Lawrence Hall, HSG
Queen Elizabeth
and Big-Mouth Billy Bass
Forty years ago Chuck and Di coffee cups, tea towels,
posters, dolls, and other made-in-China stuff were big sellers. I don’t think
we will now find Chuck and Camilla mouse pads on neches.com, but I could be
wrong.
And, really, has anyone ever referred to King Charles III
as “Chuck?”
Souvenirs of kings, queens, princes, and princesses are popular
tourist take-homes and as Ken-and-Barbie variants for children on their
birthdays and at Christmas.
Little girls want Princess Barbies, not Senator Pelosi
Barbies (accessories include a stainless-steel refrigerator stocked with of ice
cream of the kind you can’t afford), and as Orwell famously said, no little boy
ever sat on the floor before the fire and played with little toy pacifists.
There are no souvenirs of Communists or other tyrants. There
is no Vladimir Putin Ken doll, though a Dobby-the-House-Elf from a Harry Potter
playset would do. Pull the string and it says, “I love to send 19-year-olds to
their deaths for the greater glory of me, me, me.”
Children hug Paddington Bear, not dolls representing the
Communist murderers at the Siege of Sidney Street.
Can you imagine Lenin and Krupskaya as part of a series
of Cute Kremlin Couples™ collectible cups and saucers?
Or Hallmark Ho Chi Minh Christmas ornaments?
No high school homecoming celebration features a Comrade
Homecoming Commissar and a Comrade Homecoming Co-Commissar slowly circling the
football field sitting atop clapped-out Ladas while the band plays “The
Internationale.”
An odd thing is that we Americans, while professing to be
republicans-with-a-small-r, are quite taken with royalty and with titles of
nobility. Further, many of our federal officials are eager to be perceived as
just-plain-God-fearin’-workin’-folk but enjoy indulging themselves in
high-falutin’ luxuries such as seemingly unlimited access to luxury government
aircraft, gated communities, armed guards, luxury rides, servants, and the
power to raise their own salaries and budgets.
Maybe Americans are fascinated by royalty as a
wish-fulfillment alternative to the political class of graspers Yevtushenko
referred to as “the brief-case politician in his jeep.”
But let us return to the topic of royalty. Numerous
sources on the InterGossip report that Queen Elizabeth, of happy memory, had a Big
Mouth Billy Bass™ on her piano at Balmoral. I don’t know if that’s true, but it
ought to be.
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