Accession

The Queen is dead!

Long . . . live . . . the King.

Going Platinum

 All hail the Queen?

Britain's Queen Elizabeth II is celebrating her Platinum Jubilee, seventy years on the throne.  Can you imagine that?  Golly, Her Majesty must have seen a lot of changes during her reign.  I mean, when she ascended to the British throne in 1952, rock and roll didn't exist, and today . . . 

Okay, bad example! 😠

The queen is the leader of her country and a symbol of  unity.  She tends to affairs of the state while the prime minister runs the government.  This allows her to stay above politics while the Cabinet and the House of Commons take all of the flak for whatever goes wrong.  Fourteen prime ministers have come and gone in the past seven decades, and the Tories and Labour have had their difficulties with themselves and each other, but the United Kingdom remains united because, well, they all love the queen.  They love her in Canada and Australia, too, where she remains the head of state.

And in America, all we have is a President who can't unify the country because half of the population hates him.

This is really embarrassing . . .. 😩   

We simply don't have anything to celebrate here.

The Return of the House of Windsor

Just so you know, CNN finally aired the last two episodes of "The Windsors," the miniseries covering the lives of the British royal family in the last one hundred years or so, featuring Queen Elizabeth II (below), this past Labor Day weekend, six months late and having been interminably postponed due to COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. If you missed it, at least the series is now available on On Demand in its entirety. 

And the final two episodes of the second season of "Race For the White House" are airing later this month.  After that, a slew of new CNN documentaries, about John Lewis and First Ladies, are set to air.

Please note that any of these broadcasts may be delayed yet again if more serious news breaks at the most inconvenient times.  Because while things seem to have settled down (and thanks to COVID-19, how could things ever settle down completely before the pandemic ends?), any one of these planned broadcasts could be pre-empted at any moment due to the instability of the times.  Don't forget the ongoing hurricane threat, either.  Heck, CNN once pre-empted a documentary about the Eagles (which I still haven't seen) to cover a blizzard  I happened to be living through that night.  I wanted to see a CNN documentary to take my mind off the weather!

Oh yeah, "The Windsors."  Well, the fifth episode was heartbreaking, as it covered the dissolution of Charles and Diana's marriage and how the pres turned against Diana in the months and weeks leading up to her fatal car crash, a crash the paparazzi might have caused.  The sixth and final episode was more heartening, showing what fine young men William and Harry turned out to be.  When this queen leaves the scene, it will be interesting to see how the monarchy evolves in the brief period that will be known as the Carolean era (which I assume is what the reign of the future King Charles III will be called), as well as how it evolves when William is on the throne.  The failure to account for King Edward VII, the first monarch of the current royal family, was perplexing - the producers apparently decided that the story began when Edward's son, George V, changed the family name to Windsor from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha - because Edward had a number of character traits that emerged in his descendants.  But overall, it's a good documentary.  Again, the entire six-part series is on On Demand, so watch it.  I highly recommend it.

Her Majesty's a Pretty Nice Girl

Queen Elizabeth II was in New York today, making her first speech to the United Nations since 1957. To give you an idea of how long ago tat was, Prince Charles was still too young to be contemplating marriage.

The queen spoke about the importance of the United Nations achieving peace and aiding humanitarian efforts and found that, while progress has been made since the last time she addressed the UN, she emphasized that more needs to be done.

One would laugh at the idea of the queen taking a short time out to visit New York after having spent a week in Canada and acting like the kindly old matron we Americans know her as, but bear in mind, Canada's in the British Commonwealth and we're not. Besides, the queen, who turned 84 in April, has witnessed so much history from her position as head of state that it wouldn't hurt to take her advice on achieving world peace and combating terrorism, just as it didn't hurt her to deliver it in person - for greater effect.

Rock on, Your Majesty!

But please, don't require American tennis players to bow to you - we can go only so far.

Obama Abroad

So how can you call Barack Obama's first trip to Europe as President of the United States a success when he didn't accomplish much?

Well, for one thing, he actually made it to Europe. And he impressed the British, the French, and the Germans alike with his charm, his self-deprecation, his articulate manner, and his willingness to listen. Obama wanted the Europeans to spend more to stimulate their economies. They don't want to do that so much. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel wanted more international banking regulations. President Obama wanted more regulations, but not on a global framework. But at the G-20 summit, Obama did set a tone for ongoing negotiations and good-faith efforts at reviving the global economy that should bear more fruit later, just not now. So, as the President himself insisted, he did okay.

And thanks to him, the Queen of England has a new IPod!

Probably a lot of Sir Edward Elgar on it . . .

(The best sideshow involving First Lady Michelle Obama was not her meeting with Her Majesty, both rather her meeting with her French counterpart, Carla Bruni Sarkozy. A picture of the meeting shows that they were clearly sizing each other up! :-D)