The Spectator exposes Tancredo's Tanton links!  FINALLY!  For those who missed it and want to know more aobut Tancredo and his associates, check out The Subway Canaries.  I have a two part expose of Tancredo which I posted this weekend.  You might also want to check out the Tanton links.  Then check out the comments over at Red State.  Most people are still backing him.  Like I've said - goosestepping with Nazis!  It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!  Okay, I'm snarky because I've been working on this for six months and no one payed attention until Spectator picked it up.  I've noticed H&C isn't discussing it tonight.

This evening Terry (Ike) Clanton is doing a webcast from his Haunted Saloon. 

By now you probably know I am a sucker for archaeology. Cool new development over at Stonehenge. Ah yes, why global warming IS a crock.

Mommy Cat and the babies had a visitor today – our official kitten wrangler, Sydney.  She played with the little calico for a few minutes then had to bop off to gymnastics.  Plans are for me to pick her up at gymnastics on Thursday and bring her over here to do more kitten wrangling while her big sister is playing basketball.  Rumsfeld was SOOOO mad when she ignored him.  He can’t wait to get one of the kittens and ‘play’ with them.  I’m not sure if they are eating on their own or not.  The moment they do, three of them are gone, Mommy Cat goes in to prevent additional unwanted pregnancies, and I guess I end up babysitting the little red one.  Alicia watched him walk today.  We defiantly have a problem.  Naturally I can’t give him to just anyone!  I guess Rums will end up spending some quality time with his grandparents while I work with the baby.  I just don’t know if six weeks is too early to separate the babies.  This batch seems quite immature.  Their siblings were up and out by five weeks, climbing and getting into mischief. 

I have two new articles up on blog critics, this time it is about various Jane Austen films.

You might want to check the first comment that came in for this article. I’ll probably end up in trouble over this one.  I have a tendency to be a reasonable person, but when I deal with people like this, I refuse to back down.  Obviously the critic was a liberal feminist. I have no tolerance for these people.  They look for meaning in everything, taking history out of context.  Nothing annoys me more (not even liberals or Dems) than people who take history out of context in order to prove their current social theories.

I think we can sometimes over-think the meanings of things.  As a research historian and a writer of history, I feel it is important not to take a historical figure and their life/words out of historical context.  In that way I do not even think we can begin to put a feminist spin on any of Austen's work.  I don't think that is why she was writing.  I think she was observing the world around her.  Because people do not change, and because she was such an acute observer of human character her work is timeless.  It will be as important several hundred years from now as it is today.  BUT, if we do not take pains to present her work in historical context, we will be doing a disservice to Austen and to her future readers.  .  By infringing on her storyline with modern interpretations that have absolutely nothing to do with historical context is almost abusive in my way of thinking. 

Pride and Prejudice is not a feminist tome.  While it is entirely possible Austen was familiar with the writings of Mary Wollenscroft, given the fact that Austen was raised by very conventional parents in a typical home, I doubt she would have been caught dead with anything by the scandalous Wollenscroft, who flaunted every aspect of polite society of her age. To read it a an early expression of feminism takes Austen completely out of historical context.