Life After Downton Abbey

"Lady Mary" who bears an great resemblance to my late sister

Enough of politics for the moment!  The husband and I are huge fans of Downton Abbey, the Masterpiece Theater series that ended earlier this year.  In fact, one of the items being debated is whether we do another trip to Paris (one of our wealthy widow travel mates from the 2015 trip wants to go back) or, instead go to Great Britain and see London and, of course, make a pilgrimage to Highclere Castle, where much of Downton Abbey was filmed.  The verdict is still out, but my vote s for Great Britain since the husband has never been.  Both our widowed friend and I have been - I traveled to London in my in-house counsel days and stayed at hotels where we'd never think to stay. But I digress from the subject of this post, a piece in Vanity Fair where Downton creator, Julian Fellowes has kindly looked into his Downton Abbey crystal ball and offered fans a glimpse into several characters’ futures.  Here are highlights:

This past March, Downton Abbey ended its television run with the Love Actually of series finales—a joyously light-hearted affair for most characters involved, especially the long-tortured Lady Edith, who closed out the show by finally locking down a man, a better title than her sister, and a cushy career. (Respect.) Since the finale aired, there have been rumors that the ensemble cast might re-unite for a big-screen spin-off. (God knows at least one butler would welcome the work.) But in the event that a spin-off film never happens, series creator Julian Fellowes has kindly looked into his Downton Abbey crystal ball and offered fans a glimpse into several characters’ futures.

Charitably, Fellowes shares the fate of Lady Mary, the snooty protagonist who closed out the series with a shock twist: she has a heart. The character demonstrated as much by re-uniting Lady Edith with Bertie, and then actually refraining from plundering their wedding day with news that she is expecting a second child. Well, in an interview with Deadline, Fellowes forecasts that Mary’s business acumen will help keep the Crawley estate afloat, now that she’s taken over the business reins from her bumbling father.

“My own belief is that Mary, whether you like her or dislike her, is a hard worker, and she’s practical,” Fellowes explains. “I think she will employ the kind of advice that she needs [to manage the estate]. She would probably have opened the house to the public in the 1960s, as so many of them did, and she’d have retreated to a wing, and maybe only occupied the whole house during the winters.” (Coincidentally, this is the same strategy Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, the son of the Earl of Shaftesbury, used to save his family’s estate—a story chronicled in a recent issue of Vanity Fair.)

As for the rest of the family and staff—Fellowes does not think they strayed far, and that future generations would still be inhabiting the same Yorkshire pile.

“My own belief is the Crawleys would still be there [in Downton Abbey], just as the Carnarvons are today [in the real Highclere Castle, where Downton was filmed],” says Fellowes. “George [Mary’s son] would have gone to the Second World War, and of course the fear is that he would be killed. We know that Mary is pregnant, so there’s going to be another child. As for the title, I don’t know where it would go beyond George, but let’s hope he gets through the war and has children of his own.”

Although Fellowes does not offer the fates of the other characters, he does offer up another great trivia note by revealing the inspiration behind Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess.

“One thing I very much enjoyed about Violet was that I had, in creating her, touched on an iconic figure of British families,” explains Fellowes. “There was a whole generation of women like Violet. My theory is that, when the men went off to war, the women had to keep the show on the road back home, and they did. As a result, during the 50s, 60s and 70s, there were these incredibly frightening matriarchs in all sorts of family situations, that everyone was half terrified of and half loved.”

“I modeled her on my grandfather’s older sister,” Fellowes continues. “And the thing about those women is that they were as tough on themselves as they were on everyone else, which is why you forgave them. They weren’t selfish in that way; they just had these incredibly high standards that everyone had to meet.”

Fellowes has previously said that he is keeping his fingers crossed for a film spin-off, so that audiences can re-unite with their beloved characters.

“I hope there will be a film,” Fellowes told IndieWire several months back. “I’d structure a narrative with lots of things happening, but we would need a kind of unity to make a feature, which is a challenge for me. 

There was much to like about the series and, as a British and Russian history major, I loved the historical detail that showed the societal transition from 1912 to 1926.  World War I set in motion so much more than just the crumbling of empires- i.e., Russian, Austro-Hungary, Ottoman - and monarchies.  Society went through its own revolution and made a stark change from the 19th century Edwardian society. 

GOP Closet Case Aaron Schock Facing Questions About His Expensive "Male companion"

Aaron Schock's boyfriend??

