"Hold, good people! I am the PROTESTANT whore!"

[saltpoint]

Those words are Nell Gwynn's, mistress / prostitute to King Charles II of England after his restoration to the throne.

Some accounts record the quotation as "Pray, good people, be civil. I am the PROTESTANT whore," but generally the content and tone are the same.

A day or two downstream from the Edwards story, I thought Nell Gwynn might be an instructive consultation. Here's a Wikipedia link on Nell Gwynn as a fruit-seller in theaters, her humble origins, her illiteracy, her career as an actress, and her role as the carnal companion of the King.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nell_Gwynne

(excerpt):

- - -
Nell is especially remembered for one particularly apt witticism, which was recounted in the memoirs of the Comte de Gramont, remembering the events of 1681:

Nell Gwynn was one day passing through the streets of Oxford, in her coach, when the mob mistaking her for her rival, the (Catholic) Duchess of Portsmouth, commenced hooting and loading her with every opprobrious epithet.

Putting her head out of the coach window, "Good people", she said, smiling, "You are mistaken; I am the Protestant whore."

This appeal to British bigotry made her immensely popular. The Catholic whore was still the Frenchwoman Louise de Kérouaille, who had been raised to Duchess of Portsmouth in 1673.

Nell is also famous for another remark made to her coachman, who was fighting with another man who had called her a whore. She broke up the fight, saying, "I AM a whore. Find something else to fight about."
- - -

The King's carnal appetites were public knowledge. There was little discussion as a result of "approval ratings" and there were no National Enquirer reporters hounding politicians for tabloid headlines. One watched what one said or one faced consequences one did not want.

In Shakespeare a king might don the garb of a commoner and under cover of night walk the streets to overhear the true "polling" of his subjects. No Rasmussen or Gallup existed and no 24/7 cable news.

The given religion of a prostitute seems to me to be a hilarious distraction to her specified role with kings and politicians. A traditional service is desired; a willing fulfillment is offered. Whether there are political implications to the given spiritual identities of the particpants seems to me less the point if the point at all. Nell Gwynn was illiterate but she was not a dummy.

The angry mob attacking the King's prostitute's coach is anyone who ever criticized anyone else on grounds of religious affiliation or sexual conduct. The story of Nell Gwynn is juicy and provocative but when I consider it, I don't see myself as part of the mob attacking her coach, screaming epithets at her. It's not where I want to be in the narrative. If I am far from perfect, I still want to be far from that mob.

Not myself a Christian, I appreciate a guy who places himself in the line of fire between yet another angry mob and "the woman taken in adultery" in the pit. The people in the mob have stones in their hands but are being asked not to throw them. I don't believe Jesus was trans-human but someone had to make a stand for the woman in the pit.

Not myself a Clinton Democrat, I nevertheless took Big Dog's side against the Hannitys and Limbaughs and weighed in on behalf of Bill Clinton the man against Linda Tripp, who betrayed her friend, and betrayed a president to the media, and also against Kenneth Starr. Bill Clinton committed adultery with an adult woman? I wouldn't give you a nickel for that information, let alone the tax dollars that were spent in bringing it to the headlines -- money which IMO could have far better been spent on a girls basketball team, books for a grade school library, or a science fair in a rural community in northern Montana.

It bothered some folks that Alexander slept with both women and men and also eunuchs. It doesn't bother me. It didn't appear to negatively impact his role as hegemon of Greece. Militarily, he was the apt student of his brilliant father. Unless I am the woman, man, or eunuch in question, it really is none of my fucking business.

There's always going to be an angry mob. There'll always be people attacking somebody's coach. There'll always be someone with a stone in his hand ready to kill someone else on religious objections or grounds of moral indignation.

IMO Nell Gwynn's quotation is very useful because in calling the mob attacking her "good people" she made it clear that there was very little "good" in what they were doing, including the audacity of imagining they had a right to moral superiority in the first place.

I'm sorry that people commit adultery because others' feelings are wounded, and it should never be anyone's intention to wound anyone in any way. But the human condition does not allow us to make perfect steps forward. No man, Oscar Wilde felt, is rich enough to buy back his past. Whether with money or will. Though either money or will are useful currents for meaningful reform of one's self. Either you believe in redemption by good acts or you don't. I do.

John Kerry versus Dubya was a no-contest decision for me. I honor brains and clarity and distrust incompetence. To cheat one guy from Massachusetts was far less the point than cheating everyone who needs responsible and representative government as an idea and as a policy. When Kerry stepped aside, I supported John Edwards because a pro-labor Democrat has always been to my liking and never more than right now, after Reagan, Poppy, and the current jabbering monkey have been so terribly effective at dismantling economic democracy, unions, and so effective also at rewarding large corporations' greedy machinations.

