Quote of the Week...from Queen Elizabeth II

Football's a difficult business and aren't they prima donnas.  But it's a wonderful game.

                                                                    ---Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Elizabeth II of England passed away at her family's Scotland home yesterday at the age of 96, having one of the longest realms in the history of nobility at seventy years.  It was interesting reading and hearing of the outpouring of emotional tributes coming from some sources you might not automatically think of, like for example the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger.  But most reasonable and mature people understand that she was born into ceremony and royal duty and had precious little actual political power...her life was one largely preprogrammed for her.  She still made the most of it with a lot of class and some refreshing candid humor, as the above quote about her country's (and most of the world's) chief sport of soccer.  I think the same about other sports, too...with the U.S. Open going on now, tennis comes to mind as player after prima donna player pitches fits on the court, breaking their rackets, bawling their eyes out and screaming epithets at the judges and spectators.  TV analyst John McEnroe has provided more humor by publicly castigating their excesses, although he himself was one of the worst offenders when he played...

I had the television on yesterday morning when the Weather Channel mentioned the Queen's deteriorating health and I switched to the three main cable news channels.  CNN and MSNBC had concentrated coverage of the gathering of her family and different aspects of her life and career, but FoxNews was completely ignoring this momentous story, instead focusing on key political races that "their" party, the Republicans, needed to win in November.  Apparently, boss Rupert Murdoch had given the order to snub her, but why? Well, maybe a clue is in another quote of hers, from nine years ago: "I don't like to badmouth people.  but I'm the head of a monarchy that began in the ninth century, and I'm apparently more modern than Chris Christie.  Look, I know he has to appeal to the crazy right-wingers in his party, but the fact is, he's not as forward-thinking as an eighty-seven-year-old lady who wears a crown on her head.  It's pathetic." Melissa later told me that Fox did finally start to cover Queen Elizabeth II's death, but their decisions yesterday morning were telling: "fair and balanced" my ass...

So now it's King Charles III in charge of things...I remember my mother telling me about him in the late 1960s and it's been a long wait, for sure.  I've never been one to care about the news within the English royal family or any others...dang it, didn't we shed all that when we declared independence in 1776?  Still, I always liked Elizabeth and, like many others, will miss her presence and often incisive and straight-forward humor...

Trump, Meghan, Nasty, and Royalty

This is starting to sound like a broken record: I'm no fan of President Trump, but...

In advance of President Donald Trump's visit to Great Britain next week, he was interviewed by some Brit journalist and asked about Meghan Markle, the American actress who married Prince Harry and last month gave birth to their first child.  Markle, it was revealed to Trump, had made some disparaging comments about him as a candidate during the 2016 campaign and the interviewer wanted the President's reaction.  Trump replied, repeatedly expressing his goodwill and support for the new Duchess of Sussex and that he hadn't heard anything about earlier criticism from her.  At the end he used the word "nasty" to describe the comments that he only just heard of secondhand from the interviewer.  And now you would have thought he was insulting the entire British royalty by his comment, which I thought he was provoked into making...

Whatever negative things you might want to say about Donald Trump, he has always made himself available for interviews and has been willing to address questions head-on without evasion.  The journalist in this interview kept prying at him for some kind of interesting reaction about Meghan Markle, and Trump wouldn't oblige...the "nasty" remark was blown way out of proportion, just to make him look bad.  Although I think he has a low moral compass and seems think the universe revolves around himself, as an American I am sick and tired of folks on the other side of the Atlantic acting as if we're somehow obligated to kiss up to their royalty and all the rituals and rules associated with it...didn't we fight a war of independence to break away from that nonsense?  So go ahead, Britain, and deride our president with your asisine big orange balloon and keep showing that clip of him actually standing in front of the queen at one point...I'll say it right now: I couldn't care less about British or any other brand of royalty...to me there is much more nobility and dignity in the masses of people...be they in America, Great Britain, or elsewhere...who have to get out of bed each morning to go to work in order to take care of themselves and their families than a small group of folks born with silver spoons in their mouths who expect the rest of their society to enrich and practically worship them.  So Brits, thanks a lot for actually making me have to stoop to the level of defending Donald Trump...