I'll have an M.T. on the rocks. And make it a double.

I like news. I never thought I did. But somehow as age gathers like a wedgie, world events seem to matter and you stop paying attention to the bartender and more attention to the screen behind him. This week in world news is pretty interesting stuff.  Very public figures are doing kooky things..Kim Jong Un is doing what he does, the Pope is washing ladies feet and of course Margaret Thatcher dying on us leaving many British people without someone to hate.

Other things Kim Jong Un do.

Now I don't know about you, but my association with Margaret is totally different.  Whenever I think of M.T., I end up thinking about one thing..

Meryl Streep

That's right I think about Meryl Streep. And how she did that jumping split in Mamma Mia.

I want to call her up and ask her how she feels about M.T. now that she's no longer of this world and as  it turns out I am not the only one who is curious. In fact Michael Shulman posted this little article in what I like to call The world wonders about Meryl and Margaret and even includes part of Meryl's press release in regards to M.T.'s life and death.   Darn tooten! I have taken the liberty to add a quote from said release as it contains such interesting words to describe a woman I knew nothing about prior to the screening of the "Iron Lady".  (In a way it is frightening to learn history from cinema. But that is a discussion all by itself).

 "But to me she was a figure of awe for her personal strength and grit. ... To have withstood the special hatred and ridicule, unprecedented in my opinion, leveled in our time at a public figure who was not a mass murderer; and to have managed to keep her convictions attached to fervent ideals and ideas—wrongheaded or misguided as we might see them now—without corruption—I see that as evidence of some kind of greatness, worthy for the argument of history to settle."

As I am not British and can only observe the love and loathing the people of England are displaying I did a bit more delving into M.T. and her policies. The Guardian posted a pretty helpful article in this regard For M.T. doubt was for WIMPS! so I understand why so many of the blue collar folk of the Isles have only bad things to say about her.

Extra Extra! Read all about it. M.T. still fucking us over post-mortem!

She certainly had a way of making the poor feel like their poverty was a failure of character in some way (a reference to Hendrik Hertzberg's Thatcherist). It still is remarkable that she was re-elected three times and ran as Prime Minister for 11 years.  In a world where poor Hilary Clinton gets kicked in the ovaries every time she gets close to the important podiums, it is a testament to her strength of character that she held onto that position for as long as she did. And that she passed so many unfair policies uncompromisingly and definitively. She was quite a character to hate, but then we have many of them in politics. None that I would go to a "death party" for, but still. Here's the thing about figureheads in the past..history has proven that given enough time, even the worst of them may end up the icon of a t-shirt spawning "Liberty, Freedom and Coolness", or perhaps in M.T.'s case "Resolve and Propriety". You just never know what time does to an "icon's" reputation and how it could shift to become a symbol of something entirely different.

R.I.P MeryImeanMargaret..

Now as I last posted about the role of artists as mediators of the history they are making, I would like to add this homage of portraits of and about M.T. as they appeared in a recent edtion of Art Times.

Benjamin Shine, Margaret Thatcher, Eyelet Portrait

Karine Percheron-Daniels, Margaret Thatcher Nude

Kristin Halldorsdottir Eyefeels, Margaret Thatcher Prime Minister UK

Lola Dupré, Margaret Thatcher

Matt McLaren, Bow to Me Fixed

Vivienne Westwood's Tattler

Pete Mason, Margaret Thatcher

Richard Stone, Margaret Thatcher

Baroness Thatcher unveils her portrait by Richard Stone at No 10

Neil Simmons, Baroness Thatcher by sculptor

Textportraits, Margaret Thatcher

To end, I'll let you in on a funny little fact that a Taiwanese TV channel confused Margaret Thatcher with the Queen of England and broadcast images of the dead "Queen" instead of M.T. And just like me, Thailand posted images of Meryl instead of Thatcher in their broadcast of the story. God bless Asia.