The anti-Semitism of Cecil Beaton

Bootsy Gumdrop is a huge fan of Beaton.

Bootsy has always liked anyone who’d throw her a sardine[bold] : (

"Do you think he should have stayed employed?"

WTF are you asking, exactly.

Do I think that Cecil Beaton should have stayed employed 80 years ago based on the politics of 2022?

It was hardly the politics of 2022 that got him fired.

Stay employed by the Royal Family, is what you are asking?

An upper-class person in Britain, or America for that matter, being openly anti-Semitic prior to WWII, is not news. If he wasn't that would be news.

Anyone's opinion is irrelevant. The historical fact are the facts. "Firing" him posthumously is stupid. Just accept that historical figures were of their period.

The OP is livid because Cecil used a four letter word almost one century ago.

OP, you are obsessed.

Firing him posthumously is insufficient. He must be removed from history

[quote] Indispensable? Not in my book.

Tell us more about this book of yours, OP.

Is it a credo or manifesto like 'Das Kapital' or 'Mein Kampf'?

The OP is The Cancel Brigade.

[quote]R10 Tell us more about this book of yours, OP.

It’s a book in which someone secretly including the words “damned fags” in their fashion illustrations wouldn’t be venerated.

OP, do you know who owned Vogue at the time of this performance art that you consider so utterly, unforgivably shocking almost a century ago?

R13 not OP, but it was Conde Nast, the actual man, right?

Photography isn't a great art, nor does it take great talent. It's not hard to point and shoot.

Plato owned 5 at the time of his death! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO! CANCEL PLATO!

Yes, R15, Cartier-Bresson said something similar but Beaton dressed his subjects and worked the decor.

And Beaton was also a clever —if perhaps waspish— diarist.

Grow up, OP.

R14 Who is this "Conde Nast"? is it a name or a corporation?

Was he a physically unattractive, corpulent, avaricious American with spittle on his fleshy lips?

MGM/Arthur Freed had Cecil work on Gigi. Jack Warner/George Cukor had Cecil work on My Fair Lady. If they could move on -so can the hurt OP.

Where’s this kike drawing?

R19 He was the businessman who founded the eponymously named corporation. Wikipedia and google are your friends, so use them.

[quote]R21 Where’s this drawing?

I think it’s reprinted in [italic]Cecil Beaton: A Biography [/italic]by Hugo Vickers. I don’t see it online.

Half the issues had already been shipped when the intent of Beaton’s artwork was detected. When Beaton refused to alter the piece, the remaining copies were pulled and the offending words and images inked out at a cost of $30,000 (in 1938 dollars.) Mr. Nast fired Beaton, who was begging for his job back in 3 months.

What’s also deeply disturbing is that when Nast refused to rehire him, the Royal Family clutched Beaton to their (Nazi sympathizing?) breast and put him back to work on Britain’s dime. Yuck.

[quote] their (Nazi sympathizing?) breast

Yes, you had to include that question mark because it's a stupid inflammatory claim.

He took divine pictures of me! Cookie, well what can one do with her? All that taffeta.

Wallis, dear. He had to give you fake hips because you don't have any!

His anti-semitism has nothing to do with his photography talent.

That being said, he was overrated. Richard Avedon (ironically, as Jewish as it gets) was a far better photographer in a similar line of work. Avedon did standard ad campaigns on top of celebrity portraits and high fashion photography which I'm not sure Beaton ever did.

The article is actually fairly balanced and it seems he had a number of Jewish friends both before and after and seemed to be playing some kind of game with the tiny writing he assumed no one would read. Not that it justifies it, just that he's a more nuanced character and not a hard-core Jew-hater.

The article is very interesting -- worth reading for a glimpse into gay life in the 20s and 30s

Does anybody here believe he fucked Garbo?

I read the Beaton/Garbo volume and it is, of course, very discreet. They circled each other "like feathered doves".

I love this picture. They both look rather handsome.

Old Cecil ought to meet my wife.

R29 Mutual bearding story.

