Queen Elizabeth: Dealing with my monarchy issues is affecting proper mourning of her death

I confess. I haven’t been emotionally invested in all the news coverage about the death of Queen Elizabeth II. 

I had already maxed out on Elizabeth’s life after four seasons of the engaging Netflix series, The Crown. And as a citizen of a former British colony, a colony that only gained its independence through buckets of bloodshed, I can’t escape feeling that all the fawning over royal personages on the other side of the Atlantic is, well, a little bit silly for us.

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This was perhaps no better exemplified than by the condolences offered by the cast of Hamilton, the musical that celebrates the American Revolution while making merciless sport of its villain, King George III, who was Queen Elizabeth’s third great-grandfather.

“Everyone at Hamilton is deeply saddened by the passing of Her Majesty The Queen and we offer our sincere condolences to the Royal Family,” the Hamilton statement read.

Time heals all wounds, I guess. Either that, or the Broadway musical is now on the road at a West End theater in London.

70-year reign for Queen Elizabeth

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That’s not to say that the queen, who died at the age of 96 and had a 70-year reign, didn’t lead a remarkable life that was long in service to her country.

But for we Americans, monarchies by definition should serve only as a source of amusement, derision or disdain. They're something to avoid, not celebrate.

Or to put it another way, we prefer our queens of the Latifah variety.

People can pretend through their bloodline that they are better than anyone else. But we don’t have to play along to the extent we do.

It reminds me of that Woody Allen joke about the guy who goes into his psychiatrist’s office to complain that his brother thinks he’s a chicken. The doctor asks the man why he hasn’t gotten his brother psychiatric help.

“Because we need the eggs,” the man responds.

Great Britain needs the eggs. We’ve never needed the eggs.

Being a reporter in Palm Beach County has meant a few close encounters with British royalty. I can’t say I’ve been impressed.

I watched then-Prince Charles play polo in Wellington, a monumental exercise in vanity, while his young wife, Princess Diana, sat in the stands to bear witness.

At halftime, the locals took to the field, gathering in front of her box and gazing up at Diana as if she were a rare zoo animal, while they pretended to stomp the divots created by the horses’ hooves. No wonder why she eventually bolted.

And I almost got to hear “the royal consort,” Prince Philip, the Queen’s husband, give a speech at the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach in 1993.

But It turned out to be only one of two times in more than 30 years of column writing that I had been specifically disinvited from an event.

The prince had arrived in the Port of Palm Beach on the royal yacht Britannia. I wrote a column about his arrival, pointing out that the British taxpayers paid $12 million a year for Philip to gallivant around the globe on the 421-foot yacht while collecting his $547,000-a-year paycheck.

Prince Philip's Palm Beach talk

He had landed in Palm Beach County, in part, to give a talk about “Nature in the Arts.” And I had a ticket for it.

But on the day of the talk, my column ran about his drain on the public dole and about his credentials as a lover of wildlife.

“Every weekend he can, he goes out in the country and blasts as many pheasants as he can,” Robert Jobson, the royal family reporter for the London tabloid, The Sun, told me.

I guess this is what can happen when men don’t take a shine to golf or pickleball.

Philip had defended his killing of animals for sport, saying it wasn’t much different from killing them for food. But his rationale was less than elegant.

“I don’t think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing,” he had explained.

I guess my welcome column was off-message for his visit. Come to think of it, I may have also thrown in some quotes from British tabloid writers who referred to Philip as a “shag-about” and “swordsman” — words that are tragically missing from the American vernacular of English.

And yes, I do recall suggesting that police scour the route on Broadway in Riviera Beach and West Palm Beach to make sure the prince didn’t have any opportunities to make unscheduled sidewalk stops from the port to Palm Beach.

As my columns go, it was more playful than anything else. And I was doing Philip a favor by making him sound relevant when he was basically just unemployed with style.

Getting the royal snub

If anything, I made him useful, not only to the Palm Beachers who were somehow gaga over his royal presence, but to the rest of us, who refused to play along and would now have something amusing to read one morning while sitting on the john.

I call that a win-win. I was helping the prince earn his money.

Nevertheless, on the day of the talk, my editor was informed that my assigned seat for the royal lecture, Seat No. J-210, was unfortunately the subject of an unexplained scheduling mishap, and it had been assigned to somebody else. Unlucky.

No, problem, my editor said. The newspaper had another seat it wouldn’t be using, so I could slip into that one.

But that just forced out the truth. No, I couldn’t take that seat either. And no, I couldn’t just stand in the back of the room. I was being barred from the event.

I took the bad news in stride. I was thrilled. Not only did I not have to subject myself to Philip’s talk, but I got to write a column about getting snubbed, which is way more fun.

I looked it up this week. Here’s how it began:

I’ve won a few journalism awards. 

(I know, it’s hard to believe.)

But nothing compares to the distinction I received Wednesday.  

A jail by any other name ...

As I said, that was one of two dis-invitations I received.

The next one was a few years later, when I was disinvited to attend the opening of Donald Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach.

Trump had asked the sheriff to move the Palm Beach County Jail because it was an ugly building that was visible from places on his new course. Out-of-town golfers would be paying big money to play at a course visibly nestled next to a 12-story barbed-wired detention facility.

The sheriff sympathized with Trump but declined to build a new jail elsewhere to improve the ambiance of the golf course. I wrote a column suggesting a compromise. Instead of moving the jail, we could rename the Palm Beach County Jail with a big sign that would fool Trump’s golfers into thinking that the big building next to his new course was a luxury hotel, not the local hoosegow.

Readers responded with renaming suggestions: The best ones were "Bar-a-Lago" or "The Breakers In." Trump was furious. He even wrote a letter to the editor to complain.

"Doesn't Post columnist Frank Cerabino have anything better to write about than my golf course?" his letter began.

The rename-the-jail contest got me disinvited from the course opening.

That dis-invitation was delivered to the newspaper’s sports department by voicemail. Any journalist but me. Another treasured moment.

Astute readers may be picking up a theme here: My column isn’t comforting to pretentious monarchs.

So, forgive me if I don’t join the cast of Hamilton in saluting British royalty.

Frank Cerabino is a columnist at the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at fcerabino@gannett.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Frank Cerabino: Grieving over Queen Elizabeth, tough for columnist