‘She’s forthright with her interest in depravity, and as such, her films make no effort to conceal their degeneracies or shock the viewer.’

Emerald Fennell’s wondrously sicko “Wuthering Heights” is a real-time aesthetic parallel to the ever-elaborating Epstein/Mountbatten epic. She couldn’t have timed her exploration of our darkest urges more brilliantly: Her film pulses with the power of perversity, but does its thing playfully, as art will.

In the real world we cluck and cluck about famous greedy depraved self-destroyers. We pretend astonishment at each new twisted twist.

As in:

The Nurse Racheds among us gasp to find ICE Barbie melting in the arms of her sub! Before this, she was a perfectly normal person who shot puppies (Heathcliff hanged them).

Nice work if you can get it.

Newly released audio from early 2013, part of a Feb 2026 release, features Epstein and former Israeli PM Ehud Barak discussing “gigantic” sums of money allegedly paid to [Tony] Blair for consultancy work, including a reported $11m/year from Kazakhstan.

‘There was also, I suppose, a collective astonishment at the dissonance between the monarchy’s self-fashioning (restraint, duty, asceticism, higher purpose) and this completely trashy couple who would renovate their Berkshire residence, Sunninghill Park, with teddy bears, a helipad and a swimming pool when they were both half out of the marriage anyway.’

Completely trashy is good.

Yeah, but he didn’t marry an American.

Prince Harry … has always been “frustrated” by comparisons to his uncle. “It was never fair to lump them together,” an insider [said]. “Harry served his country, did the job well and never engaged in misconduct — yet lost security and housing, while Andrew was protected for years.”

“Poor Evelyn. Died of snobbery.”

Let Cecil Beaton’s terse eulogy for Evelyn Waugh be also the eulogy (he hasn’t died yet) for Andrew M-W.

UD loves Beaton’s clever statement, and was sorry to see, years after using variants of it in many contexts, that she’d been misquoting it. He actually wrote So Evelyn Waugh is in his coffin. Died of snobbery.

Not tonight,

dear.

The power of prayer pulses through…

… the Texas school system.

’He pointed out that priests are asked to bless more than just boats – for instance, motorcycle blessings at the start of the summer season are also a popular tradition.’

Some worries up in Quebec about how Biker Boy blessings might have to get municipal approval if tighter secularism laws get passed.

‘“Andrew is bovine, philistine and opines with great inanity and self-importance, while Charles is hugely sophisticated.”’

Sorry, but UD’s loving the verbal fallout. Keep it coming!

‘David Voas, emeritus professor of social science at University College London, who thinks the YouGov figures are not representative, says if the quiet [Christian] revival was real, “we’d be looking for literally millions of new churchgoers, and they’d have to be very quiet indeed, not to say invisible, to have escaped our notice”.’

Wishing does not make it so.

‘Minnesota bars opening extra early Sunday for Team USA’s gold medal hockey game’

Nice example of ambiguity.

’The comments were revealing about how Mr. Trump views Supreme Court justices, not as independent legal thinkers appointed for their expertise or as a constitutional check on his administration, but as appointees who should be loyal to him.’

Know Hope.

And there goes the lapdog owners vote.

*********

”[T]he court sends the blunt message that Trump should not expect SCOTUS to rubber-stamp all of his expansions of executive power, no matter how much political pressure he puts on the justices.”

Don’t you really need to know…

who stole it?

‘The arrogant, tone-deaf oaf we know today was forged in the nursery.’

By indulging Andrew from an early age, the Queen nurtured and shaped the sweating, bombastic buffoon that may yet bring the whole edifice crashing down.

************

What’s more fun to read — reviews of ‘Wuthering Heights’ the movie, or reviews of Andrew Mountbatten?

UD says it’s a toss-up.

‘Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s descent into ignominy has unfolded slowly but inexorably. His stupidity and arrogance led him to believe that he could talk his way out of his relationship with the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.’

Stupidity and arrogance — the very heart of the thing.

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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte