Just when I thought it was impossible to be shocked by anything that came out of a politician’s mouth, the bar got raised today. (Or maybe it got lowered. I can’t remember if we’re trying to high jump over the bar, or limbo under it.)
What was most surprising was that the shocker didn’t come from any of the usual suspects. Not the one with the orange hair and even oranger face. Not the one in the unflattering pantsuit. Not the one with the five-second coma between sentences. Not the one with the white tousled mop on top of his head.
No, this shocker came from the smoothest talker of them all—President Barack Obama — and it wrung a gasp from me when I heard it.
The President was speaking in London with Prime Minister David Cameron by his side, as Great Britain ponders whether or not to stay in the European Union.
But his stunner had nothing to do with the economy, or the Union, or international relations, or anything you would expect to hear him address.
In fact, he had hardly cleared his throat at the start of his talk when he said that he wanted “to wish Her Majesty, the Queen, a very happy 90th birthday.”
And I cried: “Crikey! Does he want to start a war with our closest ally?!??”
My mind flashed back to that day exactly 32 years ago when I was in London with my wife. It was our first visit there, and as we sat in the back of the taxi I said to the driver, “Wow, the streets are crowded. Is it always like this?”
“No,” the driver said, with a flush of pride to his voice. “It’s the Queen’s birthday!”
And that’s when I dropped the “O” bomb on him: “That’s nice,” I said. “How old is she?”
It was a warm spring day in London, but the temperature dropped at least a dozen degrees in the taxi as the driver fell silent. And these were Celsius degrees which, like everything British, are even more dramatic.
We had been having a pleasant conversation, but now the driver was incensed. His neck glowed red with silent rage. He couldn’t wait to dump these stupid Americans by the curb — or maybe it was the kerb, which would be even more dramatic.
Because — I guess—although the Queen has plenty of birthdays, she has no age.
At least she didn’t back then. But now, thanks to our President, the cat is out of the bag.
The Queen is 90. He said so, right into the microphone.
Crikey!
Now, before we go much further, let me admit that I have never been much of an Anglophile. My wife, on the contrary, can’t get enough of them.
The last time there was a royal wedding, she kept our TV glued to the round-the-clock coverage. It seemed silly to me, so I only caught glimpses of it as I passed through the living room on the way to get another cup of coffee.
“Are you sure this is a wedding?” I asked. “Looks like a Festival of Funny Hats.”
“Sh-h-h-h-h-h!!!” she said, but with a lot more h’s and exclamation marks than I have room for here. And who knew an “h” could be so loud? She almost blew out an incisor.
It was the same with the nonstop coverage of a royal birth, or the yearly nonstop reminiscence of the death of Lady Diana. Or pretty much anything English.
“You do know, don’t you,” I said on one of those occasions, “that if you and I were British, you’d be the one laundering the hankies, and I’d be the one mucking out the stables. Our peasant blood isn’t anywhere near as blue as all that royal plasma.”
But she didn’t hear any of what I said, my logic obliterated by a blistering and durable “Sh-h-h-h-h-h!!!”
Once, while she was watching Wimbledon (for the royal crowd shots) I said, “You know, they have a guy whose only job in life is to make sure that the Wimbledon seats are occupied in the proper order according to social standing. God forbid that the Earl of East Chippingham would be sitting in front of the Duke of Umbrage.”
My wife heard none of it. The woman really has amazing Sh-h-h-h-h-h staying power.
The British press can’t even show a member of the royalty eating, because — I guess — royals are above common things like digestion. There’s a lot of jewelry in Buckingham Palace, but apparently not a single roll of toilet paper. After all, what would be the point?
I can’t say how much of my disdain of everything British stems from that first encounter with the incensed taxi driver. It seemed so…well, so un-American.
I mean, what American working man would embrace a system whose whole history celebrates the fact that kings and queens are born to their lofty station, while laborers are born to be laborers? Sure, we have our ceilings too, but we don’t define ourselves by them. We strive to break through them.
And even if he learned to accept the insurmountable gulf between commoners and royals, what working man would embrace it so heartily that he would be offended at the very thought of his Queen having an age when her royal birthday rolls around?
I can only wonder what that British taxi driver thought when he heard our President wish his Queen a happy birthday—and then prove that the rest of the world, at least, was counting. Crikey!
The Prime Minister, to his diplomatic credit, didn’t even blink at our President’s offense. So maybe things are changing in Great Britain.
But then again, when my wife insisted on watching the Queen cut her birthday cake on TV, we never saw her take a bite of it.
