Wouldn’t it be amusing to see an actual fly-on-the-wall job about Netflix’s new Harry & Meghan documentary? Imagine the scenes behind-the-scenes. The Duchess rehearses her crying face in consultation with her make-up specialist. The Duke glares at himself in a mirror. ‘I had to protect my family,’ he repeats over and over as he fingers his apricot beard. The lighting team try to coax along the impossibly capricious royals only to suffer their own nervous breakdowns after Meghan accuses them of disregarding her mental health.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/war-of-the-windsors-who-will-win-this-round/

THE SPECTATOR IS A RIGHT WING MAGAZINE. THE QUESTION IS “Can a leftie read the Spectator?”

I'm a devoted New Stateman reader, but I'm increasingly drawn to the Spectator - for its erudition and wit, rather than its purple-faced rightwing worldview…

https://www.theguardian.com/media/organgrinder/2008/apr/03/canaleftiereadthespectato

NOW IS THIS “THE SPECTATOR” TO WHICH ALEXANDER POPE CONTRIBUTED?

The success of An Essay on Criticism brought Alexander Pope to a circle of friends, notably Richard Steele and Joseph Addison, who were then collaborating on The Spectator. To this journal Pope contributed the most original of his pastorals, “The Messiah” (1712), and perhaps other papers in prose. 

The Spectator, a periodical published in London by the essayists Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison from March 1, 1711, to Dec. 6, 1712 (appearing daily), and subsequently revived by Addison in 1714 (for 80 numbers). It succeeded The Tatler, which Steele had launched in 1709. In its aim to “enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality,” The Spectator adopted a fictional method of presentation through a “Spectator Club,” [Disney's precursor?] whose imaginary members extolled the authors’ own ideas about society. These “members” included representatives of commerce, the army, the town (respectively, Sir Andrew Freeport, Captain Sentry, and Will Honeycomb), and of the country gentry (Sir Roger de Coverley). The papers were ostensibly written by Mr. Spectator, an “observer” of the London scene. The conversations that The Spectator reported were often imagined to take place in coffeehouses, which was also where many copies of the publication were distributed and read.

The Spectator [the new one] is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. ... It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving …ETC…

THUS “THE SPECTATOR” TO WHICH POPE CONTRIBUTED IS NOT THE SAME, BUT THE NEW ONE SEEMS TO CARRY ON WITH THE WIT AND THE ERUDITE SATIRE, ALBEIT SUPPORTING THE RIGHT-WING ESTABLISMENT…

Alexander Pope, (born May 21, 1688, London, England—died May 30, 1744, Twickenham, near London), poet and satirist of the English Augustan period, is best known for his poems An Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1712–14), The Dunciad (1728), and An Essay on Man (1733–34). He is one of the most epigrammatic of all English authors.

The Popes were Roman Catholics, and at Binfield they came to know several neighbouring Catholic families who were to play an important part in the poet’s life. Pope’s religion procured him some lifelong friends, notably the wealthy squire John Caryll and Martha Blount, to whom Pope addressed some of his most memorable poems and to whom he bequeathed most of his property. But being Catholic precluded him from a formal course of education, since they were not admitted to universities. He was trained at home by Catholic priests for a short time but he was mainly self-educated. He was a precocious boy, eagerly reading Latin, Greek, French, and Italian, which he managed to teach himself.

This early emergence as a man of letters may have been assisted by Pope’s poor physique. He acquired a curvature of the spine and some tubercular infection, probably Pott’s disease, that limited his growth and seriously impaired his health. His full-grown height was 4 feet 6 inches (1.4 metres), but the grace of his profile and fullness of his eye gave him an attractive appearance. He sufferer from headaches all his life, and his deformity made him abnormally sensitive to physical and mental pain . 

POPE HATED CRITICISM AND USED HIS WITS TO ATTACK PEOPLE, LOSING A FEW “FRIENDS” IN THE PROCESS. 

ONE OF HIS VENDETTAS WAS AGAINST COLLEY CIBBER:

Cibber ! Write all thy verses upon glasses,

The only way to save ‘em from our Arses.

Now wits gain praise by copying other wits

As one Hog lives on what other shits.

Has not C—lly still his Lord, and Whore?

THIS WAS WAY BELOW THE BELT… THOUGH NOT UNEXPECTED... CIBBER HAD BECOME POET LAUREATE WHILE POPE COULD NOT, BECAUSE HE WAS A CATHOLIC, HENCE THE REFERENCE TO THE “LORD”, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE WHORE?

SHOULD POPE HAVE RESERVED THIS ATTACK FOR LORD HERVEY, WHOM POPE HATED AS MUCH — AS HE WROTE THE FAMOUS EPISTLE:

Let Sporus tremble ….

            ....

         And pride that licks the dust.

LORD HARVEY WAS BISEXUAL, MARRIED WITH EIGHT KIDS AND SHARED A “MISTRESS” (MISS VANE) WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES (Possibly: Frederick, Prince of Wales, KG (Frederick Louis, German: Friedrich Ludwig; 31 January 1707 – 31 March 1751) — the eldest son and heir apparent of King George II of Great Britain. He grew estranged from his parents, King George and Queen Caroline. Frederick was the father of King George III.)

COLLEY CIBBER GOT HIS REVENGE AGAINST POPE BY RECOLLECTING ONE INFAMOUS NIGHT:

He [Pope] may remember then (or if he will not, I will) when Button’s coffee house was in vogue, and so long ago as when he had not translated above two or three books of Homer, there was a late long nobleman (as much his Lord as mine) who had a good deal of wicked humour. This noble wag … one evening slily seduced the celebrated Mr Pope as a wit, and myself, to a certain house of carnal recreation, near the Haymarket, where his lordship’s frolic proposed was, to slips little Homer, as he called him, at a girl of the game … in which he so far succeeded, that the smirking damsel, who served us tea, happened to have charms sufficient to tempt the little-tiny manhood of Mr Pope into the next room with her….

SO THERE, THE STORY CONTINUES (for another instalment as it gets saucier)….

WE COULD SAY A LOT MORE ABOUT POPE AND HIS DEALINGS, THUS ONE NEEDS TO READ HIS “QUOTES”….

BACK TO THE BEGINNING of royal tits and bums and tiffs…. MORE TIME AND MEGABYTES (IT USED TO BE INK) WILL BE WASTED ON THESE ANACHRONISTIC CLOWNS…

THEY MAKE THE BORING CONCEPT OF THE PEOPLE RULING BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE (DEMOCRACY) A BIT MORE NECESSARY DAILY, THOUGH WE STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO TO ELIMINATE THE DEMOCRATIC SWINDLERS, THE THIEVES AND THE SPRUIKERS FROM THE FRAY….

GUS LEONIKSY

RABID ATHEIST

SEE ALSO: 

https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/45958