The DL Kancels Kankled Kunts!

Brava!

R26, Cookie- you had enough for the both of us.

They were both bi and besties. Beaton was hurt, confused and angry when he proposed to her and she turned him down.

Sad, skinny hips.

Wallis looked great in clothes.

Are Palestinians antisemites?

R35 Thank you for the laugh.

[quote]r29 Does anybody here believe he fucked Garbo?

I kind of do. She was an… eclectic person.

They eventually quarreled over something petty and he never stopped whining about it.

If the duke of Windsor was gay and he sure looks effeminate, why did he abdicate? Who did he screw?

R41 Celibacy is a LOT more common than Dataloungers will admit to.

The Duke was a horndog back in the day. With women.

From one 2012 biography review:

[quote] “That Woman” also underscores Edward’s considerable shortcomings. There was the dreadful baby talk (as a grown man, he used words like “cwying”), the pouty selfishness, the “ethical impotence” and the total lack of intellectual curiosity and historical perspective. Author Anne Sebba reports that when Edward and Wallis hired a yacht in the summer of 1936, they instructed that all books be removed from its library.

Baby talk?? Wallis was welcome TO him!

[quote] r41 If the duke of Windsor was gay, and he sure looks effeminate, why did he abdicate? Who did he screw?

The couple had some bi playboy around for years, until the rowdy Jackanape’s alcoholism became embarrassing.

What was his name?

R45 His name was Jack.

[quote] the hurt OP.

The OP is still smarting from this personal outrage from his youth.

84 years ago.

Wallis' "sad, skinny hips" were perfect for bias cut 1930s clothes.

Molyneux, also.

Vionnet and Molyneux dressed women who were as skinny and white as cigarettes.

And, of course, cigarettes suppressed hunger.

Thanks R46, I believe I’m thinking of a Jimmy Donahue, who’s mentioned at the 19:00 mark below.

But the name Edward "Fruity" Metcalfe (for real) also comes up.

Who was this Jack? There must have been many liaisons….

'Jack' may have been a nick-name just like 'Fruity'.

Fruity was the Duke's equerry and friend. A quick Google search explains the basics.

The Ramones were so upset by him that they wrote a song called "Beaton the Brat". There was a typo space in the original issue title.

WTF is the point of this?

Jew hatred was and remains endemic in England (and the rest of the world for that matter). Beaton is no different to Waugh or Dahl or Chaucer or Shakespeare in his proud, forthright, unashamed Jew hatred. While authors are condemned and rejected/removed for being anti-black, being anti-Jew is different, innit?

His My Fair Lady outfits were amazing!!!

The author of that article has a few things confused. He attributes Beaton's anti-Semitism to Beaton wanting to cover up alleged humble beginnings and he was uncomfortable at the idea that Jews too had also pulled themselves up by the bootstraps.

[quote]One journalist, a contributor for the left-wing New Masses, Robert Forsythe, had his own theory of Beaton’s subconscious motives. Beaton began “as a young man with a Cockney accent and manners … short of perfection.”

This is laughable. While Beaton was no aristocrat (a world he longed to enter, and did so quite quickly and easily) he was of a very wealthy background, the son of a successful businessman. Born and raised in Hampstead, he was educated at a top prep school, then at Harrow, one of the best public (i.e. private boarding) schools in Britain, and Cambridge. Beaton had anything but a Cockney accent and was bred from birth to have impeccable manners.

Beaton's anti-Semitism was simply a reflection of the casual anti-Semitism of his day.

R57 There was and is nothing "casual" about vicious hatreds, in this case, against Jews. Attempting to trivialize Jew hatred is deplorable.

R58

Yes, Hillary. I didn't vote for you before and I won't vote for you again.

Sorry r58, I meant anti-Semitic microaggressions.

[quote] microaggressions

Does Cecil's barely visible, four tiny letters fit the definition of 'microaggression'?

R60 R61 Bigoted slurs against Jews are not "casual" or "micro-aggressions". Just like Nigger isn't "casual" or "micro-aggression" against blacks.

