What’s in a name?
Taki
IMarried a Princess is among the most embarrassing reality shows to have appeared on American television, which makes it unique in view of the garbage which fill the airways 24 unrelenting hours per day. The format is a simple one: a man and his wife and their small children spend their days being filmed saying nice things to each other. Children’s nappies are changed, the husband goes shopping for food, the wife cooks and opens some mail — it was so boring I had to turn it off. The banal horror takes place in Hollywood and the star is ‘Princess’ Catherine Oxenberg, with her real-life actor hubby, whom I’ve never heard of, and their children. The whole thing was so hammy, so cretinous in its banality, so half-witted, I almost yearned to see Charles Kennedy with his little son in his arms calling unstoppably for more social justice for Britain’s yobs and minorities.
Mind you, this is not the point. I’ve done some lousy things in my life, but watching the life of a Hollywood brain-dead couple is not one of them. The reason this particular horror caught my eye was Catherine Oxenberg, someone I used to know along with her family. And, if memory serves, Catherine is as much a princess as my own little girl is. Her mother Elizabeth is one, but her father Howard Oxenberg, now retired I assume, was a 7th Avenue rag trader who made good but did not exactly make it into the European Gotha. Yet Catherine, who once played Diana in an American mini-series about Chuck and Di, is billed as a real-life princess, and who am I to dispute Hollywood’s claims? After all, Michael Jackson himself has named one of his own children Prince Michael, which should get the kid a leg up if and when he decides to meet his cousins Freddy and Ella any time soon.
And here I was thinking that girls assume their father’s name and, once they get married, that of their husband. Obviously not in the Home of the Depraved. Catherine Oxenberg is not a unique case. There is also Ariana Boardman, married to Dixon Boardman, aka Dixon Doorman for his obsequiousness towards the rich, who is referred to as a princess by people who should know better. (Mind you, even a mugger will take Hohenlohe over Boardman any day, but that doesn’t make it kosher.) Not that we Greeks are any better. The latest of a rather incredibly long line of Paris Hilton’s boyfriends styles himself Paris Latsis, which is like my son styling himself Prince Schoenburg. John Latsis, no longer with us, was a self-made billionaire who had three children — two girls and a son named Spiro. One of his daughters, Mariana, married a water-ski instructor named Kasidokostas. He was a good instructor, who used to drive me nuts when I anchored my boat off Vouliagmeni beach by towing all sorts of fat Greek women and children around the bay. When the ski instructor married the nouveau billionaire’s daughter, there were some raised eyebrows, but the happy couple never looked back. Their son Paris was born of that union, a union that didn’t last. (They never do, do they?) My problem with Paris Kasidokostas calling himself Latsis is not reverse snobbism — after all, the name Latsis is not exactly in the Greek Gotha — but simple bad manners. The water-ski instructor, you see, not only stopped skiing, although he still owns the school that drove me nuts, he also went on to become the best mayor that the resort of Vouliagmeni ever had and most likely will ever have. I spent the summer of the Olympic Games anchored in Vouliagmeni last year and saw for myself all the terrific things Kasidokostas has accomplished. To have one’s son take on a better-known name because of divorce or what have you, I find a real bummer. Stick to your own name, kid. You’ll have lots less people hitting you for loans, take it from me.
Which brings me to Paris Hilton. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but ‘a Mensacalibre genius at being a celebrity’, La Hilton understands the shallowness of today’s celebrity culture better than anyone. It doesn’t matter what they write about you as long as your name appears in the gossip columns. If you’re filmed doing what the rest of us do in private, and the video is sold worldwide, it don’t mean a thing. She’s publicity mad, she’s an airhead, but something tells me that it could all be a pose to make money. Her father, Rick Hilton, is quite nice — a hick, really — and as thick as they come. The press calls Hilton a multimillionaire and all that. I think I know better. Paris Hilton is making a fortune by strutting around exposing herself, and who are we to judge a girl who’s out to make an honest living? Go for it, Paris, and I hope you land your billionaire Paris Kasidokostas and — unlike the rest of those too ashamed to use their proper names — change your moniker to his.
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