GOP Congressman Aaron Schock's troubles about his lavish lifestyle and extravagant travels just keep on growing.  now, it seems that Schock violated House of Representative rules when he took Jonathon Link - Schock's "photographer - to India to accompany the congressman on the trip, but failed to disclose Link's name appears anywhere on the travel disclosure form Schock filed afterwards. There has been much speculation that Schock is gay and now, some are questioning Link's real relationship with Schock.  Schock may be a jerk, but Link - -pictured above - does seem to have some some attractive attributes even if they have nothing to do with photography.  Here are highlights from CNN:

Another week, another report about a possible violation of House ethics rules by Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Illinois.

The congressman traveled to India last August 24-29 on a trip sponsored by the Global Poverty Project, an international anti-poverty group. The group also paid for Schock's Dallas-based photographer, Jonathon Link, to accompany the congressman on the trip, the group's spokesperson confirmed. But Link's name appears nowhere on the travel disclosure form Schock filed afterwards, as required by House rules.

The National Journal first reported about the disclosure oversight.

Schock's office paid Jonathon Link $4,166 for "communications" in September 2014 and listed him under "personnel" in its quarterly expense records, making him an official staffer. It is unclear if that payment was for the services rendered in India and Link did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Schock, a fourth-term congressman from a reliably Republican district, has been under scrutiny over his use of taxpayer and campaign money to pay for flights on private jets -- including planes owned by key donors -- concert tickets and other entertainment expenses. 

He's also under fire for lapses in reporting some of his expenses and already has taken steps to correct or amend some of those errors. He has hired a public relations team as well as a pair of lawyers, William McGinley and Donald McGahn, to review the compliance procedures in his official office, campaign and leadership PAC to decide whether they can be improved.

Global Poverty Project spent $4,000 to fly Link from Dallas to New Delhi and to lodge and feed him. According to the travel disclosure form Schock filed, the group spent $5,000 on his travel, $525 on his lodging, $300 on his meals and another $389 on travel insurance and ground transportation. Schock stayed at the Radisson Blu Plaza in New Delhi at a rate of $152.03 a night and at the Grand Hyatt in Mumbai at a rate of $159 a night, according to the disclosure form.

One can only wonder what next week's revelation will be!  Meanwhile, some on the far right are beginning to call for Schock's resignation.

Presumed Closet Case, GOP's Aaron Schock Draws More Ethics Questions

Michelle Bachmann's lisping, limp wrist husband "Marcia" Bachmann represents one type of closeted gay.  GOP Congressman Aaron Schock represents the gym rat, style conscious type who wants to always be the center of attention.   Now, with his "Downton Abbey" office makeover gift and a questionable real estate transaction that sounds like something Bob and Maureen McDonnell might have engaged in, Schiock is getting more attention than he wanted.  The New York Times looks at his growing problems, including his now former aid who compared blacks to escaped zoo animals.  Here are highlights:

WASHINGTON — Aaron Schock was 27 years old, a fresh-faced and ambitious Republican from Peoria, Ill., when he joined Congress in January 2009. Today, Representative Schock has earned a reputation — not for legislating, but for his ripped ab muscles, shirtless poses, racy Instagram account and, now, a Capitol Hill office decorated like a drawing room from “Downton Abbey.”

But Mr. Schock’s troubles may go deeper than the blood-red color of his freshly painted office walls.

The congressman confessed Friday that he has “had better weeks.” Monday brought mocking revelations in the Style section of The Washington Post that a firm named Euro Trash had donated the office makeover — complete with a crystal chandelier, gilded mirrors and a spray of pheasant feathers. A government watchdog group promptly demanded an ethics inquiry. The congressman, now 33, said he would pay for the work.

On Thursday, Mr. Schock’s communications director, Benjamin Cole — at 38, the resident grown-up in the office — was forced to quit over racially charged Facebook posts comparing black people to escaped zoo animals engaging in “mating rituals.” 

By Friday, Mr. Schock was denying accusations that he had sold his home in 2012 to a political donor for more than its market value.

This is not the first time Mr. Schock has drawn unwanted attention. In May 2012, an independent congressional ethics board found “substantial reason to believe” Mr. Schock violated federal law in soliciting a $25,000 donation to a political action committee. The House Ethics Committee investigated but took no formal action.

The questions about Mr. Schock’s real estate transaction, first raised by the liberal-leaning website Blue Nation Review, involve the 2012 sale of his home in Dunlap, Ill., to a company linked to a contributor, Gloria L. Bahaj, whose husband, Ali, is a former executive at Peoria-based Caterpillar, the construction equipment giant.

According to Peoria County Assessor records, Mr. Schock sold the property for $925,000; the real-estate website Zillow estimated at the time of the sale that the property was worth $819,000. Mr. Schock told reporters in Peoria on Friday that he had built the home on speculation before coming to Congress, that the transaction was handled by a real estate agent, that he had never spoken to the buyer and that the sale price was “right in line” with comparable homes in the neighborhood.

