by Mark Steyn
Similarly, Obamacare is apparently all about the repressed patriarchal white male waging his “war on women.” The women are struggling thirty-year-old Georgetown Law coeds whose starting salary after graduation is 140 grand a year, but let’s not get hung up on details. Dodd-Frank financial reform, also awaiting Supreme Court judgment, is another unconstitutional power grab, but its designated villains are mustache-twirling, top-hatted bankers, so likewise who cares?
One can understand why the beneficiaries of the postwar west’s expansion of middle-class prosperity would rather pass themselves off as members of way cooler victim groups: It’s a great career move. It may even have potential beyond the page: See Sandra Fluke’s dazzling pre-Broadway tryout of Fake Memoir: The High School Musical, in which a wealthy law student approaching middle age passes herself off as the Little Rigoberta Hussein Wilkomirski of the Rite Aid pick-up window. But transforming an entire nation into a fake memoir is unlikely to prove half so lucrative. The heartwarming immigrants, the contraceptive-less coeds, the mustache-twirling bankers all provide cover for a far less appealing narrative: an expansion of centralized power hitherto unknown to this republic. In reality, Obama’s step-grandfather died falling off the chair while changing the drapes. In the fake-memoir version, Big Government’s on the chair, and it’s curtains for America.
WHEN HARRY MET HILLARY
Hillary Clinton’s book, Living History, was published in June 2003 a few days before J. K. Rowling’s latest Harry Potter blockbuster. For some reason, my Daily Telegraph column managed to get these two quite distinct authors confused:
The Daily Telegraph, June 21, 2003
WELL, THE BIG DAY is here! Around the world this morning, bookstores opened their doors and millions of customers who’d spent the night waiting patiently in long lines eagerly stampeded to the counter and said, “Here’s the copy of Living History I bought last week. I’d like my money back, please.”
Sadly, the publisher’s returns policy, conveniently footnoted on page 523 of the book, makes that impossible. But already industry observers are hailing the brilliant marketing strategy of ensuring that no details of the fictional bestseller were allowed to leak out until the checks for advance orders had cleared. It’s that kind of sophisticated media campaign that has helped make its multimillionaire creator, J. K. Rodham, the world’s most widely unread author.
It’s hard to imagine now, but just a few years ago Rodham was financially dependent on the government, living in dreary public housing in an obscure part of Little Rock, and separated from her husband for a few hours while he was over at his brother’s testing the new hot tub with a couple of cocktail waitresses. It was then that the soon-to-be-world-famous author came up with her incredible plot: the story of an adolescent with magical powers who saves the world from the dark forces.
The result was Billy Clinter and the Philosophers Stoned, in which young Billy attends a party at Oxford and discovers his amazing ability to smoke but not inhale. With that first fantastic adventure of the shy misunderstood boy blessed—and burdened—with the awesome power to feel your pain with just one touch, young Billy Clinter became the world’s most popular schoolboy.
Then came Billy Clinter and the Gusset of Fire, in which the vast rightwing conspiracy led by the sinister Lord Newt and Doleful Bob plant a hogtail disguised as a house elf in his hotel room in Little Hangleton. The elf tricks Billy into revealing his pocket sneakoscope and she glimpses its remarkable distinguishing characteristics, the strange lightning bolt along the side that signals the tremendous potency of his Slytherin Beaubaton. After this narrow escape, the young wizard gets into yet more scrapes in Billy Clinter and the Prisoner of Azkansas, in which Rodham tells the story of how young Billy and his much brainier friend, Hillary Granger, finally escape the hideous swamp of Azkansas after being trapped there for far longer than Hillary had expected to be.
