A Beautiful Princess and Some Thoughts

This lovely painting is of none other than the marvelous Queen Elizabeth II.  We spent about 5 months in England in 1995, and I fell madly in love with the English people and their culture.  When we were there, Michael and I made of point of trying to be as positive and enthusiastic about all things British as we could. After all, we were guests in their splendid country. Some of the others in our group sadly fulfilled the stereotypical "ugly American" role by criticizing as much as possible. I was embarassed by their behavior.  We found the English people to be very kind, and we realized that there in Lincolnshire, we were the ones with the hard-to-undestand accents!

I was disappointed and hurt recently by the inappropriate and untrue remarks made by my once-favorite Beatle.  As a guest in the White House, Paul McCartney  used a very public occasion to blast President George W. Bush. If Sir Paul had made similar remarks about the current President, I would have felt just as incensed. I think that the Hollywood/Music Industry community believes that to trash a politically conservative American politician is to increase their own popularity. Sadly, this is all too true of the academic community as well.

Sir Paul will never be troubled one minute by this irate American's opinion, and he'll never realize that he is teaching a generation how not to act when visiting abroad! But at least I know this commoner from the American South had more manners when visiting "across the pond."