Dee Kveen
Queen Elizabeth II turned 80 last Friday, on the same day I turned 30. But there is not a single other similarity between her and I. A slightly nasal timbre, perhaps. Can you, mon semblable, think of others? You Anglofritzers know me so well. Between us there are only similarities.
The Germans love the Queen. (Some of them love me too, but not nearly as many. Four or so. And in a different way.) The other royals, (especially the fucked-up spawn of the fucked-up Diana) are generally looked upon by the German media as dissolute idiots, but the Queen they see as everything they like about Britain. It's funny how the Germans and the British think of each other as emotionally crippled. That's what people think of me too. But there's an ocean of liquid fire in me. The Germans think it's like this: the Queen represents all the best parts of royalty - the dignity, the big hats etc. whereas the rest of the royals represent the dark side of a monarchical state - the decadence, the incest etc. All this is of course horseshit and the truth is that the Queen is really a foolish old wombat who, along with her ridiculous pond of tadpoles, represents all the flat-headed mediocrity and ignorance that Britain is famous for.
The Pforzheimer Zeitung is a whole newspaper that loves the Queen. They've found someone who thinks she is "eine gute Oma."
Comments
"between her and ME." (second line)
Dientrinch; April 24, 2006 6:19 AM
The Germanz see the British Queen -- more largely, the greatest, most robust outgrowth of the old European monarchies: contemporary Britain's -- as a surreal smoothing-over of all difficult history and every painful thing that happened in the 1900s. The Holocaust, the whole second world war, even the first war with its Serbian assassin and trenches and U-boats, nostalgia for Germany's might-have-been colonial greatness, the aimless and shameful '20s and '30s, the wall, DDR disparities, the new Russian gangsta regime, even the Balkans war of the '90s...all that pain is assuaged by the simple existence of the Queen, that somewhere in there she is, after all, a little bit germane to the Germans.
She's too good to be true, in fact. She's a connection to another kind of world where nothing hurt -- Bismarck riding on his estate, the Czars alive and oblivious again, a Europe made of just a few countries. (No Poland!!!) A Europe in which everybody knew his place. (Make your choice, Poles: German or Russian!) Hell, she could even represent a European future thay the Germans could actually enjoy, a lesser EU, no computers and chemicals and taxes -- just a monarch and subjects. And nothing would hurt!
Consider the irony. The French wish they had something like a queen, these days, to rally behind and to strike against. And vast swaths of the Russian electorate yearn for a monarch again the way a twelve year old dreams of goosing a naked girl's ass.
But only the British have enjoyed enough rich, unspoiled independence to savor a Queen. Why, for Germans waking up and looking across the Channel, she's like finding in the back of an old dresser a dozen shares of IBM stock that your great-great-gramma bought a century ago. What an inheritence! And, what's better, the Germans have a pleasant Oma -- she's German-looking enough, even ancestrally German, and she takes German affairs just as seriously as any true German believes anybody should consider Germans and their counrty. (Self-loathing, yes, but it's true.) She visits and waves every few years, maybe says a few German phrases, tours a BMW factory and the Reichstag -- to give the European economy and European democracy a friendly little pat of encouragement. (Not on the bottom, though. Right?)
And best of all, the Germans don't actually have to pay for her.
But, you do, Ben, or at least you should be sending some of your income to support the pageantry and its brood. You need to pay them -- they're your public relations guys now, and you need them to advertise to the world that "Britain = Great." So get back to work.
Marzifall; April 24, 2006 6:53 AM
Bugger off, Dientrinch.
Marzifall; April 24, 2006 6:54 AM
Ah, the self corrective blogosphere with editors over editors with far too many chiefs and very few indians. This royal crap is such oldskool lamenting of the modern british napoleon complex. stay at home queen, please.
Ore; April 24, 2006 10:43 AM
You're both a bit German.
You can both be found on a chessboard.
You both have two middle names, the former of which starts with A.
You both have nine letters in your first name, and three in the shortened form.
You both live in a palace.
This is too easy!
Bennox; April 24, 2006 11:29 AM