But in the fourth volume events take a grim turn, as the careless schoolboy becomes aware that Professor Starr has in his laboratory a magic dress that could destroy all his and Hillary’s plans. In Billy Clinter and the Chamber of Semen, Billy realizes that he splinched while he was apparating, which had never happened before. This is all the fault of Moaning Monica, the intern who haunts the anteroom at Housewhites and has the rare power of Parcel-mouth, the ability to look into the eye of the Basilisk, the world’s smallest snake, without being petrified. Is she a Niffler or a Death Eater? Billy cannot be sure. He looks to Housewhites’ giant shambling groundskeeper Reno to protect him, but she’s busy raining down fire on strange cults. As the book ends, their old friend Albus Bumblegore fails to become Headmaster of Housewhites after insufficient chads are found in his sorting hat.
With each new adventure, critics have predicted that the eternal schoolboy has run his course. But he keeps coming back. Nonetheless, there were strange rumors this time that J. K. Rodham was preparing to kill off the most popular character. It’s been known for a while that she sees the series’ future depending more on the much brainier though somewhat unlikeable Hillary Granger and the four female ghosts who write all her words.
According to the pre-publicity, the latest book—Living History: The Heavily Discounted Bulk Order of the Phoenix—would see Hillary rise from the ashes yet again, step out of Billy’s shadow, and prepare to take Housewhites back from the evil usurper Lord W. Bush (as fans know, the W stands for Woldemort, but by tradition the name is never said). But instead it’s mostly hundreds of pages about who Hillary sat next to at the many school dinners she’s attended, with a brief passage about when Billy told her about Moaning Monica. According to the book, after spending the summer golfing with Uncle Vernon Jordan, he admits to Hillary that, although he did play quidditch, he never put his bludger in the golden snitch. Hillary thinks this is a lot of hufflepuff, and, although he doesn’t die, Billy finds himself under an impediment curse which means that for the rest of the book he hardly gets to take his wand out at all and Uncle Vernon starts calling him Nearly Headless Bill.
But has the series lost touch with its original fans? Many of those impressionable young readers from a decade ago are now in their mid-fifties and may have difficulty still believing in fantastical tales about boys who don’t inhale and girls who can’t remember where they placed their billing records. “Oh, you say that every time,” chuckles J. K. Rodham. “Believe me, they’ll still be swallowing this stuff twenty years from now.”
VII
IMPERIAL ECHOES
KEEPING IT
National Review, August 19, 2013
MONARCHY IS THE natural order of things, which is why, as Ben Franklin grasped, the tricky bit about a republic is keeping it. Franklin didn’t live to see how that panned out. He died in 1790, a year after the first inauguration, back when John Adams was proposing that George Washington be addressed as “Your Most Benign Highness.” Instead, America gave a word to the world—the now-standard designation for a non-monarchical head of state: “President.”
Many presidencies are monarchical in all but name—Putin is known to his subjects as “Tsar,” and Mubarak was “Pharaoh”—and some are even hereditary—the Kims in North Korea, the Assads in Syria. For those citizens looking for a lighter touch from their rulers, there are Europe’s non-executive presidents—the heads of state of Austria, Germany, Portugal, and Italy that nobody beyond the borders can name but that seem to suit post-imperial powers in search of a quiet life: A republic is the phase that comes after dreams of national greatness have flown and the world stage has been abandoned to others.
And then there’s His Royal Highness Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge, third in line to the thrones of the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Belize, Tuvalu, and most of the other prime monarchical real estate. I kept my royal-baby fever in check—name-wise, I was hoping for Prince Trayvon Carlos Danger Windsor—but I confess that, passing a TV set tuned to BBC World, I did stop to enjoy an in-depth report on how in far-flung parts of the Commonwealth many peop
le were reacting with total indifference to the regal newborn. You’d be surprised how long the man in the street is prepared to stop and chat about how he couldn’t be less interested in the new princeling.
