Culture Vultures: Fergie Something

...It sounds like a simple thing, but it wasn't...

...Instead, with Di and Fergie, the Americans have colonized the Crown...

...it was the devil that I knew...

...In the Royal Family, that denial's becoming ubiquitous...

...Weary of half-a-dozen exclusive soul-baring interviews every day, C. B. Jones, in a letter to the Sunday Telegraph, adapted a nineteenth-century verse originally addressed to Queen Caroline: Duchess dear, we thee implore To go away and sin no more But if that effort be too great To go away at any rate...

...The Duchess, by contrast, pleads a modification of Marie-Antoinette: "Let me eat cake...

...It's fashionable to bemoan the way celebrity has contaminated every aspect of life, but, curiously, the one group who seem to be immune are the original celebrities themselves: our grander pop stars now behave with the decorum and restrained formality previously associated with the Royal Family...

...Edward Windsor," he said, extending his hand, and for some reason trying to talk like the granite-jawed John Tesh from "Entertainment Tonight...

...Perhaps I had nothing left inside, not even my illusions," writes the Duchess,"and pain, like nature, abhorred a vacuum...

...As the years go by, this jolly jape, long forgotten by Britain's "Royal-watchers," assumes for me a greater and greater significance — as if at that moment some furtive, symbolic Prisoner of Zenda–type Royal role swap took place...

...Ah, those topless photos—of the Duchess in St...

...But now I simply don't care anymore...

...But Thelma and Louise drove off a cliff...

...I shouted her down in my self-hatred...

...For all the high-flown touchy-feely abstract nouns of his speeches, President Clinton's message is subtly different from Kennedy's: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what your country can do for me...

...or, as the radio commercials put it, "Spend the night with Fergie...

...she now sings "Happy Days Are Here Again" so damn slowly that it sounds far more like a national anthem than "God Save The Queen" or "The Star-Spangled Banner...

...In November, Sarah, Duchess of York, insisted that her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, was also not gay...

...Meanwhile, as pop stars have become aloof and remote, those in public life we used to think of as aloof and remote have rushed to fill the gap...

...The duchess is a disgrace, even by rock-star standards...

...The Prince Edward this evening attended a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Lyceum Theatre, London WC2...

...famous for his "Purple Rain," not a bargain-basement Windsor Prince famous for his mother's reign...

...So, on that morning, as the stretch limo pulled up, hordes of fans and paparazzi crowded the pavements outside Broadcasting House...

...The Duchess beamed with pleasure...

...his fellow members of the rock aristocracy confine their public pronouncements to lofty expressions of concern for the environment and the other great issues of the day...

...Okay...

...44 January 1997 • The American Spectator 0 He seems happy enough in his new role, judging from the "Court Circular," the list of Royal engagements published daily in the British papers: "Buckingham Palace, November 13th...

...I just lay there and felt the pain of the moment, and of the next one, and the next...

...When you have touched the flames of hell, a branding iron is only a mild inconvenience...

...in Montreal, they were advertising the Duchess as one of the star speakers, along with Joan Rivers and Mary Tyler Moore, in the city's "Women Of Today" lecture series...

...This was quite a coup, for the diminutive pert-buttocked rock star is notoriously interview-shy...

...I sat on her until she shut up," drools the Duchess...

...Prince is still in Minneapolis, continuing to eschew the studios of Radio One...

...If I see another piece of f--- ing porcelain...

...Does that bit about how hard it is "to mature in the public domain" ring a bell...

...I bowed instead to my dark voice...

...Nonetheless, when Marvin Josephson of International Creative Management in New York heard that passage, he decided that that dead piece of coal floating lifelessly in the hollow tube of the dark corridor with no open doors in the wilderness was just what he was looking for...

...Tropez having her toes sucked by her American financial adviser...

...Both use the language of emotional honesty to evade personal responsibility...

...If some enterprising genealogist uncovered proof that President Clinton and the Duchess of York were siblings separated at birth, it would suddenly all make sense...

...CULTURE VULTURES by Mark Steyn Fergie Something A few years ago, Radio One, Britain's national pop music station, announced that, on the next week's breakfast show, the special live studio guest would be Prince —or, as he still was back then, the Artist Yet To Be Formerly Known As Prince...

...I've never seen so much porcelain," bemoaned Mick Jagger after a recent visit...

...I just let myself feel bad...

...both obscure their individual failings by attempting to universalize the issues: to the President, The American Spectator • January 1997 45 his improper use of White House access, his ties to an unsavory regime, his acceptance of illegal contributions all raise serious questions...about the need for campaign finance reform...

...It may work for "Good Morning, America," but in Britain so far it seems to be leading inexorably to "Thank you and goodnight...

...She is, sad to say, the most Americanized of the Royal Family: when she and the Duke built themselves a most un-Royal ranch house in Berkshire, the press christened it Southyork — like Southfork in "Dallas...

...To where...

...To what...

...Like the Princess of Wales, the Duchess has mastered perfect talk-show psychobabble, though, unlike the romantic, tragic, doomed Princess, the Duchess stretches the plausibility of the form to breaking point...

...A few months ago, Elton and his male lover were invited by the Queen to join her for tea in the Royal Enclosure at the Ascot races...

...He now had his own production company, he was making a film on his great-uncle, the Duke of Windsor, and he was interested to know about coproduction money from the States...

...He paused...

...Hang on...

...t can only be a matter of time before I AIDS carries off a member of the House Of Windsor, for they've succumbed to every other symptom of modem celebrity...

...I acknowledged how I felt, and I said it was all right...

...Like real aristocrats, they live in stately homes: even Elton John, whose country house in Berkshire was once full of glitterballs, strobe lighting, amyl nitrate, cocaine, and louche young men, has signed up for the New Gentility...

