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A Ricochet Challenge
I’m torn. On the one hand, I think we should all pause from our busy schedules to consider the most salacious and astonishing tabloid scandal in British history since the Profumo affair. We could surely use the comic relief.
On the other hand, the entire story violates our Code of Conduct.
I thus solicit your suggestions for appropriate, dignified, and family-friendly ways to discuss the matter of Lord Sewel. (Warning: The link is not safe for work. And do not open it in front of your children.)
The contest is open.
Published in Culture, Entertainment, Humor
No indication of Nazi lingerie or involvement of underage sheep etc so on the whole this behavior seems rather mainstream for the peerage, eh wot?
It is ironic that a tiresome, pompous git is making similar characterizations by other figures.
He doesn’t finish even one line of blow, uses a mere 5-pound note for the roll-up and then proceeds to use up the fee left on the dresser by boring a medium-priced hooker. What a tool! England is toast!
His appraisal of Yvette Cooper is more positive than mine.
I was fascinated that they accepted payment by check.
Just when you think politics is nothing but Trumpian bombastics or Hillary’s brand of “fingernail on a blackboard” politics, the Brits give us a genuine political scandal.
None of this “you can’t see my emails” stuff for them. Nothing less that a life peer caught frolicking with the ladies, taking drugs, and wearing a bra.
There’ll always be an England, and there’ll always be an English political scandal.
I was fascinated that they could make vaguely supportive sounds while he spouted such pablum. I guess women have long been able to pretend to be stupid in order to humor a man, but it still disgusted me even more than the drugs or the sex.
There’s something quaintly charming about the very idea of a “political sex scandal,” isn’t there? “You find this upsetting? How sweet!”
I’m underwhelmed.
1.) I thought the purpose of the House of Lords was to put useless people in the government where they couldn’t do any harm while distracting the realm from dangerous people doing lots of harm. Sounds like he’s doing a bang up job, pardon the pun.
2.) But while his work erupts with passion, it fizzles in style. At minimum, he needed at least the quality of hooker used by Bob Morton (obviously not CoC). Also, his blazing conclusion clearly underperformed. I think we can also expect David Cameron’s response to be less vindictive, too.
3.) As for reporting, you should ask Rob Long to convert it into Variety Speak, which I can’t do justice to, but consider the possibilities.
I don’t know what to say, really. If this doesn’t impress you as achieving some kind of Platonic ideal of total degeneracy, you’re … quite a tough audience.
This doesn’t rise to the level of shadows on the walls of Plato’s Retreat.
Did I mention I live in Porn Valley?
Profumo had an affair with a fetching brunette skinny dipping in a friend’s pool, lied about, and found out he was literally sleeping with a Soviet plant. He fell on his sword metaphorically, while his friend fell on his sword literally (well, fell on his drug overdose).
Charles II required his lords and their wives to join him in massive overnight cuddle puddles, which were apparently chaste, which just confused the hell out of everyone and resulted in the worlds’ first civil war provoked because the legislative assembly wasn’t invited to the orgy, only to discover the orgy didn’t happen in the first place.
By comparison, ugly man with pedestrian views acts like knock-off corrupt VP with mid-tier (if we’re being generous) hookers.
Yes, but it’s the involvement of the chair of the committee that makes the decisions on discipline that makes this so special.
I suppose the public taurobolia might have exceeded this.
Thanks for posting, Claire. I wish our politicians were this colorful instead of the PC dullards we have now. Who cares if he likes blow and hookers, as long as he’s paying them with his own money? At 69 years old more power to him.
But he wasn’t! And he was boasting of that!
Leading one to suspect this was, in fact, a strategic leak, so the naughty boy can be punished… appropriately harshly, by an… appropriately uniformed authority figure.
If the choice is between tax quid going to unassimilated non-citizen immigrants or to such committed public servants, I find the choice frankly obvious.
Well c’mon Claire, is it really a serious British political sex scandal if there is no auto-erotic asphyxiation involved?
I conceded this point earlier. But I did so in language more suitable for Ricochet.
I prefer the more euphonious “he was choked on both ends”.
Ms Berlinski,
One would have expected that in this world one would never see the day that drugs, sex, and political gossip wasn’t interesting. Lord Sewel may have broken through a barrier. He has reduced all life down to the level of a pig rutting in the mud. No thanks.
Oh and BTW, Blood Pudding isn’t Kosher and neither is Lord Sewel.
Regards,
Jim
1.) *facepalm*
2.) I don’t see that as a mark of particular degeneracy, either. You’ll get no argument from me that the West is degenerating. But part of that degeneracy is simply how banal it is. What, 20 years ago, was the symbol of corporate corruption is today an ugly out of focus picture of business as usual. Even our moral turpitude is done so slovenly that past gluttons look on us in despair.
Frankly, especially about sex.
I’ve aways found it weird that we call explicit material “adult” when it’s locked firmly in an adolescent’s perspective on the subject—a perspective I remember vividly, as a terrified adopted Lutheran pastor’s grandson who was taught effectively nothing about sex, but knew it was how my birth parents got into trouble (and please do add whatever subconscious separation anxiety etc. you can imagine adoptees go through under the best of circumstances—I’m satisfied they’re quite real).
Now imagine hormonal lightning striking, e.g. growing 4″ in a single year, complete with stretch marks on my knees. No, I am not engaging in hyperbole.
There’s nothing impressive about having a sex drive, being a sexual creature, even powerfully. So what? All healthy mammals fall into this category! To be human is to not follow those impulses wherever they may lead—to not follow them at all, or to follow them in the context of something bigger and more significant—to reflect your belief in God’s bet on the future of humanity with a spouse who shares that belief; to confirm your lifelong commitment to your spouse by having children. “Banality” is exactly the right word to describe what we see here. Sense-stimulus and power; power and sense-stimulus. It’s very difficult indeed to think of anything more trite, more tedious.
I hardly think Lord Sewel is groundbreaking. Doesn’t anyone remember Mayor Marion Barry? The cool thing about Barry is that he was re-elected mayor of DC after getting out the slammer. Maybe there’s hope for Lord Sewel’s comeback in a couple of years.
Hope is not the proper word.
Regards,
Jim
Gee, I dunno. Think of the comedic possibilities. Marion Barry was comedy gold.
Surely you jest.
https://youtu.be/DhOvYLOkw4c
Regards,
Jim
Today’s sex scandals strike me as arse backwards.
By 2015, adults employing sex workers or privately using a small pinch of dope should neither be scandalous, nor illegal.
Secretly filming anyone without their written permission, however, should be a felony, and one so scandalous and actionable that media refuse to run it.
Profumo was a great scandal — spies, mini-skirted party girls with cute hairdos, and no video.
Mandy Rice-Davis and Christine Keeler
I don’t know the going rate of hookers in London, or anywhere. I’d like to say that it’s because I’m such a moral exemplar. I would hope that’s part of it, but let’s face it: Mrs. Mongo is an RN with the predominant percentage of her career spent in the operating theatre. The lady is an expert with a scalpel. I conduct myself accordingly.
But were I a member of the House of Lords determined to go on a cocaine-fueled hooker binge, I’d want it to look like an X-rated vintage 80’s Whitesnake video. Watching the story, all I could think was “that’s worth 400 quid (which is about $620)? C’mon, man. Go epic.”
Banality. Too right.
Well, maybe he’s just wishing he’d taken the Blue pill….
Well, the Red pill was certainly a suppository…
Claire, you are obviously not familiar with some of the school districts in Washington State and the Bay Area. This would be considered “Alternative Family Cohabitation Recreation”.
Watch Your Micro-Aggression’s. :0)