podcast friday
Sep. 9th, 2022 07:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabby You won't believe me but I was going to talk about these episodes anyway.
This week's featured episode is Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff's two-parter, "Roger Casement: The Gay Irish Anti-Colonial Knight" (Part 1, Part 2), featuring food historian and poet Wren Awry. Like Margaret Killjoy, they know an awful lot about potatoes. And Irish history. I really like the conversational episodes where the guest knows a ton about the subject matter and they go on various tangents contextualizing part of the story.
I knew very little about Sir Roger Casement, besides what gets described in "Banna Strand," which imo is one of the lesser Wolfe Tones songs and he deserves a better one. I absolutely did not realize that he was one of the more interesting Irish revolutionaries, like up there with James Connolly tbh, All I knew about him is that he had a knighthood, which is weird given. You know. Irish revolutionaries. And that he'd tried to smuggle German guns to fight the British during the Easter Rising, but there was a little inconvenient World War happening at the time so he got hanged for treason about it.
It turns out that the Easter Rising is kind of like, the less interesting thing about him? What is way more interesting is that he was basically a bureaucrat/spy for Britain during Leopold II's occupation of the Congo, and he was the guy who revealed the atrocities that the Belgians were perpetrating against the Congolese and helped bring one of the worst genocidal maniacs in history down. Like, that's awesome. Especially for a relatively privileged white guy around turn of the century. How come there is not a verse in "Banna Strand" about that?
He was also a poet and apparently just a legitimately nice guy. The episodes talk a lot about his idealistic view of chivalry and he by all accounts was a truly Romantic figure in the capital-R sense of the word. I generally have GRRM's attitude about knights and chivalry so it's kind of intriguing to hear about a person for whom those sorts of ideals were a motivating factor to do a lot of good in the world.
Also he fucked. A lot. And was a bottom and a size queen, which he recorded very diligently for some reason. This may have—along with, famously, punctuation rules or lack thereof from1325 1351—contributed to why he got hanged. And also why he doesn't get the kind of historical acclaim that he deserves.
Anyway. Maybe monarchies and empires are bad and we shouldn't have them, and we should celebrate people who tried to get rid of them.
This week's featured episode is Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff's two-parter, "Roger Casement: The Gay Irish Anti-Colonial Knight" (Part 1, Part 2), featuring food historian and poet Wren Awry. Like Margaret Killjoy, they know an awful lot about potatoes. And Irish history. I really like the conversational episodes where the guest knows a ton about the subject matter and they go on various tangents contextualizing part of the story.
I knew very little about Sir Roger Casement, besides what gets described in "Banna Strand," which imo is one of the lesser Wolfe Tones songs and he deserves a better one. I absolutely did not realize that he was one of the more interesting Irish revolutionaries, like up there with James Connolly tbh, All I knew about him is that he had a knighthood, which is weird given. You know. Irish revolutionaries. And that he'd tried to smuggle German guns to fight the British during the Easter Rising, but there was a little inconvenient World War happening at the time so he got hanged for treason about it.
It turns out that the Easter Rising is kind of like, the less interesting thing about him? What is way more interesting is that he was basically a bureaucrat/spy for Britain during Leopold II's occupation of the Congo, and he was the guy who revealed the atrocities that the Belgians were perpetrating against the Congolese and helped bring one of the worst genocidal maniacs in history down. Like, that's awesome. Especially for a relatively privileged white guy around turn of the century. How come there is not a verse in "Banna Strand" about that?
He was also a poet and apparently just a legitimately nice guy. The episodes talk a lot about his idealistic view of chivalry and he by all accounts was a truly Romantic figure in the capital-R sense of the word. I generally have GRRM's attitude about knights and chivalry so it's kind of intriguing to hear about a person for whom those sorts of ideals were a motivating factor to do a lot of good in the world.
Also he fucked. A lot. And was a bottom and a size queen, which he recorded very diligently for some reason. This may have—along with, famously, punctuation rules or lack thereof from
Anyway. Maybe monarchies and empires are bad and we shouldn't have them, and we should celebrate people who tried to get rid of them.
no subject
Date: 2022-09-09 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-09 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-09 02:25 pm (UTC)Bwahaha.
> along with, famously, punctuation rules or lack thereof from 1325
You have me curious!
I've been slow to go through my playlist and CPWDCS is still just starting in the bottom half... Can't wait!
no subject
Date: 2022-09-09 10:17 pm (UTC)Basically, it was a matter of punctuation not existing when the treason law was written, so his lawyer argued that it was unclear as to whether you had to be in the realm to be guilty of acts against it.
To which Casement wrote: "God deliver me from such antiquaries as these, to hang a man's life upon a comma and throttle him with a semi-colon." Given my reputation for overuse of semicolons I may require this to be inscribed on my tombstone.
no subject
Date: 2022-09-09 03:50 pm (UTC)It's been on my wishlist for a while, ever since I saw it on the website of my local left/green/LGBT/anti-racist bookshop, Rabble Books and Games.
https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/trial-of-roger-casement_9781910593202/
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Date: 2022-09-09 04:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-09 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-09 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-09 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-09 09:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-09 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-09 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-10 01:02 am (UTC)Do you know about the Easter Rising? It was an Irish insurrection against the British in 1916 that failed miserably but is incredibly important in the Irish struggle for independence. One of the guys involved was Sir Roger Casement, who smuggled arms from the Germans (then at war with the British, but WWI was one of those situations where both sides sucked equally). The rendezvous went horribly awry and he got arrested and eventually hanged for treason. There's a song about it that I don't think is as good as a lot of the other songs about Irish heroes getting murdered by the British.
Anyway this podcast is about how he was more awesome than most of the other Irish heroes who got murdered by the British.
wrestling chant: this guy fucks! this guy fucks!
Date: 2022-09-10 12:05 am (UTC)Re: wrestling chant: this guy fucks! this guy fucks!
Date: 2022-09-10 12:59 am (UTC)