Since 2008, campaign finance records show, Ali and Gloria Bahaj and Caterpillar have donated a combined total of at least $191,035 to Mr. Schock and his political action committee, the GOP Generation Y Fund.

Schock's new office look

Modernity is Sweeping Away Conservative Christianity

Via Civil Commotion I came across a post by far right Southern Baptist Convention leader Albert Mohler that works a larger commentary on the story line of Masterpiece Theater's Downton Abbey.  While Mohler grasps that the larger story line is the transformation modernity worked on Great Britain and how the old world was swept away, the irony is that he refuses to recognize that the public acceptance of his religious fantasy world is similarly being swept away.  His science rejecting, creationist religious belief system is as much an anachronism today as the great houses of the British countryside became in the wake of World War I.  And like the British landed gentry, Mohler tries to deny this reality.  Mohler doesn't "get it" or see that he and religious extremists/reactionaries like him are actually hastening the demise of conservative Christianity as they drive the younger generations (and many of older generations) away.  Here are highlights from Mohler's post that he ought to be applying to himself and the Southern Baptist Convention:

[M]ost viewers are likely unaware of what they are actually seeing. They are not merely watching an historical drama, they are witnessing the passing of a world. And that larger story, inadequately portrayed within Downton Abbey, is a story that should not be missed. That story is part of our own story as well. It is the story of the modern age arriving with revolutionary force, and with effects that continue to shape our own world.

Though by season four King George V is on the throne, the era is still classically Edwardian. And the era associated with King Edward VII is the era of the great turn in British society. The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed a great transformation in England and within the British Empire. The stable hierarchies of Downton Abbey grew increasingly unstable. Britain, which had been overwhelmingly a rural nation until the last decade of the nineteenth century, became increasingly urban. A transformation in morals changed the very character of the nation, and underlying it all was a great surge of secularization that set the stage for the emergence of the radically secular nation that Britain has become.

The signs of the Empire’s disappearance were there for all to see, even if most among the elites did their best to deny the evidence. The great landed estates were draining their lordly title holders of precious capital, and the economic arrangements that allowed the nobility to live off of their estates would never return. That is why so many English lords looked for rich American women to marry.

That larger story records a great shift in worldview, not merely a social transformation. The consequences of that larger story far exceed the story of a great English house and its inhabitants. In that sense, Downton Abbey is a parable of sorts—a parable that can teach us a great deal.

Those who subscribe to Mohler's world view are literally dying off.  Within a few more generations, if America is lucky, Mohler's world view will be largely extinct.  Mohler and the Christofascist can strive to deny reality and modernity, but ultimately reality will prevail.  

 

"Downton Abbey" Breaks Ratings Records

I will make admission: the boyfriend and I are Downton Abbey addicts and had bought tickets to a Downton Abbey costume fundraiser for the our local PBS station but for the event being rescheduled due to bad weather last October (it was rescheduled to the day we sailed on our cruise last October).  As a history major with an emphasis in British and Russian history, the boyfriend teases me that I am an encyclopedia on trivia as we watch the show.  Happily, the series is doing well and the last season set new records for PBS, a constant target of anti-arts funding Republicans.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the show's success.  Here are excerpts:

24 million viewers tuned in to watch the third season of Downton Abbey.

Just think about that for a second: 24 million viewers. In an age of increasingly fragmented television viewing, those numbers are even more staggering when you compare those figures next to say, a recent episode of NBC's Smash, which garnered roughly a tenth of that audience. Those numbers are huge for broadcast and cable, but considering that they're associated with a costume drama airing on a public broadcaster, even the Dowager Countess might choke on her tea upon seeing them.

In fact, Season 3 of Downton Abbey, which wrapped up its run last month, broke all records among households, according to finalized national ratings obtained from PBS, making Downton the highest-rated PBS drama of all time.

The third season of the British costume drama—which airs Stateside as part of Masterpiece Classic—had a season average rating of 7.7 and an average audience of 11.5 million across the seven week run. Compared to the second season, those ratings are up a stunning 64 and 65 percent respectively.

In fact, the controversial third season finale of Downton, which aired on February 17, was the highest-rated show on any network that night, posting a 8.1 national rating and an average audience of 12.3 million, numbers that placed it well above any other show on broadcast or cable that evening.

As for whether the future ratings of Season 4 of Downton Abbey will be influenced by the departure of Dan Stevens (and the death of Matthew Crawley), Eaton was decidedly upbeat. "I think there's still plenty of romance and intrigue to go around in Season 4,” she wrote. “All of Downton springs from the fertile imagination of Julian Fellowes, and he is in fine writing fettle."

Having missed the fundraiser last October, I may just wear my Downton Abbey attire to the Equality Virginia Commonwealth Dinner on April 6th.