I have no problem either with Larry Craig's allegedly carnal encounters in the Minneapolis Airport. I have all kinds of problems with Larry Craig's voting record, however.

Assuming that many people would not recommend (though they cannot stop) adultery for themselves or others, and assuming that no one wishes marital trouble for others, there remains a problem with that mob.

Wherever there is a crowd, Kierkegaard felt, there is untruth.

The National Enquirer story is fair game at one level but remains a mean-spirited game nevertheless. IMO their editors are not providing a useful service so much as they are jacking up sales. I am imagining the strutting going on around the water coolers of their headquarters in -- is it Lantana, Florida? -- a pack of roosters crowing about bringing down John Edwards -- when what their "journalistic persistence" has produced instead is the likelihood that a pro-labor Democrat will not serve in a new Democratic administration at a time when one is greatly needed. What they have gained here is far, far less than what the rest of us have lost.

It's my steady impression that the Enquirer especially and the mainstream media generally are nowhere near as "persistent" with Republican transgressions.

As Nell might say, "Oddsfish!"

:bluebox: :bluebox: :bluebox: :bluebox:

[glowing]

1. Cute, and nice history lesson.. Quite appreciate it.

Oh come on, let's admit it, gossip never dies down, just a different subject on a different day. The reason we are a Democratic Republic is so that the "mob" may not rule.. That law rule with clarity and reason, because the "mob" will ruin itself eventually. Anyhoo... good history lesson. I have a good feeling that in years to come, Mr. Edwards will be sympathised and Elizabeth immortalized and all this silly scandal stuff will be left aside... but let's hope that day is far reaching into the future.

[saltpoint]

4. It's been a rough patch for John Edwards but as expected, he

decided to speak openly and presented as confessional to the "angry mob."

I personally don't care for David Vitter and Larry Craig politically but I do not care if they hire prostitutes or frequent airport stalls for sexual release. There are posts on DU by very insightful people who would disagree with my division of powers there. But in politics, I align with people who represent a political improvement to conditions and distrust people who argue against those improvements.

Vitter and Craig, IMO, are free to do as they please in their free time. On the time that is our mutual time -- when they are forging legislation in the Congress that impacts everyone coast-to-coast -- I expect them to act in the interests of all citizens. They often don't. They usually don't.

Edwards politically is still well left of the center of the nation's voters. What disturbs me is that they rejected him for that position in numbers larger than I'd prefer prior to this story. The people I hang out with thought Edwards' and Bonior's labor positions were damned attractive and refreshing. So did I.

[tblue37]

21. I think the nation's voters *would* have turned out for Edwards

if the MSM had not deliberately buried his campaign by treating the race as a contest between just two candidates.

After Edwards came in second in Iowa, the MSM ignored him and continued to focus on the Obama-Clinton race, and continued that tactic through all the rest of the races Edwards was in. As an Edwards supporter I was screamingly fustrated at the time, but now, since this revelation would doom his chances, I am glad he didn't win the nomination, and I bet the MSM's corporate sponsors are actually frustrated now that they so effectively prevented him from getting the nom and instead made it possible for a such a strong candidate as Obama to take it.

One thing about his run, though, is that he forced the other candidates to move in the direction of more populist issues, and for that I will continue to be grateful. I hope they will let him and Elizabeth advise them from behind the scenes.

[saltpoint]

35. I think you're right on several key points, not least about Edwards'

forcing the other 7 Democrats (I'm counting from the original 8 in the primaries) more toward the left generally and toward poverty and unions especially as focus issues.

As definitional issues.

He and Bonior were very sure-footed on this, and their hearts and minds both were in the right place.

And the right place was the Left place.

A debt of thanks is owed accordingly. I think President Obama will realize that these issues are "activated" for many grassroots Democrats and that his support in part is owed to people Edwards and Bonior reached.

[Inspired]

2. I read this three times to get every last drop of wisdom.

Thank you for this, OC.

We would be much better served as Democrats if we started circling the wagons and protected our own. Sometimes I wonder what has happened to our humanity.

[annabanana]

3. instructive... thanks!. . . . .k&r . . . . . .n/t

[Ninga]

5. There are more than a few stages of this story, and IF they are to be believed, then

the conundrum is not who did what to whom, who forgave whom, and who has a right to privacy with a private act......but came to light because our fair Carolinian seems to have created an epilogue......or put another way......the story after the story.

It does not compute with me that he didn't "get it" when it comes to the National Enquire.
A mistake after the mistake is a few too mistakes for me, especially when the National Enquire has made its name by being able to either set up or find the snitch who gives them "round two."


If you and I and the rest of the world are on to the shenanigans of the National Enquire, why make it easy for them by providing an "epilogue"?
It is the story after the story that has allowed the NE to plaster self-righteous headlines and blither on cable TV.

