Which is not to

say I’m necessarily a fan of the perennial cellar-dwelling baseball team from America’s mid-west who supplied the SF Giants with this year’s best player (possibly in all of baseball) in an off-season trade. It’s merely to say that I’ve never been a fan of the seemingly unfettered love and admiration England and much of the world give to a family of individuals who are where they are just from the luck of the zygote. 

                 Her Royal Highness has been addressed as such for 60 years this month, and she is only four years shy of Queen Victoria’s all-time record reign. Given that her mother hung around until age of 101, and The Queen at 86 shows no signs of failing health, heredity and staying away from anything more stressful than occasional international flights would indicate that Elizabeth should easily surpass Victoria’s reign. Most of the current residents of UK have known no other monarch, as most are under 60. During her reign as the country’s 40th monarch since William The Conqueror, England has had 12 Prime Ministers, while the US has had 12 presidents. On the REAL trivial side, she has owned 30 Corgis over that time.

                  Now I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade (according to weather forecasts, Mother Nature is going to take care of that!), but I sit and wonder what all the to-do is. Surely it’s a great accomplishment of life to have the same enviable gig for 60 years and counting, but I consider it a far greater achievement that she and Prince Phillip have been married for 65! For her, Phillip, and all their offspring and siblings to be so abundantly heralded when all they’ve had to do is just “be” totally baffles me. I cared even less about last year’s royal wedding; Kate Middleton, and in conjunction, sister Pippa and her derriere, drew a lottery ticket, and can coast for the rest of their lives. Yet there were people flying in from the US just to hang out in the general area where the wedding they weren’t invited to was taking place. “I couldn’t miss THIS,” was the response from those being interviewed. Well, technically speaking, you DID, but for UK’s sake, I hope you spent plenty of tourist dollars while you were here.

                    In retrospect, Lady Di has been given posthumous accolades for being possibly the first to say, “This is bullshit, I want to DO something, not just be a figurehead.” Those certainly weren’t her words, but the attitude was there. She saw herself as something other than a person who “just shows up as a royal presence.” Once she was done with the royals, she spent more time in the Mother Teresa territory than she would have done if she’d remained Princess of Wales. I think she’d be proud, whether she endorsed the cause or not, of her younger son Harry for at least volunteering to serve in the military in Afghanistan. Obviously, the powers that be didn’t let that happen, primarily because he would have become little more a huge target. Still, it was better PR for him than being photographed stumbling out of night clubs at 3 AM. His mostly-off relationship with Chelsy Davy is intriguing, only in that she has had the carrot of potential royalty dangling at her feet for close to a decade now, but has chosen to pursue education and a career. 

                    This brings up one area where The Queen gets my respect. She’s had to oversee fractious relationships, and a tearing down of the tradition which has been passed through heredity for nearly 1000 years. Where the Royals used to be untouchable, they have shown themselves to be human and prone to make mistakes, as Elizabeth did in her lack of immediate response to Lady Di’s 1997 death. She has never had to make major political decisions, unlike many of her predecessors, only to make the occasional speech and assure everyone that if all is not well, it can, or will be in due time. A cushy job indeed, plus her image gets to appear on not only her own country’s currency, but that of other Commonwealth nations. Let’s not forget that had her uncle Edward VIII not abdicated the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, thus giving the crown to his younger brother, all these jubilee celebrations would not be happening.

                    Still, that’s what happened, and while England has had its ups and downs over the last 60 years, the royal family continues to get their special spot in the public’s eye for doing nothing to earn their glory other than being in the right womb at the right time, or marrying into that lucky gene pool. There are not a lot of countries where an unelected official commands such seemingly universal respect. She’s done nothing catastrophically wrong over her reign, though by doing virtually nothing, she avoids that pitfall. I should also add that I love living in England, and when I see the swells of patriotism, it comes off as a lot more real to me than any of the “God Bless America” tripe I still see the US subscribing to. Over this four-day weekend, a lot of love and tears and respect will be fulminating over the British airwaves and populace. While I can’t totally get behind the celebration of this much-loved individual, I can respect the longevity and the overall dignity she’s shown over a time span to which this grizzled geezer is only slightly older. Suffice to say that few in the same situation could maintain as she has.