As someone said elsewhere, casual anti-semitism was common in British upper classes and nobility Edwardian times all the way up to the start of WWII. But also in the US. A quick search of periodicals and newspapers of pre-WWII in the US would find the number of advertisements for jobs or for apartments carrying the words "No Jews need apply" to be very high. As in many other situations of bigotry, (also found in the South in regard to black people) people immersed in the culture toss off statements of prejudice seemingly oblivious to how hurtful such statements would be to people they'd consider themselves to be friendly with.

Cecil Beaton denunciations have knocked the Ukraine War out of the news. Just as well, the war got boring.

[quote] people immersed in the culture toss off statements of prejudice seemingly oblivious to how hurtful such statements

R63 Because their societies have never inculcated in them that there is anything wrong with their bigotries. Especially when it comes to Jews, against whom bigoted slurs remain socially and culturally acceptable. While Brits and Americans have been socially inculcated to know that Nigger is a socially unacceptable slur, for which the person uttering it will be subject to social censure and ostracism, bigoted slurs against Jews don't carry that same negative social connotation or social penalty. On the contrary, as R60 R61 and your post have illustrated, anti-Jewish bigotry is mitigated, rationalized, trivialized and often justified. Because no one has ever told any of you Jew-hating turds that mitigating, rationalizing, trivializing and justifying Jew hatred is WRONG.

Yes, R65, is WRONG and it's SINFUL.

Cecil Beaton committed crimes against humanity in 1938 ! ! ! !

[quote]r52 Fruity was the Duke's equerry and friend. A quick Google search explains the basics.

Oh, we know they were FRIENDS…!

[italic] In a 2004 edition of his biography of Wallis, author Charles Higham revealed that the Duke's former equerry Sir Dudley Forwood had told him that Edward "Fruity" Metcalfe, an Indian army officer and close friend of Edward, "was an active homosexual and that he had a physical affair with the Prince of Wales".

R66 Like Hitler and Beaton, another proud Jew-hating turd. Labour voter too, I'll bet.

R68 Just WHO are you accusing of being a Labour voter?

[quote] On the contrary, as [R60] [R61] and your post have illustrated, anti-Jewish bigotry is mitigated, rationalized, trivialized and often justified. Because no one has ever told any of you Jew-hating turds that mitigating, rationalizing, trivializing and justifying Jew hatred is WRONG.

Bullshit. I am Jewish and under 40 and never experience this.

What I do see is people on the far left substituting the word "Zionist" for "Jew" and repeating all sorts of slanders-- "the Zionists control the media" -- fortunately I don't know many of them (or any TBH) IRL

[quote] his illustrations for Vogue, which got him fired in 1938

Where are these illustrations?

He was one of those fey bisexual who couldn't live without cock, but made a great big deal about any faint desire for women - in a way no man who really desires women in such a base sense does. Those types of bi men really show actually how 'gay' they are.........

[quote]What I do see is people on the far left substituting the word "Zionist" for "Jew"

Don't insult us all by playing a dumbfuck, Moshe. You damn well know people across the political spectrum, including Jews themselves, utterly condemn Zionism, which denies justice for Palestians, and steals their land.

He turned up at the country house of an aristocratic friend of mine, and when we walked out to the pool and saw all the naked men in it, turned on his heels and fled! She could be achingly precious. But he was always conscious of being born middle class, and always on guard against anything that might compromise him, whereas aristos like my friend couldn't give a flying fuck.

R73 steps right up to perfectly prove R65's and R70's points. I'm not a Jew-hating turd, Moshe. I'm a Zionist-hating turd Moshe. And these other Jew-hating turds, including these slimy Jew enablers (which Jew-hating . . . er . . . Zionist-hating turds love) prove I'm absolutely right to be a Jew-hating . . . erm . . . Zionist-hating turd. Moshe.

You have told us this anecdote before, R74, but you didn't give a date, location or any fact at all.

