Digital Analogue

"A gentle, firm, sensible lecture"

An extended quote from an article on the British monarchy in this weeks USN&WR ("Family Drama", by Michael Korda, himself a Brit):

Nobody who has listened to President Bush ranting about cutting Social Security benefits or lowering taxes for the rich can doubt that it would do him no harm if he had to listen at regular intervals over a cup of tea to a gentle, firm, sensible lecture about social responsibility from somebody like the queen, who, for all her faults, is very conscious that the poor and the humble are as much her subjects as is the Duke of Devonshire. Prime ministers as powerful as Gladstone, Disraeli, and the Marquess of Salisbury complained that their palms grew sweaty and their knees trembled before their regular "chats" with Queen Victoria, whose stern common sense and careful moral judgment made her a formidable interlocutor. Those who know Queen Elizabeth II say that she is every bit as sharp and formidable as her great-great-grandmother. Indeed, recent photographs of the queen not only show a certain resemblance to Victoria---the frown, the turned-down corners of the mouth, the beady eyes, the expression of barely concealed impatience ("We are not amused")---but make it clear how unnerving it would be to explain to her a policy with which she disagreed.

There's the solution! I wonder if they're accepting applications for readmission.