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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsScalia's hat is a reference to Sir Thomas More
I guess he sees Obama as Henry VIII, which would be a nice break from the Mao, Stalin comparisons.
The twitterverse is alive with tweets about Justice Scalias headgear for todays inauguration. At the risk of putting all the fun speculation to an end . . . The hat is a custom-made replica of the hat depicted in Holbeins famous portrait of St. Thomas More. It was a gift from the St. Thomas More Society of Richmond, Virginia. We presented it to him in November 2010 as a memento of his participation in our 27th annual Red Mass and dinner.
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,576 posts)The one thing he does have in common with More is a fifteenth-century world view.
This is the painting:
redwitch
(14,940 posts)and give you a DUZY too!
JNelson6563
(28,151 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)But Scalia would probably liked the 1st century better.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,576 posts)is a fifteenth-century world view. Upon further research, however, I discovered that Scalia is a whole lot less enightened and modern than More was, for his time:
When he saw from the signature that it was the letter of a lady, his surprise led him to read it more eagerly... he said he would never have believed it to be your work unless I had assured him of the fact, and he began to praise it in the highest terms... for its pure Latinity, its correctness, its erudition, and its expressions of tender affection. He took out at once from his pocket a portague (A Portuguese gold coin)... to send to you as a pledge and token of his good will towards you.
The success More enjoyed in educating his daughters set an example for other noble families. Even Erasmus became much more favourable towards the idea once he witnessed the accomplishments of More's daughters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_More
Kalidurga
(14,177 posts)Fat Tony is unworthy. Completely and totally unworthy. It is sad despite all the obstacles More faced to become a decent person, he managed. And he paid the price with his life. It seems the king didn't appreciate a man of convictions,
elleng
(130,710 posts)'He also helped originate the phrase "grasp at straws" to mean "desperately trying even useless things", in Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation.[5]
Intellectuals and statesmen across Europe were stunned by More's execution. Erasmus saluted him as one "whose soul was more pure than any snow, whose genius was such that England never had and never again will have its like".[6] Two centuries later Jonathan Swift said he was "the person of the greatest virtue this kingdom ever produced,"[7] a sentiment with which Samuel Johnson agreed. Historian Hugh Trevor-Roper said in 1977 that More was "the first great Englishman whom we feel that we know, the most saintly of humanists, the most human of saints, the universal man of our cool northern renaissance."[8]'
DonCoquixote
(13,616 posts)I would gladly see him lose his head at a London Tower, he is guilty of treason after all.
meow2u3
(24,757 posts)malaise
(268,664 posts)WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)marybourg
(12,584 posts)(from a Catholic University, although I don't know if that matters) and yup, I was wearing one pretty much like that.
RB TexLa
(17,003 posts)marybourg
(12,584 posts)RB TexLa
(17,003 posts)LeftInTX
(25,097 posts)I was thinking, "Is there some academic thing going on here"?
WolverineDG
(22,298 posts)backscatter712
(26,355 posts)Cha
(296,771 posts)Whovian
(2,866 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)but it was a fairly common headgear back in the day.
Here's a Protestant wearing the same hat:
Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (c. 1485 28 July 1540), was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister of King Henry VIII of England from 1532 to 1540.
Cromwell was one of the strongest advocates of the English Reformation. He helped engineer an annulment of the King's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, so that Henry could marry his mistress Anne Boleyn. Supremacy over the Church of England was officially declared by Parliament in 1534, and Cromwell supervised the Church from the unique posts of vicegerent for spirituals and vicar general.
Henry got rid of him, too...
Bucky
(53,929 posts)Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore
Riding through the land
Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore
Without a merry band
He steals from the poor
And gives to the rich
Stupid bitch
musette_sf
(10,198 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)Tom Ripley
(4,945 posts)Fat Tony can delude himself with:
"If any person or persons, after the first day of February next coming, do maliciously wish, will or desire, by words or writing, or by craft imagine, invent, practise, or attempt any bodily harm to be done or committed to the king's most royal person, the queen's, or their heirs apparent, or to deprive them or any of them of their dignity, title, or name of their royal estates..."
but he is still just a thug with a law degree.
Princess Turandot
(4,787 posts)On the other side of the fireplace is Thomas Cromwell, who helped engineer More's beheading in 1535. (Cromwell also helped engineer Anne Boleyn's execution on a trumped-up charge of adultery. But he served a fickle master: Henry had him beheaded in 1540.)