The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Lunch-break links

A few stories have gotten my attention in the past day. Each of them merits thought, but unfortunately I haven't got enough time to think today:

On this last point, apparently the future Queen Consort of the UK is getting tutored in statecraft to help her be queen someday. As I wrote to Celebitchy, "It’s not like she’s getting tutored in how many MPs there, who’s the head of the C of E, or how to pick Ed Milliband out of a crowd, which I’m pretty sure she knows already. (By the way, anyone criticizing her not knowing how English government works had better know those things cold.) Imagine if you were someday to become the symbol of the United States for all the world, wouldn’t you want to know the real ins and outs of US institutions? And if you had the opportunity to get private tutoring on those institutions from, say, Joe Biden, Ruth Ginsburg, Mitch McConnell, Hillary Clinton, Admiral Mullen, and a dozen others of their stature—don’t you think you’d take that opportunity?"

I'm not usually cock-a-whoop about royals, but in this case it seems the duchess is behaving like a conscientious adult, and wants to do her job competently, or even as well as her mother-in-law. She's not treating her marriage as a fairy tale; she's treating it as a responsibility. The future of British royalty is riding on her, after all. Another Diana and England could become a republic, and we can't have that, what what.

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