I am so saddened by all of this, just as I was in the 90's with how Clinton dealt with being caught.


I saw a sign some where that said "You won't remember the words or the deeds, but you will remember how they made you feel."

[saltpoint]

8. It's a pleasure to be on DU of a Saturday morning and encounter

you there as well, ninga.

I am hearing you. I'm not celebrating over the story by any means and I'm sure you and I and others could sit around a tavern table and be in agreement on many points to this story.

I invoke Nell Gwynn and Alexander as moving screens to advance the notion that the severity of adultery in Edwards' case is less than the ignorance and hyper-judgment of the coach-mob.

The Right attacked Edwards prior to this story and will gloat over its publication by the Enquirer.

An anonymuous third-shift clerk at a 7-11 story in Omaha or Little Rock would not be a headline story, whether he or she were faithful to a spouse, or not, or whether they went to a church that preached fidelity in marriage, or not.

[Ninga]

13. Point well taken and made. The tavern table is looking mighty inviting, even at this early hour.

As you so aptly pointed out, our history is fraught with powerful men and the women who fed their egos and appetites.

Europe just rolls its eyes at our table thumping Puritan morals, all couched in double standard.

Nonetheless, this too shall pass. But as it does, it takes the hope and prayers of so many who wished for a return of economic justice and fair play.

I was really pulling for JE to play a roll in the Obama Administration......


A special hello to you OC......"loveya"

[CTyankee]

6. It was the Enquirer, if I am not mistaken, that revealed a story about W's resumption of drinking

in the White House a while back. And wasn't there also several stories about Laura sneaking out of the White House to spend nights at a hotel in D.C. I remember the former very well, as I got laughed at when I brought it up at a family gathering...

[saltpoint]

9. I can't speak for Laura Bush, but if she's heading the opposite direction

from her husband, she's smarter than I thought she was.

Am I remembering right about Dubya's arrest for DUI -- in Maine? -- I think? Not sure & too lethargic to google it right now.

Anyway, the story broke shortly before the heist by Bush of the 2000 election. I remember a conversation with a group of Democrats who worried that the story's breaking actually helped Dubya rather than hurt him.

Instead of exposing him as a possible alcoholic who should not be supported for the presidency, this group feared many voters would rise to Dubya's defense and vote for him because "the liberal media" was trying to make him look bad.

So the beer those votes always wanted to have with Dubya was one he had already drank.

[CTyankee]

14. The story about W was about his current drinking, not past drinking.

It wasn't that long ago, maybe winter of 06. Full of juicy details. I of course loved it and believed every word...

[saltpoint]

15. Ok. I'm fuzzy on some aspects but remember the general thrust.

I wonder what his days are like now.

Less than 6 months before he slithers out of the White House into disreputable obscurity!

[CTyankee]

16. yep, whole days go by when I don't think about him.

Couldn't care less what happens to him from now on...

[saltpoint]

17. Laura might surprise us and make some redemptive independent moves

that won't include her worthless husband.

[CTyankee]

23. She redeemed herself a lot with me when she stuck up for Michelle

over the "really proud for my country" flap. She would have no reason to do it other than her belief that Michelle didn't mean it the way it was being spun by the media. I think she helped Michelle a lot...

[saltpoint]

24. Agree. For some reason there's a flicker of decency in Laura that I

definitely have never sensed in the guy she's married to.

After all the political pressure of the last 8 years is finally out of the way, we could see her emerge as a more poistive force.

She's been in bed, I guess, more or less, with a hopelessly ill-equipped man who has never been capable of generating good. He can't inspire people. Obama has that all over the Bush administration & McCain, who supports Bush.

She's been the good solider for a while now. At the end of January 09 or so, she could very well turn the next page of her life while Dubya guzzles the hard stuff at home.

[CTyankee]

25. She may divorce him...n/t

[saltpoint]

26. LOL! She should. He doesn't look a whole lot to me like one of those

engaged spouses.

More like a victim of the next bad-ass pretzel that happens by.

[Voice for Peace]

31. here ya goes

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=national+enquirer+bush+drinking&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

[saltpoint]

32. Mmm. Thank you.

[Darth_Kitten]

7. Nell, like the others, dangled her kid outside a window until it got a title.....

Nice gal. They are were all such nice ones. ;)

[saltpoint]

10. Well, I'm not hogwild about Nell's example of citizenship, but it's not

because she was mistress/prostitute to Charles.

She did hail from somber, dreary origins to rise thru her wit and instinct and bravery to very high circles indeed.

Not the career trajectory for everybody, but it seemed to work for her.

[Darth_Kitten]

30. Bravery? She was an actress.....

who just happened to keep a King's attention for a few years, and then he moved on.