...He signed himself "Edward Windsor" — a stage name which his showbiz confreres seemed to find more awkward to use than his Royal titles...

...Thus, Prince Edward quit the Royal Marines, declared he wanted to break into show business, and got a job as Andrew Lloyd Webber's tea boy, in which capacity he used to send me faxes announcing the opening of Cats in Bratislava or a new touring company of Phantom of the Opera in Uzbekistan...

...Maybe the best is just to give up and realize I am in the wilderness, alone and frightened and very confused...

...What nobody knows about you is that it's been a long battle for you to mature in the public domain...

...For his part, responding to more lurid rumors, the Duke laconically remarked that, if he did have AIDS, it seemed to be an excellent way of putting on weight...

...You see," he told the Duchess, "That's what you've got to say...

...On another occasion, Her Majesty gamely escorted Elton onto the floor and whirled daintily around to "Rock Around the Clock," dancing Queen to queen...

...She hotly denies the toe-sucking, insisting that "John and I were actually playing at Cinderella," and that the entire incident was a cry for help from what she calls her "female voice": "All my life I had abused my poor female...

...It was a horrible mess of treacle, a massive oil spill of the spirit...

...I'd be over there like a shot," the Duchess told ABC...

...And is Prince your full name...

...A set-up between the radio station and the Queen's youngest son, born third in line to the Thrones of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Belize, the Bahamas, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, and sundry other places...

...A fatal Interstate pile-up of random metaphors, a grisly mass murder of preposterous analogies...

...I last saw him at David Frost's summer party...

...to the Duchess, her affairs, her greed, her decision when officially presented to a disabled group to amuse them by telling a joke about a penguin that involved simulating oral sex, all these raise serious questions...about the sinister closed world of the Palace courtiers and the outrageous behavior of the British press...

...In November, shuttling hither and yon, I found myself accidentally trapped on the Duchess of York's publicity circuit: In Britain, every paper had an exclusive interview...

...At the close of the twentieth century the two most enduring, ancient forms of government—Republican and monarchical— seemed to have dwindled down in their most prominent exemplars to pudgy boomer sensualists unable to restrain their gross appetites...

...In the end, the President can get away with this egocentric mumbo-jumbo, the Duchess can't...

...I move on to the next thing...

...You know, er...," said a TV executive who, uncertain of how to introduce the Prince, just waved his arm vaguely in the guy's direction...

...Well, actually," he said, "my full name is Prince...

...Outside in the street, the fans were a bit miffed: after all, they'd expected a bona fide Minneapolis Prince MARK STEYN is theater critic of the New Criterion and movie critic of the Spectator of London...

...Oh, absolutely," said Prince, and you couldn't help noticing he didn't sound terribly African-American...

...His Royal Highness The Prince Edward, an Artist Very Formally Known As Prince...

...The girls screamed and the flashes popped, even though the man himself couldn't be glimpsed behind the entourage of the usual pony-tailed leathery heavies in satin tour jackets who hustled him inside...

...Whatever the reason I sat for hours in that chair by the bluest of pools, and allowed myself...to be...

...She has impeccable manners, explaining in a polite note to President Mandela that regretfully she'd have to decline the invitation to his inauguration due to "prior concert commitments...

...Is it okay to call you Prince...

...The quickest way to précis the descent of the Duchess is to skip the text and look up her entry in the index, under "S" for "Sarah `Fergie' Ferguson, Duchess of York": Royal position and duties of, Self-deprecation of, Self-sufficiency and desire for independence of, Ski-ing of, Stress of Royal life on, Tapped 'phone lines of, Topless photos of...

...A year or two back, Barbra Streisand let it be known that she'd once been sweet on the Prince of Wales: he could, it seems, have married a genuine Jewish American Princess instead of the manipulative suicidal bulimic neurotic he wound up with...

...I am so very tired of this long and arduous battle...

...But Prince Edward and his new chums at Radio One all agreed that it was a spiffing wheeze...

...They say never let fear get the better of you...

...Both stagger from one shambles to another, trailing sleazebags and hangers-on, to the point where self-preservation is all that's left...

...In America, a fawning Diane Sawyer was telling the Duchess that she and the Princess of Wales had been like "Thelma and Louise in the Palace...

...What flames of hell...

...Welcome to the studio, Prince," said the disc jockey...

...Certainly, the protocol seems more flexible these days...

...Maybe it was because ABC ran a trailer for their Fergie special during election night that, for me, both events seemed to merge...

...However, it is not fear...

...I dove deeper, into the gummy blackness of my loss—lost prince, lost marriage, lost dignity, lost hope...

...It is a hollow, dead piece of coal floating lifelessly and aimless...

...Many teenage girls would sheepishly recognize those overwrought anguished outpourings, but they sound very odd coming from a 36-year-old woman...

...Attending a Lloyd Webber premiere on Broadway, the Prince suddenly blurted out to a tabloid hack: "Look, I'm not gay...

...It was all a delightful spoof...

...Barbra is a model of regal dignity: she issues Christmas messages to the peoples of the world, just like the Queen and the Pope do...

...There was a time, not long past, when my every little minute was caught up in who said what and why did they think I was so terrible," writes the Duchess in My Story, warming to her theme...

...Good to see you again...

...Edward...

...Churchill used to dream occasionally of reconciling the English speaking world by reuniting the American colonies with the Crown...

...Clinton is from Venus, Fergie is from Mars —a big, galumphing, down-to-earth, upper-middle-class gal who's only adopted all this Venusian hooey as a career move...

...Fergie, alas, has declined to supply us with any such satisfactory narrative conclusion, though she has had her darker days, as she confided to her diary last March: "It appears to be a vacuum inside, a hollow tube, a dark corridor with no open doors...

...What are the true feelings within...