Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl ...
... but the Beatles were wrong, she doesn't change much day to day. And that may be part of the reason why Queen Elizabeth is not attracting the big crowds she did in her first few trips to the United States. (Witness the comments in NBC journalist Jim Long's postings on Twitter). I think this new lack of interest can be chalked up to overexposure in the 24/7 media universe - although, as this article from the Hampton Roads Daily Press points out, she may be more popular in the U.S. than in her native England.
H.R.H. (Her Royal Highness) and her husband, Prince Phillip, took a carriage ride Thursday through Colonial Williamsburg, Va., to mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of the first British settlement in what was then the "New World." Saturday, she's at Churchill Downs to watch the running of the Kentucky Derby, and then on to D.C. for some chow with President Bush, then home on Tuesday.
Several decades ago, the queen made a now well-known decision to open up the royal family more to the media. She understood that the institution of the British monarchy was in danger of becoming an anachronism in the late 20th century. In many ways, that decision has indeed kept the royal family in business.
But it's a double-edged sword. I'm not sure when the queen made this important decision in the '60s (really starting when she very publicly invested her son Charles as the Prince of Wales in 1969) if she envisioned the kind of pop-culture dominated, 24/7 media world that we now live in. (This was captured perfectly in the recent film "The Queen" about H.R.H.'s struggles with how to deal with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car accident in 1996.)
So once upon a time, a visit from the queen was something special, as was a story about the inner workings of the royal family. These days, however, there is a veritible publishing industry centered around the monarchy, made up of books written by former employees, those who had relationships with members of the family, historians, gossip columnists, etc. They can hardly sneeze without it being reported by the British or world press. And this has drained much of that all-important sense of "specialness" from the royals. Now they just seem like another group of celebrities.
I've been fortunate enough to see or meet the queen five or six times over the years, as she frequently visited my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada. (I'm still a Canadian citizen, so technically, I'm still her subject). The hair is a little grayer, the hats look slightly different. But otherwise, she really is pretty much the same as the first time I saw her 35 years ago.
10:02 AM ET | 05- 4-2007 | permalink
