When Charles speaks, I'm all ears
Slate magazine's Jack Shafer once called Richard Nixon ''the gift that keeps on giving." For a political writer, it is so. With RMN, there is always some new revelation on the horizon: yet another casual, tape-recorded anti-Semitic slur, or a report of an unsanctioned invasion into a country that no longer exists.
For me, the perennial gift is Prince Charles, the heir quite unapparent to the throne of England. I am a Charles man, always have been. It is true that His Royal Highness made one big mistake: He married a virginal (as if!) upper-class nanny, who became a pill-popping nutter the minute she got a taste of the high life. It all ended quite badly.
Charles is presently living out an odd fate as a royal ''tweener." If his own mother, the hale and hearty Queen Elizabeth, lives as long as her own mother, Charles would not ascend the throne of England until his 69th birthday. His son Prince William, famous to his preschool minders as the over-aggressive ''Basher Wills," would be a far more crownable 32.
Charles was back in the news last week, accused of uttering a characteristic ''gaffe." In a court case, it was revealed that Charles thought England's ludicrous reach-out-and-grab-your-rainbow pedagogy probably did more harm than good. ''What is wrong with everyone nowadays?" he wrote in a memo. ''People think they can all be pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities . . . without even putting in the necessary work or having natural ability," he said. American kids are being fed the same line of pap, as if achievement in any field is an astrological accident completely divorced from effort or talent.
Inevitably, Charles had to be slapped down by one of Tony Blair's henchmen for being ''out of touch." Charles riposted, defending his ''fiendishly old-fashioned views." Just yesterday, he added that ''I have been around long enough to see what were thought of as old-fashioned ideas have now come into vogue."
This is my guy. He talks to his plants; he doesn't care who knows. He dumped Ms. Perfect for a woman who looks like his grandmother; it's his business -- slag off! Earlier this year, when discussing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem ''The Song of Hiawatha," Charles used the phrase ''Red Indian" instead of Native American. And he enjoys fox hunting. Can you imagine?
It is true that everything Charles says is ridiculous and is promptly mocked by media the world over. Unfortunately, everything Charles says is also true, which is even more inconvenient for the self-appointed thought leaders of modern society. Dutifully, he soldiers on.For two decades, Charles has been criticizing the insular priesthood of modern architecture. In 1984, addressing the Royal Institute of British Architects, he said: ''You have, ladies and gentlemen, to give this much to the Luftwaffe. When it knocked down our buildings, it didn't replace them with anything more offensive than rubble. We did that."
In recent years he has been attacking genetically modified foods. In an editorial six years ago, he wrote that Frankenfoods take ''mankind into realms that belong to God and to God alone. The lesson of [mad cow disease] and other entirely man-made disasters in the cause of 'cheap food' is surely that it is the unforeseen consequences which present the greatest cause for concern."
Yes, that was Prince Charles making the scene at the Slow Food shindig in Italy last month, hailed by gastro-goddess Alice Waters of Chez Panisse fame as a ''radical and courageous man." Also on the bill was Winona LaDuke, the ''Red Indian" who ran for vice president on the Ralph Nader ticket in 2000. She promised that the Nader White House would use only paper recycled from hemp, ''the crop of the future." But I digress.
How can you not adore a man who, earlier this month, delivered the keynote address at a celebration of ''The Mutton Renaissance" in London? ''Wouldn't it be wonderful," Charles opined, ''if we could help to boost the incomes of our hill farmers by encouraging a mutton renaissance!" Yes, quite. You can read the whole text on his website: www.princeofwales.gov.uk.
Charles ended his speech with this zinger: ''I hope by now I have managed to 'ram' home the message about mutton." You want to kill the speechwriter, but then you realize that there probably wasn't one.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com.