R74, that seem to be at odds with his rather aggressive attempt to get me in bed. John Gielgud was more subtle and a gentleman. Beaton was just a pest. (I was 17, he was 76 if anyone wants to know.)

Yup R75 - so many DL Eldergays fall into the trap of "I may be a white trash shop bottom/chorus boy, but at least I'm not black/Jewish/Latin/Italian...." (And from looking at that particular poster's previous postings, he 100% fits the bill.)

The best part of the leftists is the gaslighting. "No, we're only talking about Zioniists. We LOVE Jews."

Whereas at least their counterparts on the Right joyously embrace their hatred of Jews and brag about it.

[quote]but you didn't give a date, location or any fact at all.

Didn't realise you were writing a Beaton biography, so didn't provide the citations.

What a stupid thread. The MAJORITY of people were anti-semitic in various degrees until very recent times, and possibly quietly still are. I'm sure many Jews believe so. It's pure idiocy to make a point of it with Beaton. He got hauled up for it because what he did was stupidly crass, and he did it in NY, which even then had a hefty Jewish pull, yet nonetheless still banned Jews from some clubs and apartment blocks.

[quote][R74], that seem to be at odds with his rather aggressive attempt to get me in bed.

It may have been in one of his 'I'm a heterosexual' phases when he was making a fool of himself over the vile Garbo.

My problem with threads such as these is that the indignation tries to make a mountain out of a historic molehill. Getting one's knickers in a knot over historic antisemitism is like getting in an uproar over historic smoking and demanding that all cigarettes be removed from old films. Antisemitism was a historic reality. What is important to remember is that Jews did not have a monopoly. For every "No Jews allowed" there was a "No Irish". This kind of discrimination was common for many peoples.

In addition, R81, the actual article OP posted, from a well known and much respected Jewish magazine, is not nearly as outraged and offers a far more nuanced view of the whole incident and about the role of Jews in the art world during that period. (They are not outraged.)

R74, if your story is true then it's very likely that aristocrats like your friend felt they were above the law at a time when sex between men was a criminal act in Britain. Beaton spoke about the relief he felt when homosexual acts were decriminalised in 1967 and how if that had been the case when he and others were young men they would have been a lot less messed up.

I'm intrigued as to just how old you and your friend are - you must be at least 110. It sounds a little implausible that Beaton would go all the way to a country house and immediately leave because he didn't approve of what his host had done. That would be far more against his middle-class mores. Beaton also had a wide and eclectic group of friends, it's also odd that something like that would bother him.

[quote] The MAJORITY of people were anti-semitic in various degrees until very recent times, and possibly quietly still are.

Were? Most certainly STILL are. See this thread for plenty of examples, including your own.

[quote] Getting one's knickers in a knot over historic antisemitism is like getting in an uproar over historic smoking

R81 Trivializing almost two millennia of attacks, harrassments, ghettoization, discrimination, persecution, expulsiion, pogroms and extermination of Jews by comparing the horrors Jews were subjected to to smoking. Just when I thought a DL poster had reached the height of deplorable idiocy and ignorance, R81 posts to illustrate that I ain't seen nothing yet. SHAME!!!

Beaton and Garbo? I thought he was gayer than a Christmas tree.

[quote] Half the issues had already been shipped when the intent of Beaton’s artwork was detected. When Beaton refused to alter the piece, the remaining copies were pulled and the offending words and images inked out at a cost of $30,000 (in 1938 dollars.) Mr. Nast fired Beaton, who was begging for his job back in 3 months.

[quote]What’s also deeply disturbing is that when Nast refused to rehire him, the Royal Family clutched Beaton to their (Nazi sympathizing?) breast and put him back to work on Britain’s dime. Yuck.

Beaton sounds like a bit of a raging cunt to be honest, but a man of his time, anti-semitism was all too common and acceptable back then as others have pointed out. It still goes on today like what R70, R75, R78 etc said, just with a different fancy new label stuck on on top of the ugly old one (sometimes it falls off though)

Conde Nast was surprisingly advanced for his time, good on him for not having any of Beaton's bullshit and telling him to go fuck himself when he came back begging for his job months later. Good guy. The Royal Family should of taken a leaf outta his book

The "casual anti-Semitism" mentioned upthread that was prevalent in English literature from Victorian times through the 1930s was "casual" in that it was often just tossed off suggestively as a descriptor of a minor character such as a "Jew shopkeeper" or "the Jewess who owned a beauty shop", as if that told the reader all they needed to know.

