Althouse: "[T]he King of Greece... was sober and I was not and I was giving him a tour of my place, showing him old Greek photographs of my grandfather who was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and also Prime Minister."

July 15, 2018

"[T]he King of Greece... was sober and I was not and I was giving him a tour of my place, showing him old Greek photographs of my grandfather who was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and also Prime Minister."

"They are old and yellowed, but the King recognized most of the players. When one particular name came up I used the F-word and apologized immediately. 'Do you know the etymology of the word fuck?' asked the King. I did not. 'It is an acronym for Fornication Under Consent of the King,' said my King. Another pearl, but he could have been pulling my leg, which unfortunately is not a hollow one."

I'm catching up on the oeuvre of Taki Theodoracopulos, a propos of the first post of the day. That pearl is from 2014, "A Click-Happy Hell on Earth" ("I’ve been thinking of the drunken old good times while watching young people socializing online, constantly messaging in a dizzying pace, never looking around... One hears junk talk about things they like or dislike, mostly about fashion, cars, and jewels, never about how we lived and what we were like, only about the glittering dystopian world of the present").

36 comments:

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: I thought only teenagers believed that old saw about FUCK anymore.; 7/15/18, 8:05 AM
Michael K said...: I read Taki's Magazine most days., He has collected a lot of excellent writers, many of whom have run afoul of the PC police elsewhere like John Derbyshire.; 7/15/18, 8:07 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "I thought only teenagers believed that old saw about FUCK anymore."

But to be with an actual king who on his own brought that out!; 7/15/18, 8:14 AM
Fernandinande said...: takimag.com is on my list of daily reads but, other than Sailer or Dalrymple(Daniels), I usually don't read any of it, and certainly not Taki's articles, which are like the one you excerpted: "I'm associated with a King, a Chief Justice and a Prime Minister! (and Michael Mailer and Harvey Weinstein) Nothing much happened and we talked about boring stuff, in this case the same boring stuff that interests middle-schoolers."

And the animated picture display on takimag only shows the top strip of them, like a 1995 dorm website. Tacky indeed.; 7/15/18, 8:14 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Also, they're Greek. Weren't they speaking Greek?! I don't know Greek for "fuck" but what about "Fornication Under Consent of the King." The story is on its face ludicrous.; 7/15/18, 8:15 AM
Bob Boyd said...: People say "fuck" everywhere. It might be the most recognized English word.; 7/15/18, 8:18 AM
rhhardin said...: Who knew that Greece had a king. Probably not named Rex.

Anax and anassa.; 7/15/18, 8:19 AM
Michael K said...: Steve Sailor is also worth reading.

Derb seems to be mostly doing podcasts these days.; 7/15/18, 8:20 AM
rhhardin said...: The question is whether anax is a dog name in Greece.; 7/15/18, 8:20 AM
rhhardin said...: Derb went to vdare.com; 7/15/18, 8:21 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: You're changing, Althouse.

I can see that Trump's success is having a huge impact on you.

Good for you.; 7/15/18, 8:46 AM
Gahrie said...: Liz's husband Phil is a member of the Greek royal family.; 7/15/18, 8:47 AM
Bob Boyd said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/15/18, 8:57 AM
Michael K said...: You're right about Derb and vdare but it seems to have been a podcast first.; 7/15/18, 8:57 AM
BUMBLE BEE said...: I remember a "sociologist's" claim, some time ago, that fuck was the 7th most frequently heard word in NYC. The time i spent in Queens seemed to bear that out.; 7/15/18, 9:01 AM
Fernandinande said...: About King of Grease

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We will repair or service:

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Contact King of Grease today!; 7/15/18, 9:06 AM
Anonymous said...: Where have you been, young lady, and why are you coming in so far past curfew?

Takimag, eh? And you had a post the other day that made me suspicious that you'd been in an even more disreputable "right wing" dive. Circumstantial evidence, yes, but I'm keeping my eye on you, young lady.; 7/15/18, 9:20 AM
Wince said...: In more ways than one, being the King of Greece is like being the Sammy Hagar of Van Halen. You indeed are a king, but...

For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge (also known as F.U.C.K.) is the ninth studio album by American hard rock band Van Halen, released in 1991 on Warner Bros. Records.

The album's title came from lead singer Sammy Hagar, who wanted to push the issue of censorship with naming Van Halen's album with a vulgarity, stating, "That's when censorship was a big issue. I wanted to name the album just Fuck." Hagar eventually backed away from the outright vulgarity after he was told by his friend, former world lightweight boxing champion Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, that the word "fuck" was an acronym for the phrase "for unlawful carnal knowledge" (though this is a false etymology).; 7/15/18, 9:39 AM
Roughcoat said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 7/15/18, 9:50 AM
Roughcoat said...: Taki is a relic of a bygone era. Reading his writings is like going down into your basement and stepping into a corner filled with cobwebs. There's that same damp musty moldy smell. I get the sense that he's still pining for the days when he was partying with Porfirio Rubirosa and traveling with "jetsetters" on 707s to the French Riveiera.; 7/15/18, 9:51 AM
rhhardin said...: Derb wrote for NRO and started doing a podcast in 2004. In fact you can get all the .mp3's of the podcasts somewhere, probably johnderbyshire.com or vdare.com .