Such are the joys monarchy affords in a democratic age: For every loyal subject enjoying a frisson of pleasure at the blessed event, there’s another getting just as much pleasure bitching to his mates down the pub about what a bunch of useless parasites they are. And, unlike the President of the United States, divisive royals are a bargain. Obama’s last Christmas vacation in Hawaii cost some seven million dollars—or almost exactly the same as a year’s air travel around the planet for the entire Royal Family (£4.7 million). According to the USAF, in 2010 Air Force One cost American taxpayers $181,757 per flight hour. According to the Royal Canadian Air Force, in 2011 the CC-150 Polaris military transport that flew William and Kate from Vancouver to Los Angeles cost Her Majesty’s Canadian subjects $15,505 per hour—or about 8/100ths of the cost.
Unlike a republic, monarchy in a democratic age means you can’t go around queening it. That RCAF boneshaker has a shower the size of a phone booth, yet the Duchess of Cambridge looked almost as glamorous as Mrs. Obama when she emerged onto the steps at LAX. That’s probably because Canada’s 437 Squadron decided to splash out on new bedding for the royal tour. Amanda Heron was dispatched to the local mall in Trenton, Ontario, and returned with a pale blue and white comforter and matching pillows.
Is there no end to the grotesque indulgence of these over-pampered royal deadbeats? “I found a beautiful set,” said Master-Corporal Heron. “It was such a great price I bought one for myself.”
Nevertheless, Canadian journalists and politicians bitched and whined about the cost of this disgusting jet-set lifestyle nonstop throughout the tour. At the conclusion of their official visit to California, Their Royal Highnesses flew on to Heathrow with their vast entourage of, er, seven people—and the ingrate whining Canadians passed the baton to their fellow ingrate whiners across the Atlantic. As The Daily Mail in London reported, “High Fliers: Prince William and his wife Kate spend an incredible £52,000 on the one-way flight from LA to London for themselves and their seven-strong entourage.” Incredible! For £52,000, you couldn’t take the President from Washington to a state visit to an ice cream parlor in a Maryland suburb. Obama flew Air Force One from Washington to Williamsburg, Virginia, requiring a wide-bodied transatlantic jet that holds five hundred people to ferry him a distance of a little over a hundred miles. And, unlike their British and Canadian counterparts, the American media are entirely at ease with it.
Just for the record, William and Kate actually spent an “incredible” £51,410—or about eighty thousand dollars—for nine business-class tickets on British Airways to Heathrow. At the check-in desk at Los Angeles, BA graciously offered the Duke and Duchess an upgrade to first class. By now you’re probably revolted by this glimpse of disgusting monarchical excess, so, if it’s any consolation, halfway through the flight the cabin’s entertainment consoles failed and, along with other first-class passengers, Their Highnesses were offered a two-hundred-pound voucher toward the cost of their next flight, which they declined.
My daughter and I chanced to be in Scotland at the same time as the Queen last summer, and went along to see her in Glasgow: Her limo had a car in front and a car behind. The royal couple got out and walked around the square greeting jubilee well-wishers. My thrilled teenybopper came within a foot of Her Majesty without having to go through a body search or a background check. Try doing that as the forty-car motorcade conveys President Obama to an ice-cream parlor and the surrounding streets are closed and vacuumed of all non-credentialed persons.1 The citizen-executive has become His Mostly Benign Highness: a distant, all-powerful sovereign—but kindly, and generous with his food stamps, if merciless with his IRS audits.
In Fleet Street, the (small-“r”) republicans of the columnar crowd advanced an argument that would have sounded bizarre a generation or three back: They attacked not so much the Royal Family as a citizenry stupid enough to dote on them. “The Royal Baby shows how far we’ve fallen back into our forelock-tugging habits,” scoffed Viv Groskop in The Independent. Tugging his forelock was what the hatless working man once did to the local squire, but chippy republicans revived the archaism sufficiently to earn it a busy Twitter hashtag in the days around the royal birth. Surveying the “Hadrian’s Wall of Kate Baby Special Editions” on every newsstand, another columnar naysayer, Grace Dent, unconsciously channeled Pauline Kael re Nixon: Nobody she knew was interested in the royal bairn. The Guardian’s Catherine Bennett peered out of her drawing-room window to watch in horror the masses below “drool over royal and demi-royal hotness.”
