America's Princess

I read somewhere that Catholics make up 25% of the US population. Can someone explain to me, then, why all the anchors are dressed in black and the cable channels are playing wall-to-wall funeral coverage for the Pope? I think this is less about the Pope and more about the misguided celebrity culture we live in. Lookee, the Pope has sixteen trumpets at his funeral! Similarly, while we were at the gym last night, CNN had a long special on the upcoming marriage of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles, a segment that consisted mostly of Camilla parading about in different outfits courtesying to different frou-frous and heads of state. Parker-Bowles and the Pope may be from the same "compost heap, the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world" as the rest of us (thanks, Chuck Palahuik), but you'd never know it in our celebrity culture. Because Parker-Bowles went to finishing schools in Switzerland and France I'm supposed to care? All from a country who claims to want a plain old country bumpkin (read = village idiot) to be their beacon of the free world. Riiiiggghhhttt.

Tell you what, folks. If you want someone to worship , worship me. I am simultaneously regal and proletarian. I'm Polish Catholic but I drink tea! CNN can show footage of me in my gym clothes (pretty much all I wear during the week) 24-7, picking up dog poop, sitting zombielike in front of the computer reaching out to my minions, hanging with the common folk in the grocery store. What do you say? I will authorize my likeness on every and any product. Nothing is too cheap or degrading for America's princess. Preorder your gold-lameé toilet seats now. Finally, some down-home royalty of our own!