Did anyone else think the cartoon fox Maid Marian in the Disney version was, well, foxy?

boko fittleworth on March 14, 2009 at 7:50 PM

Hee. Did I ever. I was sooo jealous when Robin rode off in the wedding carriage…vulpine or not, Marian was one of the few

*Ahem.* Now, as to the legend, I’m afraid I have to call you out on this one Ed.

According to a newly-discovered reference, the people of his own time didn’t have quite so much affection for him — not even the community from which Friar Tuck would have come:

First of all, think about who wrote that letter. Back in Robin Hood’s day the average Joe couldn’t so much as read or write his own name. This left the populace wide open for exploitation by those who could, of course, and in fact educating serfs/peasants to was often illegal.

Thus the literate population amounted to the clergy, the rich/powerful, and the lucky. The first group was (to the eternal shame of Christianity) often in cahoots with the second for a variety of reasons…the tales of corrupt and ill-behaving men of the cloth from this era are legion. It is not a stretch to say that the writer could easily have been a no-good fatcat.

There’s also the difference in society structure: the peasants in (not so) Ye Merry Old England were little better than slaves. They were forbidden by law to leave their liege lord’s lands no matter what and could be returned by force for doing so. (‘freemen’ were a class above and could do so) Their quality of life depended heavily the mercy of the local bigwig.

Lastly the government was hopelessly corrupt to the point where ‘legal’ methods of protest were no good at all. The only recourse for Robin to reclaim his stolen lands and stop John’s abuses was to live outside ‘the law’ in order to do anything. Much like we may be seeing in our own lifetimes.

Prince John.
Sheriff of Nottingham.

Is wealth redistribution what everyone now calls higher taxes on the wealthy? As Warren Buffet recently pointed out, the IRS had determined that the nation’s top 200 taxpayers have seen their effective tax rate fall to about 18% over the last 10 years- a 10% decrease from the late 90’s. We don’t need to ’stimulate’ the economy by giving the ultra-wealthy another 10 year low tax ride. I know ppl on Wall Street who’ve retired by age 40 and see no evidence that raising their taxes will change their behavior.

buy’em on March 15, 2009 at 2:26 PM

The AMT was passed to “go after 200 families that don’t pay income tax” by Teddy Kennedy…..now it is the bane of contractors everywhere….

can’t win votes with logic?

“Buy’em”

“We’re men, we’re men in tights! We run through Sherwood Forrest looking for fights!”

OscarSchneegans on March 15, 2009 at 3:27 PM

Oh, I completely forgot about that Robin Hood when I did my comment. It’s fully the equal of the Disney version — but I still give the nod to Errol Flynn.

Is wealth redistribution what everyone now calls higher taxes on the wealthy? As Warren Buffet recently pointed out, the IRS had determined that the nation’s top 200 taxpayers have seen their effective tax rate fall to about 18% over the last 10 years- a 10% decrease from the late 90’s. We don’t need to ’stimulate’ the economy by giving the ultra-wealthy another 10 year low tax ride. I know ppl on Wall Street who’ve retired by age 40 and see no evidence that raising their taxes will change their behavior.

bayam on March 15, 2009 at 2:26 PM

Of course, the top 200 taxpayers have deductions and expenses which those of us classed as “wealthy” by Obama can only dream about. In addition to my own expenses, I’m putting two kids through college and paying my disabled brother’s rent. None of those expenses are tax deductible, and Obama is tasking himself to be the final monkey on my back.

The big question is when “wealthy” begins. I think it begins when you’ve earned enough so that you’d never have to work another day in your life if you didn’t want to, and you could maintain the lifestyle you are now living on the interest from your savings even given government taxation.

In other words, “wealthy” is working only because you want to, not because you have to.

Obama has a different definition, and it starts as low as $75,000 and goes up, no matter where you live or how much it costs to live there. I certainly call that “wealth redistribution”.

I will endure, but I want the guy out of office and a no-more-taxes Republican in ASAP.

Some people here should just think about that before they start spouting off.

I know it is popular on this site to reclass Robin Hood as some sort of commie revolutionary, but we’re dealing with entirely different concepts here.

“The Rich” were not the wealthy of today, earning money and giving people jobs on some sort of equal basis. “The Rich” were warlords who would brutally torture, rape, and murder their slaves. Yes, slaves. Almost anyone who didn’t live in a castle or have a sword to defend one was potentially a slave.

And for those who are spluttering right now, imagine how you would feel about it if we had to give away 80% of everything we earned. Literally. Didn’t we fight a damn war about just this sort of thing? The only reason that George Washington didn’t do what Robin Hood did was because most of the money went overseas to England at the time, and we couldn’t get it back.

It’s not about robbing the rich, it’s about freeing the oppressed. That’s the point of Robin Hood. It’s about asshole warlords, the kind that we here cheer and applaud when they get a tomohawk up their ass in Afghanistan, being raided and the stuff they rape from other hardworking people given back in return.

There’s a major difference between Marxism and what the story of Robin Hood stands for. Robin Hood wasn’t trying to make everyone equal, he was trying to give the oppressed slaves, neatly called “peasants”, a chance when times were really…really….really hard for them.

I dare say, anyone who would be timewarped right now back into that era and forced into peasantry would be spluttering instead about their “inaliable rights” being violated every second of the day, would wish they could take up a gun, and would dream about overthrowing the power that oppresses them.

