Anyone have a basement I can rent?

Phil cheated on Liz that one time, right?

One of the great privileges of being a natural-born American is hating royalty as much as I do, even if it's not as deeply as our fellow Americans who immigrated to escape it. Not trying to steal their thunder or anything, but....

Cosh consideration on Yellin's Munday madniss.

I hope I don't ever meet the Queen because I don't want to curtsy. I also don't want to be rude. So it would be a dilemma.

NicoleK, while I don't know if the average woman in the U.K. is expected to do that (as opposed to a female servant at Buckingham Palace), are you saying that if the Queen were to visit you in Switzerland, you WOULD have to do that? If so, I'm amazed.

Of course, when the Queen visits the U.S., no woman HERE has to do that. Miss Manners had some scathing words for an American woman who did just that - and on a different occasion, regarding the adoring crowds of average Americans who always show up to see the Queen, MM said (not verbatim):

"What we should remember is, WE won the war."

The White House just announced that Joe Biden "will today issue an executive order forming the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States" to provide an "analysis of the principal arguments in the contemporary public debate for and against Supreme Court reform." And so it begins.

It's always the purty ones that are like that:

https://twitter.com/DinoDJ14/status/1380266819500539913

1. I'll never be expected to curtsy.

2. But I want to be rude, because

3. The rudeness is all theirs, for thinking their exalted-idiot personages require special handling.

4. We've kinda done this one already—

When Prince William and whatsername were touring the Colonies a few years ago, they were introduced to King James, who....

This is why Planned Parenthood exists. It's faster and less cruel to die instantly with a hand blender inserted into the womb than to starve to death for six days.

https://twitter.com/lporiginalg/status/1380552922090496005

More on that, from 2001:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2001/06/27/a-gristly-crime/7f3e2ff5-1310-4c13-b8cf-e09ae9dcd909/

"Dear Miss Manners: At Wimbledon time, we're always subjected to the sight of American tennis players bowing or curtsying to the royals in the box! I thought it was inappropriate for Americans to bow to foreign royalty under any circumstances. But my co-workers tell me it would be very bad manners for the Americans not to do so because the tennis players are not there in an official government capacity.

"I say it doesn't make any difference. I recall a flap in Washington some years ago when the wife of the American ambassador to Great Britain was photographed curtsying to royalty, and she was severely criticized for it. What do you say?"

"Gentle Reader: Miss Manners blushes to have to say she is the one who caused that flap, back in her days as an intrepid young reporter. She thought it her duty to reassure the nation that we had not, in fact, reverted to colonial status, when we would have to bow down before temporal leaders.

"Although your co-workers are quite incorrect, Miss Manners cannot agree with you that it makes no difference. This gesture is not a bit of etiquette one might adopt out of courtesy when traveling. It is a sign of obeisance. Even the British do not perform this to any royalty but their own. Americans do not properly bow to any royalty. We show respect for other countries' leaders the same way we do to our own, except that we give them the added courtesy of not telling them how to run their respective governments."

(Elsewhere, MM made clear that the way for Americans to show respect to a country's leader is with a handshake. Though I'm sure she wouldn't recommend that with any foreign leader who refuses to be touched. Or in a country where handshakes aren't common between ANY two people.)

I have a theory: The late prince Philip's true role was to speak what his wife couldn't openly say due to her being the queen of England.

Either that or he was sh*posting before internet chan culture made it mainstream:

https://twitter.com/feebux/status/1380528901542273025

Honestly, I'd have started BLM for a place in Topanga.

Do that kleenex thing where you wrap a point of the material around your index finger and gather the rest with your thumb against the palm as you dab the corner of your eye for those salty, salty tears.

Six's link compels sharing this, from decades ago, when Liz' mother, who could ALSO drink like a fish, died at age 101.

Okay yeah whatever, but—

Prince Philip amassed many medals for his service, and looked to have a promising naval career ahead of him. Prince Philip and Princess Elizabeth married shortly after the war in 1947, and the plan had been for Philip to continue to serve in the Royal Navy. But this all changed after the sudden death of King George VI in 1952. The Prince left active military service, having reached the rank of commander at the young age of 30, and his career was promising enough that it was quite possible he could have continued to rise the ranks and ended up as First Sea Lord, the professional head of the Royal Navy.

The Oval Office is tragic, and it ain't worth two and a half… But if you lose the furnishings, it isn't that ugly. (Psst — Where's Mentor, Ohio?)

Okay, you're right, the exterior is hideous. How come people spend millions for ugliness when the MCM home of our dreams can be built for tens of thousands?

More, from 2011.

For some reason, I often have trouble pasting - or typing - here, so I won't try to paste the whole column, since I'd have to do that in segments anyway.

The LW suggests that if George W. Bush had to take off his shoes when visiting a mosque, Americans should curtsy to the queen. MM patiently said: "You have confused showing respect with showing obeisance."

Details follow.

https://buffalonews.com/news/when-a-curtsy-means-more-you-have-confused-respect-with-showing-obeisance/article_654822b7-62df-5bb9-8f30-f71318450625.html