I've often come across such descriptors in the novels of Trollope, Angela Thirkell, Nancy Mitford, Stella Gibbons (Cold Comfort Farm) and many others and been taken so aback that I chose not to continue reading.

Antisemitism couldn't have been as normal and accepted back then as some of you claim, since Beaton was fired from his job for it.

R88 Beaton was "allegedly" fired for his Jew hatred. However,the other bazillion Jew-hating turds unashamed to publicly express their Jew hatred were not. Which makes one wonder if there were other far more cogent reasons for Beaton being sacked which had zip to do with his Jew hatred.

This image doesn't have the words in question, best I can tell, I believe it's one of the edited versions that went out in later issues, but this is the illustration where Beaton sneaked in those slurs. They were tiny little words in a telegram, a newspaper, and an upside-down newspaper.

You can argue that he hid them and no one would have noticed, but he did that kind of tiny "hidden" writing in a lot of his illustrations and people had taken to looking closely to see what he said.

[quote]r79 The MAJORITY of people were anti-semitic in various degrees until very recent times, and possibly quietly still are.

But that’s no really the issue. We all have inner prejudices that are nonsensical, in the big picture of things. It’s just the way our brain has filed things,b away, trying to make sense of the world while scrambling to make ourselves feel better about our own selves. A lot of the growth in life is about resolving that but by bit, coming closer to our fellow man rather than keeping him at a distance as the hated and feared Other.

The problem is when you start humiliating others (such as in print, like Cecil Beaton did), or pass laws to hurt them, or take stands to win others over to your disturbed views in order to gain strength… etc. etc. Just keep your fucked up prejudices to yourself and work through them the best you can… or at least do no harm, to the best of your present abilities.

Beaton took his hatefulness too far by weaseling it it to the public sphere.

[quote]r89 makes one wonder if there were other far more cogent reasons for Beaton being sacked which had zip to do with his Jew hatred.

The scandal made the front page of papers and advertisers started to pull out of buying space. It’s legitimate to wonder if Nast might have kept Beaton on if it all stayed secret, but as the events became public that was a dicier option for a business owner. We’ll never know whst Nast’s reaction would have been otherwise.

[quote]R90 You can argue that he hid them and no one would have noticed

Yeah, no one can really fall back on that excuse when the Art Department noticed the words. It was noticed. The words were not invisible.

WORSE THAN HITLER

[quote] Yes, Hillary. I didn't vote for you before and I won't vote for you again.

Wrong thread, hon.

[quote]if your story is true then it's very likely that aristocrats like your friend felt they were above the law at a time when sex between men was a criminal act in Britain.

Yes you ridiculous frau. The majority of gay people considered themselves 'above the law' back then every single day. Because we fucked despite it. And we even had naked pool parties without consulting the legislation. Imagine that.

Fuck me dead. The fraus stumbling in here are getting more moronic by the day.

Girls, girls! Enough about this tedious anti-Semitism. I've finally reached my goal weight of 50 pounds. Cookie is still 150, poor dear. She is still eating chocolates in the afterlife.

Dear, crazed r95:

My mother's dear friend, Winnaretta Singer (the sewing machine heiress and saphist), AKA Princesse Edmond de Polignac, invited me and my Harvard roommate, a handsome Lebanese Jew, to her celebrated music salon at her hôtel particulier on Avenue Henri-Martin. Too numerous to mention, the many beautiful and talented inverts present, but Beaton was there, Nijinsky, Djuna Barnes, and so on. It was Easter 1940, right before Paris fell to the Germans. Beaton came on strongly to my friend, and Beaton knew he was a Jew because his mother had the most fabulous jewels of a non royal in the Middle East, so his name was well known among the Happy Few.