Taking that feeling under that circumstance and comparing it to some high-flown current Marxist ideology is, in my mind, really stretching it to the limit of surreality.

When the Sheriff of Nottingham steals the show from Robin Hood, you know the actor playing the hero really sucks.

Look, can we at least agree that Kevin Costner was the worst Robin Hood in entertainment history?

Agreed!

So, what’s the best Robin Hood in popular entertainment? My vote goes to…

“We’re men, we’re men in tights! We run through Sherwood Forrest looking for fights!”

Is wealth redistribution what everyone now calls higher taxes on the wealthy?

No. It is what it always has been – gubmint taking the rightful property of some individuals and allocating it to others. Since it only works if the people you are taking from actually have property to begin with, it naturally becomes a system of taking from the ‘haves’ (wealthier), to give to thte ‘have nots’ (poorer). A completely unexpected side-effect is that the recipients seem to favor those politicians that stand as advocates for the system. Whodathunkit?

‘Hosing the rich’ with our progressive tax system is cynically political ‘class warfare’.

Maybe that’s why we have so many people who think of redistribution as a great idea.

Is wealth redistribution what everyone now calls higher taxes on the wealthy? As Warren Buffet recently pointed out, the IRS had determined that the nation’s top 200 taxpayers have seen their effective tax rate fall to about 18% over the last 10 years- a 10% decrease from the late 90′s. We don’t need to ‘stimulate’ the economy by giving the ultra-wealthy another 10 year low tax ride. I know ppl on Wall Street who’ve retired by age 40 and see no evidence that raising their taxes will change their behavior.

petunia on March 14, 2009 at 7:09 PM

Seeing I’m a descendant of King John I am quite aware of how history has lionized Richard at the expense of his brother.

Everyone always forgets the second part of the story. In the Robin of Loxley myth, Richard returns to England, sets John Lackland to rights and everyone lives happily ever after…except, Richard is killed a few years later in France, John becomes King, is so heavy handed that his Baron’s rebelled and forced King John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215 which leads directly to our pre-Obama Freedom and Constitution.

Being a serf sucked, to put it mildly. I’m pretty sure every single one of them would trade places with any American in a heartbeat ;)

LimeyGeek on March 15, 2009 at 11:07 AM

Probably. But the things they would LIKE about our society have little to do with government. They’d like the abundance of food, time-saving devices, and the increased freedom that our society allows. The first 2 things are provided by the markets. The last comes as a result of our adoption of a Constitution that declares that government power is limited, and only exists inasmuch as the people voluntarily give powers to the government.

How long will we be able to call our government “limited”?

Stealing is wrong.

Stealing from the poor is wrong. Stealing from the rich is just as wrong. Stealing from the government (whose money is property of the governed) is also wrong. When the government abuses it’s power to steal your money, that’s also wrong.

Feel free to call me simplistic. If you think everything is relative, then send me your address, and I’ll send an EXTREMELY POOR person to come take your money ;-)

Look, can we at least agree that Kevin Costner was the worst Robin Hood in entertainment history?

Yup. And I for one think that Errol Flynn (his stage laugh aside) was certainly the best — but he wouldn’t have gotten there without Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains, and Melville Cooper as his foils.

And the Disney version is better, too. Costner gets upstaged by a cellulose fox and bear. Gotta love it.

Look, can we at least agree that Kevin Costner was the worst Robin Hood in entertainment history?

We can agree that Costner was the worst at playing anything in entertainment history. Kevin Costner acts as Kevin Costner playing a character – great actors make you believe you are seeing the character but watching Costner act, all you see is Costner.

Frozen Tex on March 14, 2009 at 7:29 PM
In 449, the Brits hired the Saxons to fight to the Picts, the Scots, & the Irish. So, IMO, they were kind of asking to get taken over…

youngTXcon on March 14, 2009 at 7:41 PM

Didn’t get very far, did they?

In England, the rich were those that owned land. The King (or in this case, Prince John) taxed land holders, not necessarily income. The land holders (aka, lords) put a tax on those residing within their lands, and that was their main income. In a time of war (the crusades that Richard was fighting in) the taxes were pretty steep. And one of Robin’s supposed objections was that John had raised the taxes even higher than what Richard had because he was building his own personal army to suplot his cousin.

In this case, Robbing the rich was robbing the land lords that imposed taxes on the serfs working their lands. Whether or not the burglaries were oof royalties and tributes during their transport to John, was hard to tell. But Locksley WAS a noble, his father was a lord. He had fought beside Richard, and the story maintains that he was a loyalist to the crown. I find it hard to believe that he would come back to England and burglarize the poor in the Kings name. It’s possible, but just find it hard to believe.

In either case, you can always look at it this way, one national leader started a war in the middle east. A deep, dark, bloody war. In his absence, a lesser official with very little ruling experience stepped into his place and started raising taxes to the point of severe oppression. A hero stood up to him and led a small, lightly equipped army in opposition to the new tyrant and all the lords that allied themselves to him.

Kinda sounds like D.C. now doesn’t it?

Limey- I remember an analysis of the serf’s economic status.
They serfs paid less in taxes than the average American!

Amendment X on March 15, 2009 at 10:53 AM

I imagine it is really quite hard to draw meaningful comparisons across such expanses of time and civilization.

Being a serf sucked, to put it mildly. I’m pretty sure every single one of them would trade places with any American in a heartbeat ;)