{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/751",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 751,
    "subject": "\"berad\", in Digest urth.v013.n001",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-06-08T10:21:56+00:00",
    "last": "1998-06-08T10:21:56+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0013-0008@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "John Bishop",
        "address": "jbishop at alexus.zko.dec.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-06-08T10:21:56+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Re: \"berad\", in Digest urth.v013.n001",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Woody Allen uses the term as well, in a context implying\nthat it's an old, old term, and not specifically gay.\n\nIn that film, Allen is a \"beard\" when he is the escort for\na mobster's mistress (thus allowing the mistress to have an\nreason for being at a place where the mobster will be, without\nappearing to be there with the mobster).\n\nThe practice is ancient; it was an old idea in Elizabethan\ntimes, when kings would have their mistresses marry a presentable\nnon-entity.  The \"husband\" would be rewarded with lands, but\nit was strictly hands-off (until the king tired of her...).\nSee the film \"Restoration\" for a plot based on this practice.\n\n\t-John"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}