SONNET 70 CROW: That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect

That thou art blamed shall not be thy defect,
For slander's mark was ever yet the fair;
The ornament of beauty is suspect,
A crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air.
So thou be good, slander doth but approve
Thy worth the greater, being wooed of time;
For canker vice the sweetest buds doth love,
And thou present'st a pure unstained prime.
Thou hast passed by the ambush of young days
Either not assailed, or victor being charged;
Yet this thy praise cannot be so thy praise,
To tie up envy, evermore enlarged,
   If some suspect of ill masked not thy show,
   Then thou alone kingdoms of hearts shouldst owe.

The Crow, black stain, shadow, blot, eclipse
appearing suddenly in the clear blue sky of the sonnet
either Heckle or Jeckle, these talking magpies up to no good.

This ornament of beauty
a piece of foil, a shining object
attracts them in to enact their chaos
of idle amusement
for them, the purpose of the being
is to get a good laugh
at the expense of others

Or that mysterious, all powerful Minah Bird
from the early racist Looney Tunes cartoons.

"Minah is a small and seemingly almighty mynah bird. He has a blank emotionless face and personality, and he always walks to the tune of Mendelssohn's "The Hebrides" (http://youtu.be/FAXyj1dy-PE). Minah played a major role in every Inki cartoon short and has made several small appearances in Looney Tunes, Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries and Tweety's High-Flying Adventure. Minah in all cases appears in the middle of a conflict and proceeds to resolve it in his own unique way. Everything in the jungle is terrified of Minah apart from Inki and lions due to them being unaware of his reputation. In the shorts Minah always makes a huge, intimidating entrance which he doesn't seem to live up to having a small and non-intimidating appearance but he does live up to it in his abilities. Minah always gets in the middle of a conflict and causes physical pain to both sides (the amount of pain received is consistent to the size of their part in the conflict). Minah's abilities include escaping in a maze of holes, disappearing into thin air, reappearing out of seemingly anywhere whenever and wherever it is least expected or most convenient, and making other things disappear and reappear. Minah also delivers the pain personally through off-seen and sometimes onseen violence. It is true Minah cannot be defeated in a physical fight for he has regularly given brutal beatings to dogs, lions, and in one case a 28 ton dinosaur in all his cartoons but always comes out completely unharmed." - source


"Comics historian Don Markstein wrote that the character's racial stereotype "led to [the series'] unpopularity with program directors and thence to its present-day obscurity." He noted that, "The Minah Bird, which appears immensely powerful, [is] an accomplished trickster; and yet acts, when it acts at all, from motives which simply can not be fathomed...."[1] The series' director, Chuck Jones, said[where?] these cartoons were baffling to everyone, including himself. He had no understanding of what the bird was supposed to do other than walk around. But the shorts were well-accepted by audiences.[2] According to Terry Lindvall and Ben Fraser, Inki is an Everyman who encounters mysterious forces of life. He serves as a symbol of all humanity, "frustrated and rescued by the wonderfully inexplicable" - Wikipedia


Sense of "slander's mark" as the conman's mark.