Although I married a Brit and have lived in this beknighted land for over thirty years, I haven't bothered getting a British passport, even though I could retain my American one, which I do. Countless numbers of people continuously ask me why I haven't "become British."
The answer is simple: I'd much rather be a "citizen" of one country than a "subject" of a monarch. My four times great-grandaddy took up arms in the colonial navy to defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown. It's beyond my ken why people, who - effectively - have no day of celebration of national achievement and pride, should resort to celebrating sixty years of being ruled over by someone who, by dint of an accident of birth, becomes their social better.
To all those silly Americans who revel in the glamour and mystic of royalty, I say this: They're paid for with the taxes weighed on the backs of the working peasants - that's the likes of you and me. Yep, I paid for Kate Middleton, daughter of an airline stewardess and niece of a drugs dealer, to sit on her designer-clad skinny ass for three years waiting for her drunken prince to decide there was no way of avoiding an involvement.
And don't start me on Harry Hewitt.
Anyway, as the Brits drink to excess and toast sixty years of paying homage to a Teutonic monarchy before they puke in the gutter and get ready to drink some more to the success of the English soccer team, complete with racist centre forward, to begin the European Soccer Championships at the end of the coming week, I take this opportunity to donate my humble gift of rememberance to Her Madge:-
The answer is simple: I'd much rather be a "citizen" of one country than a "subject" of a monarch. My four times great-grandaddy took up arms in the colonial navy to defeat Cornwallis at Yorktown. It's beyond my ken why people, who - effectively - have no day of celebration of national achievement and pride, should resort to celebrating sixty years of being ruled over by someone who, by dint of an accident of birth, becomes their social better.
To all those silly Americans who revel in the glamour and mystic of royalty, I say this: They're paid for with the taxes weighed on the backs of the working peasants - that's the likes of you and me. Yep, I paid for Kate Middleton, daughter of an airline stewardess and niece of a drugs dealer, to sit on her designer-clad skinny ass for three years waiting for her drunken prince to decide there was no way of avoiding an involvement.
And don't start me on Harry Hewitt.
Anyway, as the Brits drink to excess and toast sixty years of paying homage to a Teutonic monarchy before they puke in the gutter and get ready to drink some more to the success of the English soccer team, complete with racist centre forward, to begin the European Soccer Championships at the end of the coming week, I take this opportunity to donate my humble gift of rememberance to Her Madge:-
Amen Sister ,
ReplyDeleteAs an African American whose family fled the British West Indies, I find the fixation with the royal family in this country grating and shameful. If Brits chose to grovel before Elizabeth Windsor that's their perogative. But we Americans as you point out have a revolutionary heritage. Why not celebrate that?
Kath