12 October 2022
Not mine, of course, but the titles of the Dinosaurus-Media in Great Britain. This morning, I was reading some news, actual factual information that had been “released” in response to the flaming lies and hysterical hype officially released to Americans, and the Citizens of the World, in yet another attempt by the feckless Ruling Class at trying to prop up what appears to be the Redux of the 1970s — worldwide. The trial balloon does not even get fully inflated, much less rise into the air to get shot down by reality, or the truth. Up in a balloon, boy, up in a balloon . . . This line from a song by George Leybourne, published in 1869, and sung by all the minstrel troupes, was also sung by the very young, beautiful and talented Angela Lansbury in the 1944 Hollywood film, Gaslight.
Dame Angela Lansbury passed away on 11 October, in her sleep. I only discovered this news, real news, late yesterday afternoon, in an aside at an online fact-finding site. I found great solace in her journey to the stars, the real stars, because she was such an inspiration for so many, and such an inspiration for me. It’s no secret in my household of my love for Murder, She Wrote, but I’ve been an admirer of Angela for many many years, going back to when she was on Broadway, and I was a young girl, growing up in Prospect Park, New Jersey. She’d dealt with personal heartache, harrowing heartache in a way that had not been publicized, and for good reasons. Her private life was kept private, for the most part, and that aspect of her professionalism was one of her many strengths. She had weaknesses, yes, but I dare anyone to display the courage and steeliness of character that were part of her very being. She lost her father in childhood, fled the Blitz of London (and England), arrived in America as a mere adolescent, and became the bread-winner before she was an adult in a Hollywood that chewed-up and spit-out talent as the way of doing business. The studio heads wanted Angela to change her name, but no, no, no, no, no. Lansbury she was born, and Lansbury she remained.
She appeared in a lot of movies, in many of them as stinkers, and in many of those as mothers, but she somehow rose above all of the nasty stereotypes that came her way. When she bit into a role, she truly devoured it. I relish each time that I see her as Mrs. Salome Otterbourne in the 1978 flick Death on the Nile.
She didn’t write about grubby murders back then! On the other, more practical hand, a paycheck was a paycheck. In 1979, there was a (gah) ghastly remake in America of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes. Lansbury played Miss Froy but she looked more like Madame Kummer of the Hitchcock original! During the mid-1990s, I read up on Lansbury, in her own words. I was quite taken by her bold, even audacious, decision to move her family and household, lock, stock, and barrel (or whatever remained of them after they’d been burned out of their Malibu home) — to County Cork, Ireland. She acted swiftly and without reservation to save her children’s lives from further peril and tragedy in Hollywood.
During those mid-1990s, I was living in Suburbia in the as-yet undeveloped western part of Roseville, California. I worked out at a woman’s gym. I was worried, visibly worried, about the state of many things in California, in America, in my life. I discussed my concerns with other women, during the workout! One acquaintance, not quite a pal, in my aerobics class, suggested that I move with my family to Ireland. Back then, my eyes were always on the lookout for where to go to escape the next parade of horribles, more than to seek out where to stay to make a stand against them. There’s a very fine and calibrated balance point that must be reached between the two acts which, for me, are instinctive. I feared for my children, or rather, for the fun but safe, stable, and sane rearing of them in California. I had to reckon with the truth that I’d not moved to California to marry and raise a family, but there I was, by the 1990s, doing such a thing.
Of course, the locale for me in Ireland would be in the west (somehow I’m always heading WEST): Connemara, where I would be isolated. Too isolated! And while the thought of re-locating the Milligans to western Ireland appealed to me as a place to live, I simply could not leave America. Neither could I leave, or abandon, California. The lush greenness of the Emerald Isle, even on the rocky northwest coast, would grant me nothing but misery with my allergy to molds! I also knew, from conversations and discussions with Irish friends, that I could run, but I couldn’t hide from whatever it was that was overtaking America and the world. We now know — at least the patriots among us know, but I think even the betrayers know — about the vile, vicious selling-out — over the course of decades — of our nation, and of the nations Over There, and of the nations in Western Europe by The Elites. Or, as I have heard it pronounced by one of those Elites — the A-lites.
In a zoom-meeting video, this uppity woman informed her covey of corrupt cronies that a study was conducted (when is it not??); and the results found that “the A-lites trust one another, but the people do not trust the A-lites.”
At first, I felt offended by her obvious arrogance; but then I realized that the A-lites don’t really trust each other either.
They back-stab each other at the first opportunity. The skinny lying loon of a Prime Minister, riding his eco-bike in the Netherlands, is the lone survivor of decades of corruption scandals in that country. He’s desperately shooting (which may be a poor, or prescient, choice of words, but I’m keeping it) for a better gig at the EU!
The pigs that have swilled their way to the top of each EU nation-state are all vying to hit the big one, to cash in on that tarnished brass ring in Headquarters at Brussels!
Angela Lansbury was a fiercely devoted and fiercely proud Labour-ite. Some of her politics owed to her lineage, some to her natural bend toward fairness, equality (especially that of women) and decency. I’ve thought of her often during the past few years, as the Labour Party in the United Kingdom of Great Britain showed itself unworthy of any working man, woman, or child. Labour is a political party that is totally unrecognizable from its roots, its inception, its formerly dignified, if not dirty, history. Gee, I think the same can be said of political parties in my nation, which became the nation where Angela lived, and died. A few years ago, she opined that the women (girls) of the thespian MeToo crowd needed to take responsibility for their acts. She was dead meat after that truth got out of her mouth! I felt so proud of her. She reminded me of myself!
My decision that a change of names is necessary for most of the public purveyances of propaganda in John Bull was necessitated by a rather startling bit of info this morning. It seems that John Cleese, at age 82, is going to have a show on GB News. For what reason, we shall all soon find out. I suspect it’s to make ribald use of all of that Monty Python/Fawlty Towers humor to eviscerate the clowns running John Bull into the “asylum-seeker” ground. The reason given by one British prig at a British rag is NOT the reason. He deemed GB News a hate-speech channel, not a free-speech channel, but Cleese has never seemed to be a hateful sort of bloke. ARE YOU KIDDING ME???!! John Cleese has reveled in nastiness. He’s gotten thrills beyond measure out of verbally impaling people with his wit that can run the gamut from comically and wildly imaginative and raunchy to viscerally rabid and dripping with acidic malice.
l decided that there must come a change to these ridiculous names still being used by the historic vanguard of erudite expressions of sophisticated and cultured opinion, of official and indisputable news and intelligence, and all that rot, in the floating crap table called Great Britain. The Independent = The Shill The Guardian = The Mugger The Telegraph = The Text Message As for hate-speech, the Elites over there had better watch their supercilious steps among the commoners. Over here, hate-speech got targeted by one Silicon Valley payment service, and though the u-turn occurred right after the immediate digital run on that “bank”, that User Agreement remains in fascist-re-write mode while that company’s stocks undergo a real reality adjustment. The users are using each other up at such a fast rate, it’s impossible for the commoner to get a fix on a straight story. I suggest watching Angela in Gaslight, to see how things usually end up for gormless scoundrels, particularly the money-grubbing woman-haters.