Yes, if you must know, my roommate was a Safra. And not gay. He died the next year, in Operation Exporter, the British invasion of Vichy French Syria and Lebanon.

R90 I see nothing there.

[quote] he did that kind of tiny "hidden" writing in a lot of his illustrations and people had taken to looking closely to see what he said.

You say "a lot of his illustrations" but you can't show us.

Second-hand slander about the dead from almost a century distance has no value.

I was surprised at the level of antisemitism in the UK. Really surprised. How did the English Rothschilds deal with this?

[quote] I was surprised

When? Did you go looking for it?

R101 I know how you feel. We were shocked by the brutal persecution of Jews in Visigothic Hispania. Luckily, my lover and I escaped to the comparatively enlightened Byzantine Constantinople, under Leo III.

[quote] Beaton sounds like a bit of a raging cunt to be honest

All of us can be like that at times. Even you, even me.

But Beaton had more talent than both of us.

R84 = Simon Wiesenthal

R87 = Precious Marigold

R91 = Adlai Stevenson II

[quote] saphist

R90 Sapphist

[quote] How did the English Rothschilds deal with this?

They bought everybody out.

Benjamin Disraeli got a loan from Lionel Nathan de Rothschild to buy the Suez Canal

One of my guilty pleasures for laugh-out-loud reading have always been the Regency novels of Georgette Heyer, but after learning that she was rather anti-semitic in her personal views (and openly used a stock Jewish stereotype in the Grande Sophy (a Jewish money lender) I find I'm not as drawn to her work as I was before. Still, if we started excising all the writers, composers, poets, philosophers, playwrights, and others from European cultural history on the basis of some expression of anti-Semitism, we'd have a very thin representation left - no Shakespeare, no Wagner, no Luther, no Dickens, no Chaucer, no Fitzgerald or Hemingway, no Chopin - maybe even Bach, with the vehemence of the anti-Jewish phrases from his St. John's Passion. So I guess we just have to accept that this is one of the darkest legacies of Christianity, one that stained European culture up to and through WWII.

People loved Wagner's music but overlooked his virulent antisemitism including his stereotypical depiction of Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, a blatant Jewish caricature as originally performed. It's always toned down these days.

Lol r95, I was talking specifically about aristocrats, in response to r74, who explicitly states that Beaton did not feel that way. Beaton himself spoke of how the homosexuality being a criminal act messed him and many others up when they were young men.

R74 wrote:

[quote] But he was always conscious of being born middle class, and always on guard against anything that might compromise him, whereas aristos like my friend couldn't give a flying fuck.

[quote]R100 You say "a lot of his illustrations" but you can't show us.

Maybe read a book some time and look at the provided illustrations rather than expect a stranger on the Internet to provide digital “proof” to you.

I much prefer his porn twin.

[quote]I was surprised at the level of antisemitism in the UK. Really surprised.

They threw Jews out of the country. It goes back centuries.

[quote] They threw Jews out of the country

A ridiculous generalisation which idiotically overlooks Ostrer, Niewmayer, Disraeli and Rothschild.

r115, you must not have read the linked article. England (specifically King Edward I) expelled all Jews from its lands in the year 1290 and none were readmitted until the year 1655, (365 years later, for the arithmetically-challenged). Expel= throw out, so r114 was perfectly correct. The English Expulsion was the first "country-wide" expulsion of Jews in Europe, long before the Spanish and Portuguese expulsions , which happened 2 full centuries later.

R116 That's ancient history.

Cecil Beaton's work was encircled by powerbrokers like film magnate Maurice Ostrer.

Ostrer employed Beaton directly in '42.

r109 the same goes to other forms of bigotry.

theparts where I get more annoyed is the revising of said history.. it's become common in this age to deny certain figures were nazi sympathizers or grossly antisemitic (to which there many against the nazis yet still blamed jews for it).. or again, other forms of bigotry. The more twisted is when they turn them into heroes against said bigotry. . . that's what has become all too common in the last decade. It seems to be more frequent when they overlap into multiple disadvantaged groups.

r38

I forget which book I read, but Princess Margaret evidently went to see Schindler's List and walked out saying these tedious Jews again?

r38

r38

R120 Princess Margaret isn't Cecil Beaton.

