On the Passing of the Queen

 

One isn't obligated to comment on the passing of every single meaningful personage, but in this case, I feel it should not go unremarked that while I didn't know her, I appreciate that her astonishing 70 year reign will feel like the passing of an era to so many among the 2 billion souls of the Commonwealth and elsewhere. 

Even hearing "God Save the King" seems jarring--and it seems like the royal formerly known as Prince Charles has accepted King Charles III because if he's gone by "Charles" for this long, how can you throw "George" or whatever on with one's coronation? It would be absurd.

I think the word that has echoed in remembrances that strikes me as awkward is "stability", If anything, Queen Elizabeth II represented a Great Generation face of the post-WW2 era of trying to move on. She wasn't responsible for colonialism, but represented the family that wrought the scars of empire on whole nations and was not, herself, the person who would ameliorate them. She maintained the face of the royal family and the duty to service of the state but did not essay to remake it.

Stability is a word that often means keeping up appearances. Maintaining a status quo.  Monarchs are not apt to be revolutionaries, and for my part, while I don't despise her for the sins of her ancestors, it only goes to show I am very white and my Irish ancestors left for the US a long while ago. I'm sure my distant cousins living through the Troubles would have felt differently and more personally about it. History has a bad habit of not judging people for what they failed to do when they weren't particularly expected to do it. 

As an American, I was able to view the Queen more as a character in a royal soap opera played out over the front pages of tabloids. I suppose that sounds seamy and I am not sure that isn't what the royals had coming. Randy Andy (who his mum covered for, and while love and duty are meaningful, so was his culpability), Charlie the Tampon, the dirty way they did Diana, Camilla the Homewrecking Vampire, Prince Phillip as a creature not unlike Fawlty Towers' "Major".  And Elizabeth, the resilient monarch, just keeping the whole rotting thing together. 

I toast, not the new King or the memory we have of his mother, but Archie and Lilibet, her great-grands via Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.  We in the US are supposedly shed of kings and queens (despite the coronation some want to push on a decrepit real estate magnate/game show host) and the idea of using human beings as a symbol just feels off to me. Maybe there needs to be a post-royal future--that what the family represents or is supposed to is just too batshit and stressful and they should just be healthy and work on themselves.  And the UK, etc. also moves on. Beyond an age of the romanticizing of personages based on their birthright, and on to something more meritocratic.  

These babies just got titles, but don't need them. I would like to believe we can move past such titles, as well. 

Okay, I Support Marriage Equality, Free Speech and Boycotts

I like to think I have a funny old quality about my "small-d" democratic leanings--I like to think the arc of history does actually bend towards justice. I like to think that, without excessive manipulation, folks are happy to let their neighbors live and let live. This is why I have a certain ambiguity regarding how I feel about Brendan Eich's stepping down as CEO of Mozilla.

Wait. I don't. Look, this is the reality we're confronted with, anymore. Alec Baldwin talks homophobic shit about a pap and loses out on his MSNBC gig. Martin Bashir talks shit about Sarah Palin and blows his gig. Tons of employees all over the globe have certain contracts regarding their conduct or compliance with standards of performance in their personal lives. Sometimes these standards have a direct impact on their effectiveness in their positions. If the impression that Eich's support of Proposition 8, which may have impacted his employees in Silicon Valley effects the market choices of the exact computing market Mozilla/Firefox want to capture--that's a business decision. People have a right to an absence of government opression for their free speech (although dudes in helmets wielding tear gas and pepper spray sometimes do make their presence known in spaces where people with particularly radical ideas can congregate--so let's not pretend that never happens--and also let's not pretend the equivalent is happening to CEO's of multi-million dollar corporations either, 'kay?)

I laugh at boycotts like those of the Million Moms over whatever their momentary outrage of the minute is because it's just puffery. You know, I don't think The Simpsons, Married With Children or The Family Guy, were ever particularly hurt by that kind of boycott, and I love like the devil loves suntan lamps the response of Honeymaid to their haters over their gay-positive ad. I think the Million Moms, who aren't either representative of even a million people or all Moms, have every right to stick it to Covergirl for having Ellen or Queen Latifa as their spokeswomen.

They just won't be effective. Because it turns out, we love Ellen and Queen Latifa. We love Modern Family and Glee.  We love our Adam Lambert and Clay Aiken. We aren't hateful of our fellow humans and respect their right to find and keep the love of their life if they are straight, gay, or what the hey.

So, you know what's been happening lately? When Chick-fil-A has to dial back the anti-gay and Duck Dynasty loses ratings?

Progress. I would call it progress. And that is why I kind of do have faith in democracy.

But I really do feel sorry for people who feel like they have to perform a lie to comply with the standards that society sets because they are a minority struggling against the opinions of a hostile majority. Which is why I do not quite have the sympathy for anti-gay Christians as they might think I'd have. Where would we have learned how to shun you all?  Maybe by watching you? Think about how that works, and get on back to us.