NRO famously fired Derb for something he wrote for Taki, and Taki took him in. For some reason Derb then moved to vdare.com , apparently with good feeling all around.; 7/15/18, 10:06 AM
Michael said...: Taki's column in The Spectator is usually, though not always, duplicated in his mag. Or perhaps it is the other way around. He is a treasure. Unapologetic rich guy who has not succumbed.; 7/15/18, 10:25 AM
Michael K said...: Derb wrote for NRO and started doing a podcast in 2004. In fact you can get all the .mp3's of the podcasts somewhere, probably johnderbyshire.com or vdare.com .

NRO famously fired Derb for something he wrote for Taki,

They fired him for his column about what he told his Eurasian kids about race.

This was in response to a racist rant in the NY Times based on the Trayvon Martin myth.

Two white reporters for a black owned newspaper found out about that time that he was right about large numbers of blacks.

Wave after wave of young men surged forward to take turns punching and kicking their victim.
The victim’s friend, a young woman, tried to pull him back into his car. Attackers came after her, pulling her hair, punching her head and causing a bloody scratch to the surface of her eye. She called 911. A recording told her all lines were busy. She called again. Busy. On her third try, she got through and, hysterical, could scream only their location.

Church and Brambleton. Church and Brambleton. Church and Brambleton.

It happened four blocks from where they work, here at The Virginian-Pilot.

Two weeks have passed since reporters Dave Forster and Marjon Rostami—friends to me and many others at the newspaper—were attacked on a Saturday night as they drove home from a show at the Attucks Theatre. They had stopped at a red light, in a crowd of at least 100 young people walking on the sidewalk. Rostami locked her car door. Someone threw a rock at her window. Forster got out to confront the rock-thrower, and that’s when the beating began.

I quit the NRO subscription I had had for 35 years shortly after that. Then they did their NeverTrump issue.; 7/15/18, 11:03 AM
Mary Beth said...: That's when censorship was a big issue. I wanted to name the album just Fuck." Hagar eventually backed away from the outright vulgarity after he was told by his friend, former world lightweight boxing champion Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, that the word "fuck" was an acronym for the phrase "for unlawful carnal knowledge" (though this is a false etymology).

I think the word "fuck" and the "pug" in "pugilist" come from the same PIE root word.; 7/15/18, 11:10 AM
Ralph L said...: My father took a ship he commanded to Greece in the 60's. Some Greek naval officers were aboard when an attractive young woman waterskied past the ship and some sailors noticed, as sailors do. The Greeks were aghast: "Please ask your men to stop whistling at our queen."; 7/15/18, 11:14 AM
Ralph L said...: The year before I started at a private school, the yearbook editors arranged the photos of the faculty(?) to spell FUCK SSS (the school initials) over several pages. IIRC, their diplomas were revoked.; 7/15/18, 11:20 AM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: People say "fuck" everywhere. It might be the most recognized English word.

I thought it was Taxi.; 7/15/18, 12:52 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: I Have Misplaced My Pants said...
I thought only teenagers believed that old saw about FUCK anymore.

7/15/18, 8:05 AM

German fick, meaning pound. Thus endeth the lesson.; 7/15/18, 12:55 PM
Michael K said...: Blogger Unknown said...
People say "fuck" everywhere. It might be the most recognized English word.

I thought it was Taxi.

Now it's Uber.; 7/15/18, 1:50 PM
Lydia said...: Taki, a friend of Israel and Jews, not -- Conrad Black on a piece Taki wrote on Israel in the UK's Spectator:

"In both its venomous character and its unfathomable absurdity, this farrago of lies is almost worthy of Goebbels or the authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Jews, according to Taki, have suborned the US government, direct that country's military like a docile attack dog, and glory in the murder of innocent or mischievous children. He presents the universal Jewish ethos as brutish, vulgar, grasping and cunningly wicked."; 7/15/18, 4:38 PM
Michael K said...: I am not endorsing Taki's views, just his blog as a good site. The WaPoo has opinions much like those you described,; 7/15/18, 6:37 PM
Roughcoat said...: Unlike the Jews, Taki is a rootless cosmopolitan.; 7/15/18, 6:59 PM
Assistant Village Idiot said...: Not only F.U.C.K, but any acronym before about WWII is made up. RADAR and SCUBA were the beginning. There are a few scraps before that, but nothing big.

And don't get me started on "In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were supported by strings or ropes that were tightened..." and all those other false etymologies. "Ring Around The Rosie" isn't about the plague, either. (Darn it.) https://assistantvillageidiot.blogspot.com/2018/03/non-urban-legend.html; 7/15/18, 7:28 PM
Jim S. said...: I grew up with the same (bogus) etymology EDH mentions: For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.; 7/15/18, 11:41 PM
MaxedOutMama said...: So before publishing, would it have killed the author to check?

It's from the same root as the German "ficken" = to fuck, Older Norse fukka, fokka, focka. Whatever.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/fuck

Etymology, like history, is important.; 7/16/18, 1:03 AM
Gabriel said...: I'm not the first to call out the bogus etymology.

It's from the same root as the German "ficken" = to fuck, Older Norse fukka, fokka, focka. Whatever.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/fuck

I had thought "Viking" has the same root--"viking" was a verb, originally, what Scandivanian farmers resorted to supplement their short growing season. But it's from vik, a creek or fjord. Or possibly wic, a camp (as in Sandwich or Greenwich).; 7/16/18, 12:18 PM