Posted 8:42 AM by Angie Schultz

Up Chuck!

UPDATE: See bottom of post.

Niles and I laughed the other day when we read this article:

Are Americans ready for a possible Queen Camilla?

That's the question Prince Charles and his new bride may be hoping to answer next week as they embark on an eight-day tour of the United States that will take them to New York, Washington and San Francisco.

...


But royal-watchers say it could be a big challenge, given how hugely popular Princess Diana remains in the United States even eight years after her death.

Are there Americans who really give a damn about whether there's a Queen Camilla? I mean, there may be a few rabid Anglophiles who take this a lot more seriously than the British do; and then there are the avid readers of the National Enquirer, who are also deeply concerned about whether their pets' quarters are properly feng shuied; and finally there are those who are informed enough to know to shake their heads when reading about the royals in the Fluffy News snippets in the newspaper (right next to the current starlet marriage league tables). The latter group don't really care, and the former two groups are surely very small. In any case, Americans are kind of out of the loop as far as approval of British royalty goes. As some of us keep pointing out, we fought a war to make sure we'd never have to care again. Surely you've read about it. It was in all the papers.

But, let's assume for the moment that the opinions of the 5% of Americans who give a damn are really really important to C&C, that somehow their approval will persuade Britons that they ought to accept Camilla as queen.

Given that, we see that Charles has exhibited the keen sense of PR that the current crop of British royals is known for, and is planning to lecture Bush about being a mean old bazootyhead to those poor Muslims:

The Prince of Wales will try to persuade George W Bush and Americans of the merits of Islam this week because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since September 11.

Right, like all those concentration camps and Koran burnings and lynchings and whatnot. Or maybe it's just that we still openly allow piggy banks to be displayed, in front of Allah and everybody.

The future head of the Anglican Church (where he'll fit right in) goes on:

"I find the language and rhetoric coming from America too confrontational," the Prince said, according to one leader at the meeting.

Unlike those nice mullahs in Iran, with their Great Satans and their martyrs and their rivers of blood and so forth.

Good job, Charles. It's a just as well no one here really cares or matters, or you couldn't sneak Charwoman Camilla into Buckingham Palace.

That Telegraph article states that Charles is actually trying to woo the American media to the Camilla camp, in which case the Islam PR campaign makes much more sense. Anybody who scolds George Bush will be a hero to them.

UPDATE: According to the Australian program Media Watch, as reported by Tim Blair, the piggy bank ban story was "hogwash".

Also, Sky News reports that when asked about the upcoming tour of Charles and Camilla, 81% of Americans breathlessly asked, "Who?" Just as I suspected. (I didn't suspect that Sky could have such a sucky website. Their news crawl is making some of their ads flash off and on in my browser. Animals. Couldn't find a print-friendly version.)