Oh my Gawd, I am so glad Friday has arrived!
Heaven to hell and back again, this week has tried a bitch’s nerves…and then dance on them…and then kick them in the face (wince).
Anyhoo, I wanted to pause for a wee exploration of the royal (pun intended) star fucking frenzy going down over Queen Elizabeth’s visit to America.
The media is beside itself with speculation on etiquette (curtsy or bow, extend hand or wait for hand to be extended), what color outfit Queen Elizabeth would wear to each location (c’mon people!) and how the “average American” feels about our “royal visit”.
A bitch is amazed with all the flutter and bother…but then again I have a different perspective on shit like this.
Some people talk in terms of the first settled colony in the New World. This bitch talks in terms of the violent conquest of an already settled land.
Some people see a colonial vacation spot. This bitch sees yet another monument to domination, genocide and oppression.
Some get all nostalgic about how the “first settlers” lived and eventually prospered. A bitch reflects on how the prosperity of Jamestown was built on forced slave labor which resulted in my people on my father’s side of the gene pool being enslaved against their will to build the economical foundation for a nation that still struggles with words like equality and justice.
Some get romantic about an Indian princess falling for a handsome colonial hero.
I don’t.
I turn on the television set and watch Queen Elizabeth tour to crowds of adoring wanna-be subjects and the bamboozled press mob and I just don‘t get it.
But hey, folks can star fuck the Queen if they are so inclined.
This bitch doesn’t curtsy (wink).
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15 comments:
Shark-fu, I'm not saying you're wrong, but maybe a word about the civil rights struggle Her Maj acknowledged in her opening speech? I thought it was at least a little cool that she noticed that there's more to Virginia than Capt. Smith and Pocahontas, and that that change has happened since her last visit in '57.
I was just in Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown a couple of weeks ago with all my female relatives. (Bad pick in a time share.)
The Newport News airport was almost ready for the queen. . . . I blew through the airport to the condo and stayed in the hot tub as the whole damned area was getting ready for the queen . . .
Too cold to go to Jamestown--depressing knowing the true history--I stayed in the hot tub.
"How about Williamsburg in the morning" my sweet Aunt chirped. I stayed in the hot tub.
All Hail to the the hot tub!
ABB, I thought this might amuse you.
Disgusted once met QE. Honest! (This is really going to date me)
It was in 1983 and she visited my office -- OK not mine personally, but she had a state visit to where I worked at Scripps Institute of Technology's Deep Sea Drilling Project (doubters can check this google search). IIRC it was a closed event for so-called dignitaries, less than 400 people, with a limited number of special invitations (all 200 or so employees were included). One so-called dignitary, San Diego Mayor Bill Cleator, made it a memorable visit with his faux pax of actually touching the Queen on the back, supposedly while telling her to "walk this way".
So, there I was, Disgusted and less than 20 feet from QE. Surrounded by Secret Service agents because I was a possible DFH-surfer-deep sea researcher-type person. I supported Green Peace afterall and that is why the NSA spies on me now. ;^)
I have some film negatives somewhere, probably in my San Diego storage bin, of pictures I took that day.
Yet another diversionary tactic our media foists upon us to take our attention away from more pressing matters.
I gotta tell ya this queen (in that oh so gay way) is down with ya regarding QEII. I ain't mad at her for being born a royal, but come on my American get a historical grip! Supposedly we threw of the chains of royal oppression so that we could do our own thing in the New (to the British) World. Now, y'all are going all crazy over this Queen while the Republican hates on the real queens? As this queen's friend Donna would say, "What's really going on?"
Your thoughts are always a pleasure to read....I hope your leg is better soon...barb
I never understood the U.S. fascination with the British royal family. Wasn't there some war fought so that we wouldn't have to care about them anymore?
As for the history of North America, Jamestown was pretty late on the scene.
Giving you props for not being down with the Queen...as a white girl from the deep South never one to romantize a damn thing 'cause my folks were sharecroppers--Americans fought an entire Revolution so we don't curtsy to anyone. Of course the Union Army would have to make more sense of that and of course the Civil Rights Act would have to make more sense of it and of course my recent EEOC complaint against the men I work with is making more sense of it....
Yeah, we did fight a war so we wouldn't have to care about royalty. And now, Dubya wants to act like royalty. Such a short time from get free of them to become one of them.
as a uk person i think we should get rid of them. they cost a lot, and have little real power. whats the point?
Yes, yes, and yes. Rock on with your angry black self.
I live in Kentucky and we had a glorious Derby day down here. I'm not into the queen but had some totally random thoughts.
How great to be the real Queen and not worry about being rail thin, coloring your hair, being on the cutting edge of fashion, etc. etc.
Because damn it I'm the Queen.
Rock on.
You do know that the story of the indian princess and the colonial hero is filled with inaccuracies, right? He wasn't a hero, and they didn't fall for each other...
I agree with you, ABB, that the media frenzy was a bit much...and a bit (conveniently) distracting from other more improtant things. BUT! That's not really the queen's fault, is it? I think she behaved beautifully, and her visit gave the president the opportunity to make some embarrassing faux pas that only helped our anti-Bush cause, don't you think?
Also, I think it's a misconception that the present queen of Great Britain represents Britain's past as a slave-dealing, gun-wielding, sea-sailing super-oppressor. When she took the reigns of government, all there was left to drive was a shitbox over shitlands: Britain was washed up, bombed out, and tired. Since then, she has led a country from the rather sour victory of 1945 and ignominious decline of the 60s and 70s, to the relatively progressive, reasonable, and conscience-bound kingdom we see today.
Britain's not perfect, of course, and its people will probably never own up to their very nasty past. (They're now celebrating their single-handed abolition of the slave trade in 1808. Wha???) But their present is something all us American progressives could learn from, especially as we come to see that we've lost a war in Iraq and might be losing the prestige we once enjoyed. We might just be groping around in the twilight of Empire. Sound familiar?
So the queen's good behavior and dour dignity carries with it the weight of recent History, I think, and as the emobidment not of British history, but of the British people (that's the idea, after all), she deserves a little more respect than our president accorded her last week.
Plus, I liked her outfits.
I agree entirely. I'm as vulnerable to the blinding light of celebrity as the next girl, but goodness, I think the Queen is even less deserving of celebrity than, say, Britney Spears. At least Spears did *something* to earn her fame and money, even if I don't think it was worth doing. All the queen did was be born in the right damn family, and she's handed a palace and a fuckload of money. And I'm supposed to bend over backward to show respect? Honey, please. Britain needs to get with the program and abolish the monarchy; what a disgusting waste of taxpayer money. I wonder why so many people who begrudge a poor mother her food stamps have no problem with an enormous national subsidy for a rich-ass family?
Ok, /rant.
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