Wednesday, April 10, 2013

The "Iron Lady" Is Dead.

Margaret Thatcher is dead. For those of you who've been living somewhere other than the U.K. (that's the United Kingdom, not the University of Kentucky), which is a lot of us, Margaret Thatcher was the first and only female Prime Minister of Great Britain. Historic as that is, her legacy will be much more remembered for her 11-year attempt to return Britain to its former feudal state. Many say that she effectively destroyed the country and it has yet to fully recover. The British, it turns out, are a lot less reserved about her than we are across the ocean. And the most vociferous critics of the Iron Lady, it turns out, were artists. A lot of musicians in England had very much a pointed perspective. One song was famously called "Margaret On The Guillotine".  She was a force of nature that seemingly nothing could stop. Artists and musicians helped fuel the growing outrage with her until she was finally toppled in 1990. One noted singer, Morrissey penned a venom-filled op-ed in The Daily Beast following her passing, calling her "a terror without an atom of humanity." He also wrote "Margaret On The Guillotine" during Thatcher's heyday.

So...safe to assume Morrissey didn't think much of her.
I mean, you couldn't infer that when he asks "When will you die?"
Well, she's dead now. At 87. Of a stroke. She spent her final years in dementia, which seems fitting given the years she spent hating things like working people, feminists, the arts in particular, and poor people. All this hollows you out. I'll have to check this part out, but I heard that she died alone in a hotel room with only a caregiver in the room next door to attend to her. Curious how a woman of such heft and bombast could come to such a pitiable end. Her twin children were living abroad and apparently didn't visit often. Of course, the exact contours of their relationship are unknown, but it does make one speculate about the reasons why some grown children put states, continents, and even oceans worth of distance between their parents. The Iron Lady, she who wrecked England was now wrecked herself, and those closest to her seemed not to care very much.

Having said this, it seems that the Thatcher twins have made names for themselves, particularly the son, Mark, in ways their mother mightn't have approved of. And all of this is to note this: Thatcher was a force in and of herself. This is noteworthy. But she might have done well to realize what most superheroes get: I must only use this power for good.

I think Morrissey might agree.




Margaret Thatcher 1925-2013



More Later
KCD

No comments:

Post a Comment