Queens of the western world
Nicholas von Hoffman
Washington This week it's been mostly queens here, too. Nowhere is Her Britannic Majesty more secure in her subject's affections than In the United States where her Silver Jubilee was celebrated extensively on the television. Not only did some of the larger Shows go off to London for the party, but many of the medium's celebrities went too SO that they could narrate every detail and facet of the celebrations. We learned all about the gold coach of state, when it was made and how it is Britain's last tangible asset Sally Quinn, the society writer of the Washington Post, behaved in a catty way toward the Queen, criticised her dresses and wrote that the best people, defined by Ms Quinn as the members of the peerage and the intelligentsia, had been slow to approve the Jubilee. However, after it appeared that the nobility would support the throne in this crisis. Sally Quinn seemed to relent in her judgments. Aside from Quinn, about whom it is rumoured, we trust falsely, that she recently has had the, cel"His cut off her derriere, the media response ranged from lukewarm ecstasy to apoplectic enthusiasm. It was repeatedly Pointed out that in addition to speaking a language remarkably like ours, the English tend to be kind, quaint and masterful at the Observance of tradition. The general tone seemed to be, they may not sow and they may not reap nor manufacture computers, but will you look at that wonderful wig and, see here, take a squint at the Archbishop's 1.1313es, and the horses and the silver, and isn't it wonderful the way they line up and Parade and sing the old hymns in their delightful cathedrals. It would seem that Britain is less of a nation than it is a very large human museum, a sort of Indian reservation for Anglo-Saxons.
Meanwhile on this side of the ocean, it's Rosalynn I who's in the queening business. Apparently her plain and unadorned southern majesty wishes to rule as well as reign, inasmuch as the White House was at great Pants before the recently concluded, twoweek, seven-nation South American tour to make us understand the visits were not merely ceremonial. A number of remarks were made about her having been given briefing books and she had her picture taken reading one like a real diplomat. It would be a mistake to patronise this woman, however. Behind that smile of hers, which is almost as unconvincing as her husband's, one suspects there beats a heart made of precision-milled high strength steel.
Her formal education is pretty much what you could get from rural Georgia public schools a generation ago, but this is one wife who hasn't stood still while her husband has grown and left her. Intelligent, studious and hard-working, if not particularly lovable, her position is quite different from Eleanor Roosevelt's with whom she is sometimes compared. Mrs Roosevelt was decidedly separate and different. Her policies, her views overlapped her husband's but were far from identical. That doesn't seem to be the case with Rosalynn who goes out of her way to make it clear that when she ventures a substantive opinion, it's her husband's as well. Nevertheless, with Rosalynn this isn't a case of the little woman's subordination to the big man, but to these two being partners in what they do. Rosalynn has been known to attend cabinet Meetings and other work gatherings in the White House in a manner that Eleanor Roosevelt never did and couldn't because she and Franklin were so often of two minds. Carter's election victory was as much owing to his wife as any other single person. Instead of simply being supportive, confining herself to being the lady with the corsage two steps behind the candidate, Rosalynn campaigned on her own as Eleanor McGovern did in 1972 but to far better effect. The victory was partially hers and in political terms her reward has been to become an exceptionally high-ranking presidential aide. Betty Ford used to say she did her Women's Lib lobbying as women have for the past six or seven millennia — when she got the old boy in bed. Rosalynn walks into the Oval Office like the rest of the staff.
After her return from South America she looked so non-wifely and so political some of the Carters' unadmirers began speculating that she would be the means by which the family would circumnavigate the nothird-term constitutional amendment passed in Roosevelt's honour, but only after his death. On the trip itself, she was treated as half first lady, half diplomat. Save in Jamaica, she was greeted at airport tarmac by a succession of wives of presidents, dictators and juntaists, but later she had long
private interviews with their husbands. After each conversation she emerged from the Palacio to stress that she had had a full, frank and substantive (her emphasis) talk with the local generalissimo and maximum leader and 'I'm going to tell Jimmeh'.
In Brazil she was required to depart from protocol and use her own judgment. The United States has been hinting to the Brazilians that their habit of pulling the eyelids off their political dissenters is regarded in some North American circles as a violation of human rights. In Recife, Queen Roz was approached by two American missionaries who told her how they had been jailed and mistreated by the locals. After a fifteen-minute meeting, our touring ambassador plenipotentiary announced, 'I have listened to their experiences and I sympathise with them. I have a personal message to take back to Jimmy.' The Queen's position on the matter puts her in opposition to those who believe that the abuse of missionaries isn't a violation of human rights but the exercise of them.
While Good Queen Roz was endeavouring to pull the heads of Christian missionaries and virgin martyrs out of the mouths of various South American panthers and pumas, the queens of Miami, Florida, were being violated by anothet Christian lady. Until Miami, Anita Bryant . was chiefly known as a suspiciously healthy-looking female of the decidedly mammalary persuasion, who sold orange juice on the television by singing jingles in what can charitably be called a mediocre voice. Then the Dade County (Miami and suburbs) authorities enacted an ordinance giving the gays, as American homosexuals style themselves, protection against discrimination in housing, employment and places of public accommodation. This stiffened the wrists of Ms Bryant and a number of other Christians who forced a referendum on the ballot to repeal this odious ordinance.
The television talk shows around the nation crowded up with angry Baptists and stuffy straight lawyers worrying lest their kids' homosexual fifth grade teacher be the wrong sort of 'role model.' To which the conservatively dressed fag on the other side of the moderator would say, 'Well, that's your problem, honey.' Orthodox liberal opinion was all on the side of the fags or 'fruits' (such language is all but forbidden in the American mass media) when gay political workers explained to Miami's large retired Jewish population that refusal to hire a fairy queen leads directly back to the gas ovens. Apparently some of the voters misunderstood who would be going into the ovens or perhaps late at night some of the liberals had misgivings about a law that would force them to rent the downstairs apartment to a six-foot-three hairy-chested banana. In any event the Miami queens got squashed two to one and all over the county the Christians lit victory bonfires of faggots.
Previous page
