Wedding Bell Blues

What is it about a royal wedding that turns normally intelligent people into complete idiots?

I recently read that Americans - especially American women - are more interested in tomorrow's wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in the United Kingdom than are the Brits themselves. The reason given for all this attention is that women in America love a real-life fairy tale - William's bride will go into Westminster Abbey as Kate Middleton, commoner, and come out as Princess Catherine of Wales - and Americans, of course, love a good fairy tale. But don't you think we've had enough of fairy tales in this country? Like, the one that hard work will get you somewhere? That anyone can become rich, which is a reason that middle-class voters are coaxed into supporting top-rate tax reductions?

Americans have opted for a fantasy version of life for decades. How do you think auto suburbia was created? Every house a manor in a park, every commoner a lord of a manor. We fought a revolution to break away from the British, and to get away royalty worship and unfair taxation. It seems we can't really get away from either.

Another possibility is our terminal Anglophilia. After all, we couldn't be bothered to pay attention to the wedding of the Crown Princess of Sweden, could we? We think classiness is represented by everything associated with the British aristocracy - family crests, stone mansions, gourmet tea. We're a nation of Hyacinth Buckets (Bou-quets!), all trying to keep up appearances and live a lifestyle of taste and sophistication. Except that we live in crappily built tract houses that are badly furnished and poorly kept, and we spend little time trying to make ourselves cultured intellectually. In North Caldwell, New Jersey (where "The Sopranos" was set), there are numerous streets named for English towns and counties, including one for Lord Byron - although the residents of Byron Road likely know nothing about Romantic poetry - and a nearby street is named Sheffield Road. How classy is that - naming a street after a rundown steel town!?

I only know one Englishman in New Jersey, and he lives in a modest neighborhood in nearby West Orange. He does not live in the town's famous Victorian-era gated community of Llewellyn Park. (That's actually a Welsh name, but never mind.)

Yeah, I'm an Anglophile, but I'm a populist Anglophile. I'm not only into British rock and roll, but I also happen to like fish and chips, not to mention sausage and mashed potatoes. I like Michael Caine because he's so working-class. And I appreciate the fact that British populism and socialism have wrought a lot of goodies back in the mother country, like national health insurance. I can't be bothered with royalty all that much.

Today I'm posting a picture of the soon-to-be-Princess Catherine on my sister blog, dedicated to beautiful women - because, admit it, she is one - but that's my only concession to the wedding phenomenon I call Royalmania. It's harmless, I guess, so let's let all these hopelessly romantic American women - the same ones who ruined popular music by buying all those Michael Bolton CDs in the nineties - have their fun, and after the wedding, let's move on.

Sausage roll and Tizer, mate? :-)