This is republicanism as class marker: Apparently, the only argument against an anachronistic, out-of-touch hereditary family ruling by divine right is that they’re way too popular with the masses. I remember, years ago, being told by a Hampstead intellectual that the problem with the Queen was that she was too middle class. Today, for Britain’s elites, monarchy is simply too, too common.
America’s elites, on the other hand, are happy to drool over Barack and Michelle’s neo-royal hotness. Shortly before his death, the sociologist Michael Young, the man who coined the term “meritocracy” for a satirical fantasy he wrote in 1958, observed that Britain’s Blairite meritocrats “can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody’s son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism.” As Young had foreseen a half-century ago, a cult of (pseudo-)meritocracy absolves a ruling class of guilt. They assume not, as princes of old did, that they were destined to rule, but that they deserve to. Which is wonderfully liberating—as one sees all around, from Barack Obama’s neo-monarchical selectivity on which laws he’ll enforce to the spambot penis of Anthony Weiner and his industrial-scale exercising of his Tweet du seigneur. Both men have bet that the public crave Their Most Benign Hotness.
If it’s any consolation to Ben Franklin, they kept it longer than you might expect. Every so often, I take my children across the Connecticut River and down to Plymouth Notch, Vermont, where a citizen-president lies buried on a hardscrabble hillside under a headstone no different from the seven generations before him. But Coolidge is more alien to today’s presidency than George III is.
Oh, well. Maybe republican virtue will be restored in the 2016 election. Jeb vs. Hillary?
1It’s not an exact comparison, because the Queen doesn’t play “fundraisers,” but in July 2014 a woman who’d gone into labor was prevented from getting to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and forced to wait at a bench across from the hospital on Third Street because the roads had been closed for an Obama/Democrat campaign event. “As soon as we can,” said Sgt. Kurt Smith of the LAPD, “we’ll be able to open it up for traffic and first thing we’ll try to get to will be an ambulance. But I can’t guarantee the time on that.” It is not known if King Barack’s grateful subject named her newborn “Motorcade” in his honor.
QUEER THEORY
The Daily Telegraph, January 11 2005
PERSONALLY, I THOUGHT the Queen’s Christmas message this year was rather old hat, or old crown. She’s been peddling the let-us-celebrate-the-strength-of-our-diversity guff for a good three decades in her Canadian speeches.
Of course, they’re written for her by her Canadian ministers, and one had hoped that she might be reading the multiculti boilerplate through at least partially clenched teeth. But the Christmas message is the one speech she writes without the advice of her governments, so one must assume she means it.
In which case, it seems an odd theme at a time when the internal contradictions of the multicultural society are ever more evident.
For example, last week The Guardian forced itself to consider the awkward fact that many young black males are “homophobic.” This would be a disadvantage if one were hoping to make a career in the modern Tory party
, but, on the other hand, if one’s ambitions incline more to becoming a big-time gangsta rapper, it’s a goldmine. Don’t blame Jamaican men, though. After all, who made them homophobic? The “vilification of Jamaican homophobia,” says Decca Aitkenhead, is just an attempt to distract from the real culprit: “It’s a failure to recognize 400 years of Jamaican history, starting with the sodomy of male slaves by their white owners as a means of humiliation.
“Slavery laid the foundations of homophobia,” writes Miss Aitkenhead. “For us to vilify Jamaicans for an attitude of which we were the architects is shameful. Jamaicans weren’t the architects of their ideas about homosexuality; we were.”
I should have known. It’s our fault: yours, mine, the great white Queen’s, for all her shameless attempts to climb aboard the diversity bandwagon.
If we hadn’t enslaved these fellows and taken them to the West Indies to be our playthings under the Caribbean moon, they’d have stayed in Africa and grown up as relaxed live-and-let-live types like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who’s accused Tony Blair of a plan to impose homosexuality throughout the Commonwealth;