got buried by histories commissioned by the winners.
People like Richard the monster better than Richard the man, as the monster makes the better story and it's more fun to have aa black and white villain than a complex political reality. It still makes me all stabby seeing smug TV presenters pretend everyone only believes in the fictional monster and that the real man is something they only just discovered and haha, look at how stupid historians are for believing things they actually don't. Sigh. Seriously people, there's several generations of scholarship going the other way and you folks in the media alternately perpetuating the myths and mocking academics because you are to ignorant to know that hardly anyone in academia believes those myths is so not helping.
* The Escheresque "Logic" behind our drone strike program:
( Embed: )
* Rove vs. The Tea Party:
( Embed: )
* Recent Republican conspiracy theories about the President:
( Embed: )
* In honor of Rosa Park's hundredth birthday, I give you Rosa Parks in her own words:
( Embed: )
* "Researchers crack olfactory code for partner selection, synthesize first biologically effective perfume:" http://phys.org/news/2013-02-olfactory-code-partner-synthesise-biologically.html#jCp
* Unpacking the privilege of being conventionally attractive: http://www.ted.com/talks/cameron_russell_looks_aren_t_everything_believe_me_i_m_a_model.html?utm_source=twitter&source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ios-share
* "New Archbigot - same old story:" http://www.sparkindarkness.com/2013/02/new-archbigot-same-old-story.html
* On androcentrism and demonizing the feminine in advertising: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/02/03/men-go-on-guyets-because-girls-are-stupid/
* When Tibicina was here, she gifted me some Firefly themed teas. I promptly forgot them until I searched my pockets last night for something else. To my delight, there they were! I tested Inara tonight and it was love at first sip.
* A tragedy of the closet: http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=3917