Saturday, December 31, 2011

Marieke's Champion

EVER THE gentleman, Richard Ackland, who styles his (slow-loading) legal site Justinian after the law-giving Byzantine emperor, has sprung to the defence of the mild and ladylike Marieke Hardy, who is “as much a victim” as the man she must pay a reported $13,000 for wrongly accusing him of being a stalker.

One of history’s much debated and most interesting characters, the original Justinian was, amongst other things, a keen advocate for the legal rights of low women. It was an understandable sympathy as prostitution was the initial career of his wife, the Empress Theodora, who was renowned for lewd acts with geese, of all things.  The chronicler Procopius explains her appetites:
And though she flung wide her three gates to the ambassadors of Cupid, she lamented that Nature had not similarly unlocked the straits of her bosom, that she might there have contrived a further welcome to his emissaries.
If you were to update Procopius’ delightful turn of phrase and substitute blunt obscenity for wit, that passage would bear a faint resemblance to Marieke’s essays on her participation in orgies or, perhaps, to what she has claimed her parents get up to with all manner of strange objects.

Yep, can’t fault Ackland’s insight. The Justinian moniker suits him to a tee.

UPDATE:  One of Ackland's pseudononymous bloggers actually goes by the name Theodora!

And another, Junior Junior, has this to say of judges:
Jurors obviously come in an array of types and degrees of intelligence, but so do judges.

To replace 12 people who represent community standards and common sense with two or three judges, who represent their private school outlook and sailing club committee, is hardly a good swap.

I don't have anything against private schools or sailing clubs, as such, but judges vary significantly in their level of attachment to reality.

I don't mean they are suffering a delusional mental illness (although that's a possibility in some cases), but they live in a world of dress-ups, bowing and scraping and generally being treated like little princelings (or princesses).

None of which is conducive to being a standard, average, well-rounded individual.
As readers of this blog will know, the Professor's discipline is Etruscan semiotics, which is much less demanding than the law because you can just make it up as you go along. But if there is a judge out there who is a sailing club committee member and widely known as such by colleagues, would that individual be right to get a little ruffled by Ackland's anonymous acolyte's imputation that he or she may figure at some lower point on any graph laying out the judiciary's  "attachment to reality."

As Ackland speaks approvingly of plaintiffs' growing ability to wring details of bloggers and commenters from ISPs and hosting services, how would he react if Mr Justice Jib-Spinnaker were to call on him reveal his own contributor's identity?

One suspects the response would be indignance and outrage, which is usually the case when the New Establishment is called upon to live by the standards it would impose on others.

9 comments:

  1. Professor, though I enthusiastically assimilate your wisdom, I feel it necessary to point out an error made by one of your bevy of writing apprentices in your most recent rendering: You refer to Richard Ackland as a member of the "New Establishment". I believe the applicable clique is, in fact, the "Temporary Ruling Class", reflecting the transience of those who mistook their ability to make sentences on behalf of frothing feral zombies for the wisdom required to run the country.

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  2. I sympathise with your sense of high dungeon, Perfesser, about the swipe at sailing enthusiasts, etc.

    But I nevertheless agree with the gentleman's post as a whole - trial by jury is one of the foundations of individual liberty, one of the (many) glorious elements that sets the English-speaking world apart from her continental neighbours, where judges are functionaries of the state and a person's individual rights are routinely bypassed on the say-so of some bureaucrat in the capital.

    Common law and juries protect the innocent. More guilty people may go free, but far fewer of the innocent are convicted. And almost none for political reasons - had Andrew Bolt's case been tried in front of a jury of his peers, would he have been convicted?

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  3. Lewd acts with geese?? Goosing??

    Reminds me of the old joke about the difference between erotic and kinky:

    Erotic: use a feather.

    Kinky: use the whole chook.

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  4. Got to be a hoax.

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  5. Alex: No argument here about the importance of juries, nor of the terrible step it would be to see the Judge Mordys of this world given further leash to decide matters without benefit of solid citizens' input. Do you think the ruling would have gone against Bolt if 12 representatives of common sense had been given the opportunity to look at the pale-ish plaintiffs and conclude, "Know what? The guy has a point."

    No, the interesting thing about Ackland's site are his anonymous posters. He doesn't like his side's ox being gored by faceless critics, yet is happy to provide a pulpit for those of whom he approves to do just that.

    Catch the whiff of hypocrisy?

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  6. I didn't see any reference to the alleged orgy taking by Hardy. It sounds intriguing and I do like to check my sauces. Please supply, cordially yours, Kathy.

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  7. KL, try Hardy's own autobiography "You’ll Be Sorry When I’m Dead," of which several reviews make reference to her accounts of attending orgies.

    Enjoy thumbing through that drivel in search of the specific pages you seek; I shan't for you.

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  8. Supplice, thank you for clarifying. I couldn't be bothered reading through it either. To know that she it's true is enough. The fact that she is into orgies speaks sufficiently of her character.

    Actually, you'd have to seriously wonder about about any man that would get intimately involved with her(and I'm assuming here she's heterosexual, based on her orgy taking behaviour). What she is is a tattoo adorned aging Lolita, come communist offspring, who attends orgies. And she thinks that something top brag about.

    I actually reckon she's the author of her own hate blog (ie James Vincent McKenzie) so she can grab the IP addresses of those who leave supportive comments -- it's just a theory, although one given support on a number of levels, including the unfolding of recent events.

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  9. Alex, the Professor may prefer lofty incarceration in a "high dungeon" but I suspect he would also be in "high dudgeon" re his plight

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