I recently received an e-mail on Pinterest that said this:
- Trending on Pinterest…
Is anything related to the newborn British royal baby. Pinners are continuing the baby-fever with party ideas fit for a prince, souvenirs and – our favorites – boards featuring historic baby pictures from years past.
CNN is still covering the birth of the royal baby. MSNBC has devoted enormous coverage to it. (I guess it saves them from having to discuss Snowden and the NSA.) It seems tactless to point out that the US fought a war to separate itself form the British monarchy.
Despite (or perhaps because of?) our theoretically egalitarian society, Americans tend to be suckers for aristocrats, both real and pretend. You may recall that Mark Twain made this point in Huckleberry Finn. When Erich Stroheim, the son of a Viennese hatmaker, arrived at Ellis Island, he gave his name as Count Erich Oswald Hans Carl Maria von Stroheim und Nordenwall, which was as shrewd a career move as any man ever made. He had a lucrative film career playing aristocrats (although in an often unflattering manner).
Americans mourned the death of Princess Diana, and they swooned over The King’s Speech, which told us that Britain was saved from the Nazis by Geroge VI and his speech therapist.
We might as well just surrender.
The Spanish Prisoner 
July 27, 2013 at 10:35 am |
Do you have columnists like one in the Ipswich Star who wrote a couple of days ago that he could “barely contain his excitement” at the news?
Probably not.
It could be worse for you, you know…..
July 27, 2013 at 9:38 pm |
Things can always be worse. In Thailand, one can go to prison for merely criticizing the royal family there. Some years ago a member of the Thai royal family spoke at my alma mater, the University of Oregon. The path to the library where she spoke was sprinkled with rose petals. I swear, I’m not making this up.