Because You Never Asked

LADY DI

     (This essay was written in the mid 90’s.)

     I was recently standing in line at a convenience store, two cans of cat food in hand. Those most adept at prospering in the “global economy” have shrewdly realized that an ostentatious display of magazines and periodicals near the cash register would be in their pecuniary interest. As a result, while patiently waiting in this civilized queue (lines are the quintessence of civilized behavior), I was gratuitously informed, in spite of my almost complete lack of interest, that Lady Di and Prince Charles had decided --- finally, once and for all, you could believe it, no more bullshitting around --- to divorce.

     Hardly a day has gone by since the inception of Lady Di as a celebrity where we have not had the opportunity to see her picture or briefly read something ludicrous about her while waiting in line at a convenience store --- she’s depressed and only eats raw radishes, she adores her children, she’s naked in Mallorca, her hats, her hair, her passions for the Royal Plumber. These blurbs are usually confined to our most plebeian publications, the ones that deal in Oprah’s diets, three-headed babies, Elvis sightings, pizza dough with pictures of the Virgin crying --- you know, the things that really matter. On the day her impending divorce was made official, she was not just fodder for the wives and girl friends of the Hulk Hogan-Richard Petty crowd, but the featured story in every publication not given over entirely to selling boats or real estate. This included our more “serious” magazines, the ones that usually devote themselves to budget battles, congressional hearings, or Bob Dole’s scintillating run to the nomination. In truth, Bob Dole’s scintillating run to the nomination had probably made any excuse to put Lady Di on the cover a top priority. So there I was, cat food in hand, standing before a vast panorama of Lady Di being happy, Lady Di being contrite, Lady Di looking lovingly at the Prince, Lady Di looking loathingly at the Prince, Lady Di mothering, Lady Di in polka dots, in lavender, Lady Di in such concentrated overdose that, if not for the people in line ahead of me buying lottery tickets, I might have imagined myself in the Lady Di wing of the Smithsonian Institute.

     LADY DI!

     While waiting in line at that convenience store, bathed in the sickly neon glow of its lighting while the Ralph Cramdens of the world desperately bought their lottery tickets surrounded by this newsstand of Lady Di omnipotence, I had an epiphany: the Princes and Princesses of the world, in spite of their elegance and social status, were amongst the most working class concepts known to man. The whole burlesque of “royalty” had the pedigree of a street dog.

     For almost the whole time the human race has organized itself socially and politically, the person in charge was generally the result of a designated squirt of male sperm coming into contact with the ovulating stew of a designated female receptor, the offspring of which being regaled as the next infallible leader, the one who could tell the rest of us to bathe in molten lava and we’d have to do it. It wasn’t until the most recent times, and after having bathed in lava just one time too many, that the rest of us began to wonder about this arrangement. After thousands of years of observing our Kings, Czars and Kaiser Rolls, it was finally decided that we were all just as capable of doing a bad job as His or Her Royal Freakin’ Majesty. The fact that it took us so long to figure this out is scientific proof as to our royal ability to be stupid.

     So along came the “republic”, which did away with designated, hereditary rulers, and gave anyone who was cunning enough to get the rest of the swine to follow them, the opportunity to stamp their brand of foolishness on everyone else. If WWI was the last colossal gasp of royal stupidity, WWII conclusively proved the intellectual equality of the masses with their former rulers.

     In a world such as ours, where anyone who has not inhaled marijuana is eligible for the presidency, one has to wonder what purpose the Lady Di’s and Prince Charles’s of the world now serve. It might be said they have become our social structure’s vestigial organs, its tonsils or appendix, that now serve for virtually nothing.

     And yet, as witnessed by our magazine stands, there is something very powerful here. The peasants still seem to need some mythical model to guide them, someone who sets the standard for the etiquette of life, who shows us what good taste is and how we should behave. Most importantly, they should fall blissfully in love with one of their peers, be loving parents and live happily ever after. In lieu of making true policy decisions, this royal crème de la crème should at least embody some image of perfection as a citizen, even if it might admittedly be a pretense.

     Now that Lady Di and Fergy, in equally guilty conjunction with their royal spouses, have slashed their ways through the House of Windsor, it seems we have moved beyond even that minimal role for “royalty”. The pretense has been smashed to bits. There is nothing left to emulate. They are, and probably always have been, just like everyone else; the same hard to control passions, the same banal instincts, the same needs, wants, frailties and frustrations.

     It might finally be time for all of them to go get jobs.

     (For more, see essays “Who Killed Lady Di?”, “La Boda (The Wedding)”, and “The King and Who?”.)         

back to the Table of Contents

Email: JerryG@postcman.info