An American view of the Royal Wedding

Press, 4 August 1981, Page 17

An American view of the Royal Wedding

That sumptuous affair, 20,000 kilometres away, “The Royal Wedding,” has been put to bed, as they say in printing circles. Some might even say thank goodness, for not everyone, apparently, was so terribly excited about the whole affair. That great republican, MIKE ROYKO, of the Chicago “SunTimes,” was one of those. He makes no bones about his feelings on the “wedding of the year,” and the Royal . Family, in general, in “ancient and honourable American” prose.

Some elements of English society were apparently offended when Nancy Reagan did not curtsey to Queen Elizabeth when they met in London before the Royal wedding. Instead. Mrs Reagan shook the Queen's hand.

I'm not much of a student of royal protocol, but I don't see why anyone should be upset by Mrs Reagan's failure to curtesy. In fact. I've never understood why an American, when meeting the Queen or any of her strange offspring and relatives, should be expected to do anything but pump their mitts' and say: “How ya doin', pal." which is an ancient and honourable 1 American greeting. After all. Nancy is the wife of an American President. which is a much more difficult job to obtain than being the Queen of England. To become a President, you have to have at least enough brains to fool half the American y-oters into thinking you

have enough brains to become President.

But to become an English King or Queen, you don't have to be any smarter than a mutton chop. All you have to be is the eldest son or daughter of someone who had the title before you. Then you have to show that you have enough intelligence to sip your tea without letting it drip on your chin, •wave at a crowd of tennis fans, and smile when someone bows or curtsies or kneels to you. Yet Americans and just about everyone else in the world are expected to treat English Royalty with great deference and to act like serfs in their presence. That's because this country's early history is so closely tied to England, and many Americans have English ancestry. Some of these ■Americans are very snobbish about tracing their ancestry back to the English thieves, derelicts, and mental defectives who were shipped over

here in earlv colonial times.

On the other hand, just as many Americans have absolutely no English heritage, and they probably wonder why this country became so excited over the marriage of the Queen's oldest kid. Charles, and his girl friend. Diana Spencer.

Now don't get me wrong. Charles seems like a nice boy. although he's poorly coordinated and is always falling off his horse. You would think that after riding horses most of his life, he'd be able to stay up on one. Our racetracks are filled with tiny jockeys who go for years without ever falling off their horses, and nobody bows or curtsies to them. But young Charles does get regular haircuts, has his shoes nicely shined, and is probably no less intelligent than most of his inbred relatives.

And his wife seems nice enough, too. although she doesn't seem much brighter than Charles. She’s being

hailed as a great beauty, and I concede that she is pretty. But if you stand on Michigan Avenue for an hour, you'll see dozens of unknown American women who are not only better looking, but have enough brains to earn their own living and decide for themselves who they want to marrv.

Diana's beauty is probably being exaggerated because most of the women in the Royal Family during the past few generations have been such frumps. The Queen wasn't much to look at even in her best days.

You might suspect that I'm bored with the wedding. Yes. I am. I was bored with it months ago when the engagement was first announced. I was bored with Charles when he was a bachelor and we had to read about all the young ladies he considered and rejected. (I doubt that any of them were broken-hearted. Who would want to be married to a guy

who spends most of his time falling off horses? He'd probably keep falling out of bed and landing on his head.) I'm already just as bored with Charles and his wife as I was with his great-uncle, the Duke of Windsor, that weak-faced wimp who gave up the throne of England "for the woman he loved." a nasty, thin-lipped woman who led him around by his nose.

The only member of the Royal Family I haven’t found boring is the Queen’s husband. Prince Philip. Rather than being bored with him. I've always thought howwonderful it would be to give him a punch in the chops. I've felt this way ever since Philip and the Queen visited Chicago some years ago and I had the misfortune to be assigned to cover one of his press conferences. I've been to press conferences or had interviews with about seven or eight Presidents. former Presidents, or Presidents-to-be. And all of

them were reasonably polite — even Richard Nixon, although his eyes were shiftier than a Chicago alderman's.

But I’ve never seen anyone like Philip. He looked at the reporters and cameramen as if none of them had changed underwear for a month. He treated each question as if being asked for a quarter by a panhandler.

When it ended, one of the other reporters said: “There's a guy who hasn't worked a day in his life. He got himself married to a woman who inherits the job of Queen, and now he lives in a palace and spends his time playing polo and sailing boats. I spent two years in Europe keeping the Germans from taking his polo ponies away from him. and now he treats me like a bum."

I asked him why he hadn't pointed that out to Philip during the press conference. He said: "Are you kidding? I wouldn't want him to think that Chicagoans don't have manners."