|
|
Post by hild1066 on Jul 3, 2020 19:18:35 GMT
Well, Starkey's rancid venom has finally caught up with him. He's just about lost every revenue stream open to him overnight. He's one of those people that delight in being controversial and saying the thing most likely to cause uproar.
Even his history programmes were rancorous diatribes where you got the impression a junior runner had the terrible job of running about the set moping up the explosive spittle as he laid into another of Henry VIII's wives.
Now his inability to keep quiet has cost him his job, his publisher, his emeritus positions and as is looking likely his honorary degrees and charitable board memberships all over the world. There is even talk of shops taking his books off the shelves.
|
|
|
|
Post by aubrey on Jul 5, 2020 17:24:06 GMT
Apart from the obvious racism, it was an incredibly stupid thing to say, for all kinds of reasons. It shows how much he really knows about history as well.
|
|
|
|
Post by hild1066 on Jul 6, 2020 12:50:33 GMT
People who think they are important often say very stupid things, they're just not used to anyone challenging them on it.
If asked about slavery in a TV interview, with a view to the protests taking place in the US. Starkey could/should have said it was not his area of expertise and his view was that there should be equal rights for everyone. If pushed he could have repeated himself and suggested the interviewer got a more learned person on to discuss it further. However, when you're as arrogant as Starkey, why would you lose the opportunity to sound clever.
What he has now found out is that an inaccurate and un-evidenced opinion on Anne of Cleves maybe annoying to other historians but an inaccurate and un-evidenced opinion on the deaths of millions of black men, women and children is going to take you down.
Just like JK Rowling recently, if you don't know your subject don't spout on about it. And if you can't resist chipping something in there, be prepared for the argument afterwards.
|
|
|
|
Post by goodlookingone on Jul 6, 2020 13:58:41 GMT
It might be more simple than that ... I remember one of my Schoolteachers (Yes, they did have schools that long ago) saying that Good Newspapers (no longer extant), like good teachers, had the ability to separate Facts from Opinions..
|
|
|
|
Post by althea on Jul 6, 2020 15:46:48 GMT
Hoist by his own petard, as Shakespeare would say.
It never fails to surprise me, when the great and the good show themselves for what they really are.
|
|
|
|
Post by hild1066 on Jul 6, 2020 17:12:02 GMT
Yes even the Holocaust Association have turned on him and said he clearly does not understand what he was talking about.
He has apologised and said he wasn't thinking but he must have thought of his analogy before he used it. It wouldn't just spring into your mind. The idea that there can't have been a genocide because some people survived may be a literal understanding of the term on his part but try telling people in Serbia or Rwanda that!
|
|
