The more things change ...

A longtime correspondent, Wraye Wenigmann, writes in after reading my previous post, "The whore who can't sing", and says that the inability to understand irony is not new to the British. She writes:

About 100 years ago, Aleister Crowley wrote,

"I'd give all and more
in this Kingdom of boredom
for a girl who's a whore
and is proud of her whoredom."

The above poem referred not only to his own physical cravings, but also to the attitude towards female emancipation at that repressed time and even to certain political relationships (some might claim the Bush-Blair relationship to be a good example here and today).

The irony was lost then too.

As they say, "plus ca change, plus c'est la même chose". No-one sang.