Seeing "Andrew Morton" in my rss reader, for a moment I thought I was reading LKML.

An odd thing--some gossip tabloidy rag (online) yesterday ran a piece that showed how burned spouses enacted revenge by looking great and, of course, Jennifer Aniston topped this list. It then went down through the jilted until, there in all her early 90s glory, was Diana in a black dress. Only, if you knew more than the picture and the caption said, it was incredibly sad. It was as though gov. palin, who didn't know which countries were in NAFTA, or that Africa is a continent, not a country, had chosen this picture w/o truthfully evaluating whether her unspoken role model was alive or dead. Living well may be the best revenge, but it's downright creepy to suggest that someone who died such a public tragedy really got revenge on Chuck.

What's his take on Obama? Anyone know?

Let it be said, I am an Anglophile in most senses of the word. My academic background is English Literature and I have an obsessive devotion to all things Shakespeare.

I like the term 'Philosopher King'. The British gave that to the world in the person of Shakespeare and his work is as important as any Bible.

So...one thing to be learned from Shakespeare is how foolish and flawed is monarchy and most of the people involved with it.

The only thing that Prince Charles ever did to garner this fame and fascination was to be born, something for which he can claim no responsibility.

I understand the commitment to tradition and all the arguments for keeping the British Monarchy. None of my business actually--but Jeesuz, the birthday retrospectives made me angry at myself for reading them.

Who cares?

What a load.

Lord, give me something REAL to think about.

I wonder if it is true that in his childhood his mother interrupted a story he was telling by saying, "If I wanted to talk to a turd, I'd put a telephone in my toilet." I've read that comment is the source of all his insecurities.

Are people in Britain allowed to mention that Diana was a high school drop out whack job?

Maybe ancient traditions that serve contemporary political expediency provide for the notion of "royalty" in Britain, but what does it say about the American press that it cares?

I find it impossible to distinguish this breed of celebrity from Madonna or Brittany.

My father and brother in the United States cried in front of the televsion during Diana's funeral. Grown men, just destroyed in that moment, reduced to an emotion usually reserved for close family members. We won't cry when Charles dies. Just another monarch with some press time to foster his selfish little agenda, himself. Unike Diana, who ruled the world with her love.

When I reached my 60th birthday, I was distraught that so few articles were being written about me. I Googled myself and found only the standard information, and Wikipedia contained only a gloss without proper attributions and a note about my love of animals, certainly a falsehood since I have never owned a clam though I did once have a pet catfish. Was my life not replete with interest and curiosity? Was I not the son of Loretta and Jesse, she who singlehandedly won WWII working in a potato chip factory in Detroit and he who, with dash and derring-do, fought his way through the South Pacific to the post-war streets of Tokyo with the style and, more importantly, the mustache of Errol Flynn, who taught his son that "in like Flynn" was the highest status one could achieve? Did I not, one memorable year, hit .461, the highest batting average ever recorded in the Southfield Woods Pony League? Did I not, several years later, win a Scholastic Gold Key for a watercolor whose quality was only surpassed by the likes of Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper? Was I not among the first to protest the war in Vietnam using magical spells and voodoo well before the likes of Abby Hoffman? Did I not also serve in the war, achieving distinction in bar room battles in Singapore and Hong Kong, repelling our chiefmost adversary in that war, namely drunken Australian sailors? Later, in university, did I not prove that Shakespeare was in every way inferior to Beaumont and that "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" is an exact blueprint for how the world actually works, and that the great minds of history, from Aristotle to Cotton Mather, were in fact standup comics? But now I see, in the photo of Charles, why I have been ignored. I do not have a fine military costume, with gold piping and medals for campaigns I was not involved in (I doubt that the "Kyber Pass" medal--third from the right--was fully deserved). As the man says, "such is my luck." Oh Charles, we understand your plight!