Posted on 08/27/2013 6:49:48 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross
Our elites would be right at home in Petronius’s world of debauchery and bored melodrama.
Sometime in the mid-first century a.d., an otherwise little known consular official, Gaius Petronius, wrote a brilliant satirical novel about the gross and pretentious new Roman-imperial elite. The Satyricon is an often-cruel parody about how the Roman agrarian republic of old had degenerated into a wealth-obsessed, empty society of wannabe new elites, flush with money, and both obsessed with and bored with sex. Most of the Satyricon is lost. But in its longest surviving chapter — “Dinner with Trimalchio” — Petronius might as well have been describing our own 21st-century nomenklatura.
For the buffoonish libertine guests of the host Trimalchio, food and sex are in such surfeit that they have to be repackaged in bizarre and repulsive ways. Think of someone like the feminist mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner, who once railed about the need to enforce sexual-harassment laws, now only to discover ever creepier ways to grope, pat, grab, squeeze, pinch, and slobber on 18 co-workers and veritable strangers, whether in their 20s or over 60. Unfortunately, the sexual luridness does not necessarily end with Filner’s resignation; one of his would-be replacements is already under attack by his opponents on allegations that as a city councilman he was caught masturbating in the city-hall restroom between public meetings.
In good Petronian fashion, the narcissist Anthony Weiner sent pictures of his own genitalia to near-strangers, under the Latinate pseudonym “Carlos Danger.” Was Eliot Spitzer any better? As the governor of New York, he preferred anonymous numbers — “Client #9” — to false names, real to virtual sex, very young to mature women, and buying rather than romancing his partners. Is there some Petronian prerequisite in our age that our ascendant politicians must be perverts?
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
VDH ping. One of his best as he “connects ALL the dots”.
I now know it reminds me of medieval gargoyles in the ancient cathedrals of Europe meant to remind worshipers of the demons of Hell.
Also Aztec demons of their underworld.
Seems very appropriate....
Good call. This "obsessed with and bored with sex" culture is absolutely sent straight from hell.
Beetlejuice boffs a skank.
OBayMe and Liberal’s Sodom and Gomorrah?
I imagine Miley will get very “up close and personal” with the real thing alot sooner than she bagains for.
I do hope she sees the error of her ways and takes “proper corrective action”.
I know where she is at and it is possible...with Faith.
Ain't That America ... circa 2013 ...
Anyone watch the movie FELLINI SATYRICON?
Perversity in ancient ROME almost at it’s worst. Only the movie CALIGULA (the porn version) was worse.
LOL ... she evidences already being a ho. Billy Ray must be so proud.
But we also should remind ourselves that this is a young woman with great temptations.
I know I had my rebellious time in my youth that was tempered only with time and, yes getting to the point of “burning out”
I'm lucky I didn't have an national stage to show how big an disaster I made of myself and my life.
As for Billy Ray, I offer him greater “damnation” for he encouraged his daughter in this direction when he “pimped out” his child in those waaay too revealing photo spread.
He, as an adult should have known better...
I have had a passing interest in the rising film careers of the Hemsworth brothers. Liam Hemsworth is dating, or the fiance of, Ms. Cyrus. I’ve scratched his name off the list of character actors whose movies I care to see. How do you see something like this spectacle and proudly say, “that’s my girlfriend?”
Satyricon was a great movie, possibly Fellini’s best. The so-called porn was incidental. The movie Caligula was a crude piece of garbage, with nothing in common with Satyricon other than that they are both set in Rome.
You mean to say its worst, not it’s worst. It’s is the contraction for “it is”.
I believe that's..."I CLAVDIVS"
VDH Bump. One of his best in tying it all together.
Yeah yeah...
Just jiving ya.
I did. Fellini portrayed well the decadence, including gay weddings and Arab like pirates slaughtering the parties.
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