High Heat Wave to Greet
The Queen in Manhattan

This won’t hardly be one of those “Where were you when…” moments. Jagged New Yorkers, lucky enough to have a job to go back to after a somber holiday, will hardly notice it. They’ll surely complain about the gridlock though, or puzzle for a moment over someone carrying a miniature Union Jack. All and all, it won’t come close to bad news from Afghanistan or the rising unemployment as a chat subject for their lunch break.
And let’s be frank, Elizabeth II’s mystic may’ve been fitting to Britons but hardly ever to Americans, who rather struggle to turn the Kennedys, Hollywood movie stars, deranged rock stars, even hot dog eater stars into what across the pond is considered proof of their self-appointed superiority. Only in their dreams.
For the only member of that dynasty that seems to have some resonance down here, Lady Di, died years ago in Paris only to awaken scrutiny over the Queen’s own ability to even feign humanity.
So, in her third and most likely final visit to Manhattan, King George IV’s daughter will not likely to elicit the kind of rapport she once was capable of. Something to do with her incredible wealth, some may say, or what she and her family cost to her still called subjects. The same ones hurting with the depression as ordinary Americans and citizens of every stripe who happen not to have a Windsor for last name.
She’ll still ride a regal motorcade through the canyons of Manhattan, make no mistake. And those small flags for sure will be waved at her, who’ll probably ignore them all from behind the tinted windows of her royal limo. And officials and dignitaries won’t miss the opportunity to rub against the privileged and their sequin of ornate guards and servants who still think of themselves as above you and me.
Don’t forget her forgetful husband too, now that they no longer have Queen Mom and her daily Gin Martinis. Did we mention her son Charles’s late conservative criticism of the architetural kind? They’re all irrelevant except for their millions, of course.
But she’ll still be here and some crowds will be drawn to her, inevitably. And so will the meek, the jagged, the unemployed. The couldn’t-care-less and the very much interested in their demise. Mostly, the uninterested. And then they’ll leave and we’ll all go back to the business we never left unattended. And the week will proceed and life too and with them, the once so important need to follow these people. Who needs them when we have Sandra and Lindsay and Tiger and so many other way more interested than the royals? Maybe if we were in London…