PAST PERFORMANCE IS…WELL, PRETTY CONSISTENT, ACTUALLY: NY Post’s critic panned Napoleon movie, founder Alexander Hamilton panned the man.
The Post recently panned Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” starring Joaquin Phoenix as “looney tunes” — an opinion largely unchanged from Post founder Alexander Hamilton’s assessment of the French leader 200 years ago.
The nation’s oldest continuously operating daily newspaper was established in the autumn of 1801.
The terror and anarchy of the French Revolution were mostly over and Napoleon was ruling France as first consul.
Alexander Hamilton and his Post successors were unequivocal in their distaste for the diminutive de-facto dictator:
“A Corsican has usurped the throne of [France]. Twenty-four millions are made to submit to the will of an obscure foreigner,” the paper wrote in December 1803, a year before Hamilton’s death.
“Suicides have become common. Murder is esteemed an amusement. Divorces daily take place,” the paper added in lurid descriptions of his misrule. “Fathers have poisoned their children, wives have murdered their husbands. Children have become parricides. Prostitutes are registered on the public records … Such is the present condition of the once flourishing France.”
How do the two men stack up? Let’s go to the tape!
Related: From PJM alum Tyler O’Neil at the Daily Signal: Ridley Scott Managed to Make Even Napoleon Boring.