Arrogance, thy name is Anne.

[rebness]

I've been fawning over Ben Goldacre of late. He's the British scientist who forced Gillian McKeith to stop calling herself Dr. as it was false. He's the one who has taken on homeopathy and big pharma and I adore him. He constantly presses the reader -- look at the study, read it properly. Are the people presenting you with 'facts' full of bias?

This fucking woman. She drives me up the wall, and not merely for splintering my dearest fandom, not merely for dragging canon over the coals of crap. She comes out with the most stupid, simplistic shit that I get so angry. There was the time someone asked her why she came out with anti-abortion rhetoric in one of her later novels when she's all for womens' rights and she was all, 'but the facts I stated were true.' There was the idiotic 'the French don't respect freedom the way Americans do' (what?) and now this.

I dislike anti-Stratfordians, and probably not for the reasons you think. It's the inherent class bias -- that's always the thought behind it! A working-class man couldn't possibly have written such imaginative, beautiful, moving things. How could he have ever known these places without travelling? (Because he didn't make any geographic mistakes like canals in Verona, and none of us have ever written about cities we haven't yet visited, have we?) It had to have been a royal figure! It had to have been a rich man, for imagination is the sole domain of the rich and powerful. Obviously, he was some bumpkin picked by De Vere to capitalise on the plays and become a very, very rich, very revered man in his own lifetime. I await Vincent Van Gogh's unmasking as Emperor Franz Josef.

But it's more than that. It's this woman. Look at the arrogance of what she says! She has studied it 'in depth', which as we all know can mean anything from Rice truly doing a great bit of research for 18th-century Lestat or making hideous, ridiculous mistakes about modern British people and our culture. She maintains throughout her Facebook page that she has taken the time to study all this, and dissenters are really stupid, and Kenneth Branagh will totally make a film about how Shakespeare was a fraud and we're all wrong, because studying literature and loving literature, much less studying authorship can never grant us the same authority as being a published fiction writer.

A pox on her!

I read a really interesting article and debate in the Guardian  a few days ago where several academics who have studied Shakespeare and the issue of whom he truly was for years argued about this. Here I will demonstrate bias myself (Ben Goldacre is side-eyeing me right now) but the academics convinced me more than ever that he was the author of the plays. As one pointed out, we have less evidence that Marlowe was the author of his own work, yet we don't dispute his authorship really, do we?

But Queen Anne has made her increasingly annoying, pig-headed mind up. IShe has pronounced herself expert, as she always, always does on issues she obviously knows very little about. She has a secret door right into sixteenth-century England and her many dorky fans are following, as if she's some tacky jewellery-clad Prophet. Ugh! How did I ever fanworship this clown?

Comments

[pointedulac.livejournal.com]

I thought they recently proved William Shakespeare was, in fact, William Shakespeare.

Also Anne is ridiculous. Not just as a writer but as a person.

We worshipped her when were young and she, at times, at least the times we knew of, mostly made sense. Now she has a forum and an audience so her soapbox is easier for her to access. Gah.

[rebness.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing: I used to believe that he couldn't possibly be so smart as to write all that. And then, you know... now I see them say he couldn't because he describes places. You know what I'd do if I wanted to write about S___? I'd ask you for tips on it. I'd ask you where my characters would eat, the names of local places. OH MY GOD I MUST BE AMERICAN.

Why would a man working with a company of actors from around the country not think to do that?

The more I read about it, the more I think he just was himself. saffronlie and I (I bet unlike Anne Rice) visited Stratford and he's just so ingrained into the culture there, his history literally in the buildings and churches of that area. He was a rich man living off his writing when he was alive. As even a cursory glance at Wiki will tell us, nobody even questioned his authorship until the 19th century, when the man was long dead.

As for Anne, she's just so ridiculous I cannot. She's absurd. She actually has some really vile opinions and acts like your embarrassing aunt. But unlike the aunt, she has an audience of clowns hanging on her every word.

I need to stop reading her craziness! It's like crack!

[pointedulac.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing about the debate in high school and watching a documentary about it, but I'm inclined to believe it was probably all him. Then again, I don't know the facts as well as someone who's done tons of research might.

And exactly. If I want to write about something, I ask people who know about it or are from there or visit the place myself. Even in the distant past, he could have asked traveling people about Verona, say.

Anne doesn't know shit. She reads one thing and decides "YES, that is fact." Like you said about abortions. They don't make a woman's womb weak - she was misinformed and probably read it in a pro-life pamphlet.

I really couldn't take having her in my FB feed because it would raise my blood pressure too much, but I'm sort of glad someone checks her page once in a while so we can find out stuff liek the "Louie" debacle. Did even one person say, "I thought it was Louis?" Geez. Her FB Fans are such suck ups.

[rebness.livejournal.com]

I keep wanting to engage in a debate with her and tell her she's crazy, but I see what happens: someone steps in and attempts to disagree, and then several fans harass them. She won't respond, but will post some PA rhetoric later on that evening (hence the Shakespeare silliness).

The abortion thing sickened me. Truly sickened me. That her vile stupidity will be republished and republished for generations to come is horrible.

Do you know that not one person did take her to task about the names? Man, if I had a brother with a troll account on Facebook, I'd totally ask him to post right now-- oh, dear.

[rebness.livejournal.com]

[pointedulac.livejournal.com]

LMAO. OMG.

I can't spell. But I refuse to use an editor. What the holy hell is with this woman???

Also Grey might be my hero but of course Anne misses the point

[rebness.livejournal.com]

Any kind of snark goes right over her head. Editors, who needs 'em?

(ALL OF US.)