Clinton got how much?

Here's the kind of story that inspires a mixture of rage and bewilderment. NBC reports that while Hillary Clinton has been lambasting "for-profit schools" including Trump University, "Over five years, former president Bill Clinton earned $17.6 million from the world's largest for-profit education company, Laureate Education, Inc. In his role as "honorary chancellor," Clinton has traveled the world on Laureate's behalf, extolling the virtues of the school." And doing very well indeed. We should be so, uh, lucky. Now look. I know a lot of people like Bill Clinton, focusing more on the charming than the rogue in his makeup. I am not among them. But a lot of people do.

I also realize that Bill Clinton is a champion schmoozer and makes good connections. He pulls in huge sums for the Clinton Foundation and by no means all of them were people hoping for favours from one H. Clinton when she was Secretary of State. But $17.6 million over five years is over $3.5 million a year. That's over $9,600 a day, even in a leap year. And it wasn't the only thing he was doing nor, indeed, the only thing he was doing that brought in vast sums. (For instance The Washington Post says he made $104.9 million giving 542 speeches between 2001 and 2013, an average of $193,542.44 per. And that he was paid $3.13 million in "consulting fees" in 2009 and 2010 by an investment firm whose boss's charity has given the Clinton Foundation millions more and who did at least try to contact Hillary Clinton for a favor when she was Secretary of State.)

What can anyone do for you on a part-time basis that's worth nearly $10,000 a day? Per customer? And what has he got to say that's worth 200 grand a pop, 45 times a year, for over a decade? I mean, we're out there asking people to support our documentaries and commentaries and other work like the "Ask the Professor" feature with, say, $5 a month, which is about 17 cents a day. That's less than one fifty-six-thousandth of Clinton's haul from Laureate Education alone. I'd need 3,226 people to answer that call to make as much in a year as Clinton does for an average speech of the sort he was giving nearly once a week.

I'm not saying I'm in the wrong business. But I am saying if this news bugs you as much as it bugs me, and if you think it's important to keep the voices that matter to you audible, please do try to find that 17 cents a day for us, and for other groups like Ezra Levant's The Rebel, Dave Reesor's Let's Do It Ourselves, Danny Hozack's Economic Education Association of Alberta (and yes, I'm professionally involved with two of them) and other similar outfits like the Fraser Institute, the Canadian Constitution Foundation and the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (who helped us enormously with our Fix the Constitution documentary project).

Unlike the Clintons, we're never going to get rich doing what we do. But that's kind of the point.

Ask the Professor, CFRA, Columns, Constitution, Documentaries, Done That, Economics, Education, Famous quotes, Government, History, It happened today, Magna Carta, Politics, Speeches, United StatesJohn Robson
Swimming slowly, steadily and rapidly

Pop quiz. When did someone first swim the English Channel without floaties? OK, you guessed it was August 25. But what year? The answer is surprising, to me anyway. It was 1875. And very much in the “Because it is there” spirit. Except not entirely in a good way.

The man who did it was Matthew Webb. A strong swimmer who went to sea at age 12 in 1860, and saved his own brother from drowning three years later, first winner of the Stanhope Gold Medal for bravery for trying to save a man overboard in mid-Atlantic, Webb was already captain of a steamship at age 25 when he read of a failed attempt to swim the channel and became, well, some say “inspired” but you could also say obsessed with doing it himself.

He quit his job, trained rigorously, and after being foiled by wind and waves on August 12 made another try on the 24th smeared in porpoise oil. Well, why not? (Porpoises might have an opinion, I suppose.)

I’m not taking anything away from Webb as a swimmer. Indeed he made the journey despite jellyfish stings and currents off Cap Griz Nez that kept him from getting to shore for an additional five hours. Finally he landed near Calais on the 25th, after 21 hours and 45 minutes in the water swimming an erratic course that nearly doubled the distance from 33.1 to 64 kilometres.

Yay. What an accomplishment. And he did become a hero. In quite a modern way, as he embarked on an impressive marketing career that made quitting his job look less reckless than it might first have seemed. He became a professional swimmer, which I didn’t even know they had then or now. He also endorsed such swim-related things as pottery, and wrote a book The Art of Swimming and had some matches named after him.

Yes, he became a celebrity. Which rather that the “modern” world is not so new after all. Whatever its virtues, or failings, novelty has less novelty to it than we think.

At this point Webb married and had two kids. But he didn’t live happily ever after.

Instead, he came up with the idea of swimming the Whirlpool Rapids below Niagara Falls. Many people told him he would surely die. Others told him they had no interest in funding this stunt. So he did it anyway, on July 24 1883… and died.