But Jerry Seinfeld and I agree that this three hour long preaching movie is rather boring.

Jerry Seinfeld is certainly an arbiter of artistry.

[quote]r123 Princess Margaret isn't Cecil Beaton.

Her family certainly fell all over themselves getting Beaton jobs right after Vogue publicly dumped him, so there’s an obvious personal affinity.

Jerry Seinfeld is a lousy arbiter of artistry compared to Sir Cecil Beaton.

[quote] Her family certainly fell all over themselves

There are idiots in my family, there are idiots in yours. We can't be put on trial for what you seem to be suggesting are SINFUL criminal acts.

Suggesting?

We're looking greatly forward to the next revelatory shock-horror thread posted by a Gen Z post:

"The racism of Kipling."

"The pederasty of Oscar Wilde"

"The class snobbery of Jane Austen"

Did the Princess think Schindler's List was about Madame Schindler's list of dresses to acquire at the couture?

R119, R120 and R122 thank you for those chilling but informative videos. I've subscribed to that Canary outfit on YouTube

The last video is really interesting as it gives a good background of how we got into the mess we are today in that region. British incompetence plus eternal hatreds, and the British should have initiated the partition way earlier than they did, would of saved a bunch of lives and got on top of a heap of problems early before they festered

Interestingly it was a Jewish High Commissioner of the British Mandate in Palestine 1920-25 that put the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el Husseini into power in a well intentioned but cack handed attempt to keep peace. Boy did that ever turn to shit. And Yasser Arafat was a cousin of his.... connect the dots

[quote]A ridiculous generalisation which idiotically overlooks Ostrer, Niewmayer, Disraeli

R115 Disraeli was a baptised CofE Xtian.

[quote] a Jewish High Commissioner of the British Mandate in Palestine 1920-25 that put the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin el Husseini into power

R131 Samuel "appointed" al Husseini Grand Mufti because he wanted to keep the very powerful al Husseini clan on side. "Peace" was never part of the equation since attacks against Jews were on-going, culminating in the 1929 Muslim riots (and the 1936 riots). Arafat obviously obtained his power because he was a member of the al Husseini clan, as were many of the senior thugs in the PLO, such as Nasser al Qudwa, who was Arafat's nephew.

[quote] British incompetence plus eternal hatreds, and the British should have initiated the partition way earlier than they did,

Think of how different the region would have been had the British not gifted in 1921 half of mandated "Palestine" to the Hashemi clan, by way of thanx for helping the Brits kick the Turks out of the Hijaz. The Hashemi clan needed a new "home" because they'd been kicked out of the Hijaz by the far more powerful Saud clan.

Matt A. either started this thread or is posting on it. Stinking things up here again.

Beaton called Babe Paley a kike in Vogue!

BABE PALEY!

Cecil Beaton was an aesthete.

He worshipped beauty and despited the petty and venal.

Most sane people now recognise that creating Israel was a gross mistake. A classic case of giving certain people an inch, and they keep on stealing thousands of square miles.

Cecil Beaton was interested in beauty and glamour.

He was uninterested in politics and grubbiness.

R137 Sane people recognise "anti-Zionism" for what it is; the latest manifestation of Jew hatred. A classic case of pretending that the same images and terminology used for centuries to slander and annihilate Jews is now different because it's couched in new verbal bile.

Cecil Beaton knew how to dress women.

His heyday was the 19th century. Look at those elaborate gowns at R136.

His triumph was Isabel Jeans in this 1890s Wilde play made during the horrors of the war.

R139 = Matt again

[quote] Matt A. either started this thread or is posting on it. Stinking things up here again.

Someone has to because the previous Beaton thread has been closed.

And Beaton was a quintessential homosexual.