May 7, 2007

Queen Elizabeth and the American Royals

The British are coming! The British are coming! And so are the C-list celebrities. Queen Elizabeth’s presence at the Kentucky Derby this weekend drew a lot of attention. The Queen of England crossed the Atlantic for the first time in 16 years to join her American famous-for-being-famous contemporaries.

While equally lacking in fashion sense and dependent on family relations for social status, Queen Elizabeth attending the most high-status sporting event in the country makes sense. Kevin Federline and Larry Birkhead are another story.

The turnout of America’s most infamous baby-daddies at the Derby, not to mention the amount of press coverage it received, must have been quite disagreeable to Her Royal Majesty.

And who can blame her? Newspapers enumerating an English royal right next to the names of men known solely for contributing genetic material to famous women’s offspring gives the U.S. as a classless society an entirely new meaning.

Judging from their previous exploits, the Queen did not catch Birkhead or Federline’s eye. Yet when questioned by the media, former Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy and Melissa Joan Hart of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” fame both disclosed that they have been practicing approaching royalty.

The ladies need not have worried. It is easy to get on Google.com and learn when to use “Your Majesty” and when “Your Highness”. It is the Queen who should have been concerned had such an encounter taken place.

While giving the Queen’s intelligence its full due, it is doubtful that she could - or would - know what to say to these women. What seems to go over these celebrities’ heads is that there are some things that money cannot buy - status and breeding in particular. Just because you too can afford the same obnoxious hat that is the uniform and are sitting in the same sports arena does not mean you are in the same league.

But this is America! We pride ourselves in equal opportunity, in pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and in telling our children that they too can be the leader of our country, no matter their background. This is very much in contrast with the British political culture and largely accounts for why we are no longer their colony.

Asking why the Queen did not practice saying, “Aw my Gawd!” or “Like, totally!” is like asking what the British celebrate on the Fourth of July. It is nothing personal, but with the exception of Prince William, who insisted on meeting the model he had a crush on as a teenager, the British royal family does not pick its companions based on the number of centerfolds, days in Caribbean courtrooms or, well, getting Britney Spears pregnant.

Perhaps one day Buckingham will take a lesson from Camelot and the Windsor will abandon fox hunting for the kind of foxhunting the Kennedys were famous for. Though to be fair, it would not be a close race by any means. Camilla has nothing on Marilyn.

Since you can’t win them all, the British can keep their status and we’ll keep the symbols.