I don't know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or pret- tier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Newton
As hereditary an authority as one could summon to mind, on the dual risks of removal from office - for an oddity of the head, or for simply having one attached to one's neck - her perplexity with a system of popular government was incurable, especially in view of who'd determine that.
These are trying moments, and it seems to me a defect in our much-famed constitution to have to part with an admirable government like Lord Sal- isbury's for no question of any importance, or any particular reason, merely on account of the number of votes. To whose predicament is Her Majesty's aperçu now more applicable, than those to whom the burden falls, of tidying up the government of the United States, from the top? Far from querying the prohibitive immensity of his popularity, the jan- itors need merely to act on the oddity or the existence of his head. All else is bound to fall into place, without all this unseemli- ness of constitutionality. No stranger to internation- al treachery in the miscon- duct of states, Her Majesty clarified entirely how to adjust to such interventions.
Once again, we're all old enough to remember the late Mohammed Reza Pah- lavi, Shah of Iran in the good old days of CIA-bespoke hegemons around the world. Enthrallingly rich, ag- onizingly beautifully spoused, and about as interested in whose money he was taking as any upstart pro on the PGA tour. People will say, the legitimate second son of the Prince of Wales conjures more the profile of his regal late great-great-uncle, Edward VIII for a few weeks, quitter par excellence for the woman he en- deared himself to, with promises neither one of them wanted to keep. But I think the feebleness which hangs about his proposals now re- calls much more the nuisance fac- tor of the late Shah, than the lamentable maladjustments to roy- alty of which the present Duke is so archly proud. We remember, how anxiously a retired fixer of all things diplomatic, Henry Kis- singer, attempted to gain for the deposed Shah, persona non grata and security risk incarnate, per- mission to enter the United States on the compassionate excuse of our having doctors, whose care he was said to require. (Disclosure: my father-in-law was one of them). Allowing the deposed Shah access to any of the facilities of the City of New York would not only have held our greatest con- centration of population hostage to recriminations from the reform government of the mullahs; no one could get around the streets with any predictability, much less di- gest the evening news without an immense amuse bouche of his day's progress through the shops and suites of highest expense. For this is admittedly the agenda of the impossibly coddled couple who wishes to be financially indepen- dent - and don't everybody howl with laughter at once - scarfing up endorsements worth quite a lot more to them, than their be- smirched Royal Warrant could ever bear to a Tate cube of demerara. (Search "Tate sugar The 39 Steps" and their portraits already appear). That said, even the most besotted groupies of Edward VIII (a matin- ée-idol prince if ever there were one) never pretended that he might endure being royal while dressed, and a free-range industrialist and tastemaker while in Nike mufti. What this modernist desires is much more beholden to the example of the late Shah, or Virginia Hill in Bugsy -- whatever he wants, whenever he wants it -- and, like his late mother, to spend the rest of his time urging everyone to mock the fount of his prestige. Didn't Aesop do a fable on this?
