Magna Carta

In the previous post Mark Stein mentions it is the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. That's the document produced by the barons of King John. His mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, his father Henry II.

This John, depicted in Ironclad.

The barons insisted on a guarantee of protection of church's rights. John had engaged in a dispute with the pope about the choice of archbishop of Canterbury. John was excommunicated for picking his own man against the wishes of the pope. It also protected the barons from illegal imprisonment, swift justice and relief on feudal payments to the crown. The dispute involved some 25 or so barons. 

The sides did not commit to the document and it was annulled by the pope leading to the war with the barons. The document was reissued by regency government of his son, Henry III, and reissued again at the end of the baron war were it became part of the treaty at Lambeth and where it acquired the name Magna Carta to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest. Henry reissued the charter in exchange for a grant of new taxes, and his son Edward I reissued the charter again this time as statue law.

This is the John that Shakespeare wrote about containing the lines whence the modern phrase "gilding the lily" referring to John's second coronation. Why do that? Why conduct a ritualized second splendid ceremony with such pomp and regalia on top of the first splendid pompous ceremony? But Shakespeare's phrasing, and you must admit the man had a way with words, had gold put on something already gilded and the lily painted unnecessarily, two separate cases of extravagance listed among other cases of extravagance that Shakespeare listed and later readers selected from to combined into one pithy adage and getting it wrong and giving Shakespeare the short shrift.

Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp, 
 

To guard a title that was rich before, 


To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 
 

To throw a perfume on the violet, 


To smooth the ice, or add another hue 
 

Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light 
 

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, 
 

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.

Speaking of second coronations. Hillary's second launching of her second presidential campaign dominated Twitter yesterday. Photos of the cable gondola that accesses the island, photos of couples wearing "stop Hillary" t-shirts that were made to reverse them, Photos of "watch Hillary" groups that amounted to a few geriatric types huddled before a television in a nursing home setting and intended for larger groups.

Who can watch? Who can bear to listen? Nobody. That's who.

Clinton strikes a populist tone to make case for 2016 campaign. Looks like Evita.

Lots of empty spaces as crowd didn't overflow Hillary campaign re-launch.

Hillary places herself in tradition of FDR at Campaign

CNN mocks pitiful Hillary campaign watch party.

Paul Simon kept linking to the same video. Most obnoxiously. Eventually I just skipped Simon's posts because the link would go to a video where blunt force grotesque antagonisms are delivered in screechy Harpy's voice. Why or how that is attractive to anybody confounds. Marco Rubio's Yesterday is Still Over uses Hillary's own unattractiveness for his campaign.