‘She was above politics” — that’s what many people are saying, as part of their tributes to Elizabeth II. She was, true. People also note that, in constitutional monarchies at large, kings and queens are above politics. That is a great advance, in my judgment: an advance over rule by kings and queens.

I’ve had a memory in recent days: a memory of King Leka, the pretender to the Albanian throne. I had an encounter with him, at his home outside Tirana, in 2005. Allow me to quote from a journal I wrote:

Only in recent years has he been in Albania, trying to participate in political life, heading up a party. . . .
Leka has had a very rough time of it: His mother died not long ago, and so did his wife. He himself is ill: gaunt, super-thin, ghostly. He wears what appear to be hospital clothes. He also chain-smokes and drinks frequently from a dark cup; I’m later told that it contained whisky — it might act as a painkiller. About him is a striking sorrow: sorrow for himself, and sorrow for his nation. He also has great dignity. . . .
Asked how his party will do, the king says, “Under the present conditions, we will do well, but not as well as we should do” — he thinks the game is rigged against him. . . .
As it is Election Day, I ask whether he himself has voted. He answers, “I don’t vote. I am above all political parties, even my own.” It is the most kingly thing I have ever heard.

It was, yes. Is.

• Some of us Americans like to snicker at the Brits, with their madness over the queen — their affection for her. We Americans don’t need a monarch! We threw that off way back in the 1700s!

Earlier this week, a congressman from Texas, Ronny Jackson, tweeted the following:

Retweet if you want the MAGA King back now!!

Uh-huh. Some of the Republicans don’t sound so republican.

• A long, long time ago — hey, that sounds like the beginning of a song! — I wrote a piece called “Books and Covers.” I’ll get to it in a minute.

Here is a report from NBC News. It begins,

A Jan. 6 rioter who wore a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt inside the U.S. Capitol is set to be sentenced Thursday, and his sister is urging the court not to “judge a book by [its] cover.”

Some more:

The government’s sentencing memo notes that his sweatshirt bore the word “STAFF” on the back and the phrase “Work Means Freedom” on the front, which “recalls the sign over the entrance to the Auschwitz death camp operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War Two.”

Some more:

The “Camp Auschwitz” shirt wasn’t the only piece of pro-nazi paraphernalia that Packer sported on Jan. 6. Video provided to NBC News this week shows that earlier in the day Packer was wearing a “Schutzstaffel” shirt, referencing Adolf Hitler’s paramilitary unit headed by Heinrich Himmler that is more commonly referred to as the “SS.”

All right — now to that “Books and Covers” piece I wrote, in 2014:

When we were in kindergarten — if not before — we were taught that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Which is true. Or rather, you can’t necessarily judge a book by its cover. Often, it is an error to do so. Related is an old expression, usually attributed to Oscar Wilde: “When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.”
Well and good. But I remember something I heard a writer say on television, many years ago. (It wasn’t Oscar Wilde. It may have been Harlan Ellison.) He said, “If the cover shows a strapping woman amid the stars, wearing a metallic brassiere and brandishing a light saber, chances are the book is science fiction.”

I love that remark — I think it was Ellison.

• There are people who believe that 9/11 was “an inside job” — atrocities committed by the U.S. government itself. I know such people. There were people who believed that FDR engineered the attack on Pearl Harbor, to get the U.S. into the war. I knew such people, way back.

The other day, I learned of a woman named “Dr. Gina.” To read about her, and why she is a “Dr.,” consult Wikipedia, here. She appears on television. And she was interviewing Rudy Giuliani. She is clearly sympathetic to conspiracy theories concerning 9/11. Watch the exchange here.

Do you think Giuliani, who was mayor of New York on the day itself, could have contradicted Dr. Gina? Could have rebuked the “inside job” stuff? He could have. But . . .

These are our times.

• An item at FiveThirtyEight is headed “Republican Nominees In 40 States Think The 2020 Election Was Stolen. Here’s Why That Matters.” Only 40 states? What’s the matter with the other ten? Should they be expelled from the Union? The item’s author says, “Almost 200 Republicans on the ballot this November do not believe that President Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.”

I’ll give you the name of the author: “Rothschild.” Make of it what you will . . .

• Many years ago, George F. Will said to Senator George McGovern, “You have become a verb.” It was common to say, “The Democratic Party has been McGovernized.” There was also a noun: “McGovernization.”

Well, the Republican Party has been Buchananized — has been refashioned in the image of Patrick J. Buchanan. In early 2017, Buchanan said to Tim Alberta, “The ideas made it. But I didn’t.” What he meant was: His ideas, his politics, had become dominant in the Republican Party, and on the right in general, though he himself was not elected president.

Very interesting is an article that appeared in the New York Times last week: “The Man Who Won the Republican Party Before Trump Did.” That would be PJB.

• On the subject of Buchananization: Here is a report by Audrey Fahlberg and Charlotte Lawson of The Dispatch on the make-over of the Heritage Foundation. Very important.

Last Monday, the communications director of Heritage Action tweeted this:

Heritage president @KevinRobertsTX recalls volunteering for Pat Buchanan’s ‘92 campaign: “My people knew what time it was before the rest of the country even knew it was ticking.”
#NatCon3

• A column by my friend Mona Charen got my juices flowing, and filled me with nostalgia.

Conservatism was a worldview intimately bound up with opposition to tyranny. Of course we fell short of our aspirations from time to time, but love of freedom was in our DNA — or so it seemed. Our hearts were with oppressed peoples from Lithuania to Tibet to Tehran. We cheered the fall of the Berlin Wall because the USSR was a comprehensive, seven-decade assault on human dignity. We hated it for its repression of speech, thought, religion, movement, and enterprise. We hated it for its torrent of lies.
Putin’s Russia differs from the USSR in ideology, but in repression and rapacity, it is comparable.

It is.

• Have I ever quoted from Elle magazine in this column? I don’t think I have. So, this is a first. I need to do a language item.

Elle published a piece about Gisele Bündchen, the supermodel, and her husband, who is involved in sports. (Tom Brady, as you know, is the greatest quarterback of all time — some would argue the greatest football player.) I will paste an excerpt:

Ultimately, she wants him to be happy and she knows better than anyone how much he loves the sport. “Obviously, I have my concerns — this is a very violent sport, and I have my children and I would like him to be more present,” she says. “I have definitely had those conversations with him over and over again. But ultimately, I feel that everybody has to make a decision that works for [them]. He needs to follow his joy, too.”

Did you notice that bracketed “them”? I suspect that Gisele originally said “him” — correctly. Because “him” goes with “everybody.” Gisele’s native language is a Romance language. (She is a Brazilian.) She knows that “him” (or “he”) is the pronoun for “everybody.” I would wager that she said “him,” with the magazine changing it to the politically correct, and wrong, “them.”

Not sure, but . . . Interesting. Modern (alas).

• As a rule, I’m not crazy about punny headlines. But I did like this one, in a neighborhood paper in New York:

• Also, someone perfectly captured my idea of a balanced diet:

• Watching the Michigan Wolverines play the Rainbow Warriors of Hawaii last Saturday, I found my new favorite name — that of a defensive lineman for Hawaii, Blessman Ta’ala. Beautiful, wonderful name.

• I might end this column where I started it — with Queen Elizabeth II. On Wednesday night, a church organist played the Nimrod Variation (Elgar) in the Queen’s honor. As the music swelled, I felt a surge of emotion in me. God bless the Queen, and Blessman Ta’ala, and all of you.

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