Honolulu Lite
I simply don't understand why anyone would give a rip about Princess Di's alleged thigh-ulite, Prince Charles' ear wax problem or any of the other royal minutiae that seem to prop up the entire English publishing industry.
For a really interesting tale of royal love and intrigue you couldn't do better than one in which a young freedom-fighter is thrown into prison for 27 years, leaving his wife to carry on his dream of creating a new nation. But the wife becomes involved in the murder of opposition party members. Then the husband wins the Nobel Peace Prize, is released from prison and elected president of the country that imprisoned him. But the happy ending is tainted when he and his wife become embroiled in a messy public divorce.
That amazing tale is true. It involves Nelson and Winnie Mandela, South Africa's "royal" couple. But it has claimed all of about four inches of newspaper space. There has been less written about the Mandela family breakup than the recent announcement that Prince Andrew is dumping Fergie. Even though any London bookie would have given good odds that the Andy-Fergie union wasn't going to last, mainly on the fairly rampant rumor that Fergie actually is a guy in drag (Or maybe she just went to the John Wayne School of Swaggering).
Let's not get into why the Western press is so intensely interested in the British royal family's fandangos yet has no interest in racy royal shenanigans from South Africa, Japan, China or Indonesia. My basic feeling is that the media's instinct to ignore royal domestic disputes in those other countries is correct and they should apply that policy to Britain.
But they don't. And so it is with profound disinterest that I view each dispatch on Britain's royal family that leaks into the American press.
That is, until yesterday.
Yesterday I accidentally read a report concerning Queen Elizabeth's youngest son. Before I could stop myself, I came across the this line:
"We are forever being told we have a rigid class structure. That's a load of codswallop," Prince Edward said.AS someone who is always on the lookout for new and exciting words, this was just a fantastic discovery. Codswallop! What a great word! I didn't even know what it meant. But I decided it would become a part of my verbal arsenal. That's a load of codswallop! I practiced it. I couldn't wait to use it. And then I realized I better find out what it means.
"So, exactly what is codswallop?" I asked our resident Kiwi.
"Fish poop," he said. "Specifically, cod fish poop."
Man. That's great. You'd never hear President Clinton call a Republican bill "a load of salmon doody."
Some punk member of the British royal family - maybe a queen or something - once described America and England as "two countries separated by a common language." I've always believed that but suspected England was hoarding some of the better English words. The use of "codswallop" by Prince Edward confirms that.
The down side of all this is that now I am an avid reader of news about Britain's royal family. If they were hiding "codswallop" all these years, what other cool words are they keeping to themselves?
If anyone tries to tell you that isn't the case, tell them that's a load of humuhumunukunukuapua'a-swallop.