Yes, she was witty, but there were other great witty ladies of that era who would run circles around old Nell. :)

[mloutre]

11. Methinks the lady doth protestant too much

[saltpoint]

12. Nell? Nah. She was laying some brainy wit on the outraged commoners.

Some of that mob probably objected to Charles' choice of a Catholic uh, mistresss and believing said Catholic mistress to be aboard the coach attacked said coach with loud epithets and rocking of same.

Some others in the crowd might have been attacking the coach on grounds of moral indignation. "We commonfolk can't take prostitutes, even if we could afford to, so neither should the King -- let's tip the King's whore's coach over on the Royal Road! Yeah!"

The crowd itself, I'm pretty sure, is from central casting in any given Monty Python movie.

[tblue37]

18. I was horrified that the supposedly liberal _Huffington Post_

put up a gigantic red banner headline ("The Anatomy of the Edwards Affair"), with huge pictures of Edwards and the other woman, and crowed in several articles about how early they were in promulgating the story. I am appalled that HuffPo would be so delighted and obnoxious about the whole thing. It is acting like The Drudge Report, with it’s flashing police lights to herald every gotcha against a Democratic politician!

I am upset about the affair, though, because I was a very strong (and contributing) Edwards supporter in the primary and was very much hoping that he would be AG in Obama's administration. If he had won the nomination, we would be toast by now as far as the 2008 election is concerned, and I am upset that he risked that, too, since it is more essential than ever that we win this election. The country and the world absolutely depend on it, and it was incredibly selfish of him to put that at risk. He could have had the affair and then accepted the reality that it would inevitably come out and therefore simply not run for president, and I would have said it's none of our business, but since he put our chances at the presidency at risk, I am upset.

Republicans certainly don’t get their careers destroyed because of affairs, and Republican presidents have no qualms about appointing philanderers to influential position, but we progressives and Democrats (not precisely the same thing, though there is a fair amount of overlap) are in hostile territory. The MSM and the Republican attack machine would barbecue any Democrat with this sort of skeleton in his closet, and we know it—and so did he when he decided to take the risk.

He knew that illegal surveillance in this country is used primarily for political purposes, so he had to know that his affair would be found out. Even if nothing else exposed him, an affair means that the woman involved has him by the short hairs and can demand virtually anything to keep the affair quiet. You just don’t put yourself in that position if you intend to run for president (if you are a Democratic, I mean). Once you have put yourself in that position, though, you frackin’ don’trun for president in a year when winning the presidency and a larger majority in both houses of Congress is the only (admittedly small) hope of saving the country (and the world) from the depths of the abyss.

But again, I deplore the fact that HuffPo would be so disgustingly delighted about blaring the story that way. With “friends” like that. . . .

Oh, and BTW, Old Crusoe, this is one of the best posts I have ever read on DU since joining in summer of 2004. You rock.

[saltpoint]

20. Agree that HuffPo did / is doing to the Edwards story what it ridicules

the MSM for doing to other stories at other times.

I've Arianna -- a woman I generally admire very much -- speak of the MSM "flogging" a story if it comes at the expense of progressive Democrats, and then here we have her own website doing pretty much just that.

I'm disappointed that this outcome shades -- at least for the time being -- Edwards' chances at becoming AG for example, or Sec. of Labor. We could have used him in those positions in a big way for the same reasons you and I were drawn to his candidacy in the primaries.

Adultery is usually not a great personal strategy for high-profile people. Here's hoping the pro-labor and poverty/economic work Edwards represents outlives and outweighs the dustup over what he does with his wiener and with whom.

[mopinko]

19. imho, monkeys invented politics to decise who would get the most girls.

reallly, here in the 21st century, we think more in terms of money. but our strongest instinctive drive is to leave our dna behind.
i am never surprised to find a powerful person is driven to have a lot of sex. i worry about the ones who don't.


perhaps i should replace bill's head with john's now.

[saltpoint]

22. Yep. This is a story we still don't have all the components of

and it really isn't our business to have any of them.

I love that graphic.

[mopinko]

27. it is my all time best selling button

i was thinking that it was sort of over, but...

[depakid]

28. Wow. Some mighty fine insight there

Your angle on the nature of the mob really gets one to thinking how little things have changed, deep down- even though on the surface we have modes of expression and mass communication that would seem to set us world's apart apart from 17th Century England- or the Hellenistic age of Alexander.

Thanks for that- we'll be chewing on those thoughts all day in my neck of the woods.

:thumbsup:

[saltpoint]

29. All good steps to ya, depakid.

Thank you.

:hi:

[JeffR]

33. If only every rumination about this story, including my own,

could be anywhere near as thoughtful and insightful as this one, well, then DU would be much better reading.

:thumbsup:

[saltpoint]

34. Yours I place very, very high, JeffR.

You do that toggle thing inbetween contexts like nobody's business, and I will stop and read what you have to say, no matter the subject.