In 1909 one of his brothers put up a memorial in his birthplace of Dawley, Shropshire that says “Nothing great is easy.” After being hit by a truck a century later it was repaired, and he has a road and a school named for him in Dawley. And I admire Webb for swimming the Channel. But it was just plain dumb to try to swim those rapids even if he did make it surprisingly far before perishing.

It has been claimed that the image of Webb on Bryant and May matches inspired Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau look. But Clouseau would somehow have emerged from the rapids alive through dumb luck because the movie is made up. Webb didn’t because life is real. Apparently that too was becoming obscure by Victorian times.

It happened todayJohn Robson
Wish I'd said that - August 25, 2016

“The writing of history, as Goethe once noted, is one way of getting rid of the weight of the past... the writing of history liberates us from history.” Benedetto Croce, quoted in Hugh Thomas An Unfinished History of the World

Famous quotesJohn Robson
You married King Who?

On August 24 of 1200, Bad King John married his second wife, Isabella of Angoulême. You have to feel sorry for anyone to whom such a thing would happen, especially if she was 12 at the time (she was). When reading about someone as wicked and inept as John I always wonder about the poor woman stuck with him, whether she’s secretly giving him good advice he won’t take, giving him bad advice and egging him on, or just trying to go about her own life and avoid him insofar as possible. But in Isabella’s case she seems to have made the worst of it.

John’s first wife was also an Isabella, a.k.a. Countess of Gloucester. And if you think it’s confusing that they’re both called Isabella try the fact that the Gloucester one was also known as Isabelle, Hawise, Joan, and Eleanor and sure, who among us wouldn’t greet an Isabella with “Howdy, Hawise”? She and John were both great-grandchildren of Henry I, in her case via one of his literally dozens of illegitimate children. As a result, though they were married in 1189, the Archbishop of Canterbury declared the marriage null because they were too closely related, but Pope Clement III said they could marry, just not do sex relations.

John being John, he busied himself bothering other women (yes, despite being a creepy loser he was apparently forever bedding barons’ wives and others) and shortly after becoming king in 1199 had the marriage annulled but kept Isabella’s lands. He would. And apparently she did not contest the annulment, probably thinking herself lucky.

So on to Isabella 2. John married her less than a year later despite the fact that she was betrothed to Hugh IX, Count of Lusignan, infuriating French King Philip II who confiscated all John’s and Isabella’s French lands leading to another war John “Lackland” a.k.a. “Softsword” lost. Apparently the king was genuinely infatuated with his dazzling if very young bride, who in turn seemed well-matched in the sense of having the same sort of explosive temper and propensity for malevolent scheming.

She bore John five children once she was old enough to do so including the future Henry III. And when John croaked she swiftly had him crowned, using her own golden circlet as the hapless John had recently lost the royal crown and the rest of his treasure in the Wash (it’s a river, not the laundry). Then she dumped him on the regent, the outstanding William Marshal, and went back to France to grab Angoulême back.

Trouble promptly ensued. Isabella and John’s daughter Joan had been meant to marry Hugh X of Lusignan, son of Isabella’s former fiancée and now Count of La Marche. But Isabella began batting her dazzling blue eyes at Hugh and before you knew it he’d married his fiancée’s mother and dad’s old flame.

This caused outrage in England, where they had a thing about people marrying into the royal line without approval of the king’s council. So they seized all her dower lands and stopped her pension. So she and Hugh threatened to keep Joan, now promised to King Alexander II of Scotland, prisoner in France. Henry III wrote scathingly to the Pope asking that his own mother be excommunicated (or at least signed a scathing letter drafted by his council) along with her beau. But eventually geopolitically cooler heads prevailed and to avoid trouble with Scotland the council compensated her for her confiscated lands and pension.

Isabella went on to have nine more children, with Hugh X. So I guess that sort of worked out. But Isabella couldn’t cope with being less socially prominent in France as a Countess than a Queen mother and after been snubbed by the French Queen mother who Isabella already hated for some small matter of having tried to put her own son Louis on the English throne instead of Isabella’s Henry (the one who wanted her excommunicated), she started conspiring against Louis, now King Louis IX of France, even persuading Henry III to invade Normandy then not showing up with the promised help. After Hugh X reconciled with the French king, two royal cooks were arrested and under “interrogation” admitted Isabella had paid them to poison Louis. So she fled to Fontevraud Abbey and conveniently died.

Eventually Henry III at least managed to get her body moved indoors, next to his grandfather Henry II and his dazzling if scary wife Eleanor of Aquitaine. Most of her other kids decided they’d live longer in England and sought refuge with Henry III.

Now I do not know for sure what might have become of Isabella if she hadn’t become John’s wife, especially at such a young age. But she gives a rather strong impression of having been a suitable wife for that wretched monarch.

I don’t mean that in even remotely a good way.

It happened todayJohn Robson