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“She is a calm and happy young woman who has a capacity for fun and who in her official life displays a rigid sense of duty and discipline and an appreciation for the dignity of her high office,” wrote Daniel. “As a result of long training and serious application to her job she almost invariably does the right thing — as rightness is understood in this country.”
But there was more to her enduring role. As Laura Beers wrote, “On Queen Elizabeth II’s watch, post-war Britain rebuilt itself in the wake of two devastating world wars, and became the modern nation celebrated to such fanfare in the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremonies — an international spectacle in which the Queen gamely played a starring role, alongside Daniel Craig’s James Bond.”
The sense of fun noted by Daniel persisted too. “In the 1990s, Britpop again put the country on the musical map,” Beers wrote, observing that the Spice Girls’ “1997 photo ops with Prince Charles and the Queen helped to cement the relationship between the monarchy and ‘Cool Britannia.'”
In the Guardian, Caroline Davies wrote of the Queen’s constant presence: “familiar in brightly coloured coat, brimmed hat and handbag, she glad-handed her way through ‘walkabouts’, garden parties, ship launches, plaque unveilings, tree plantings, building inaugurations — the bread and butter of her engagements diary — with an inscrutable smile in place…”
Balmoral Castle, where the Queen died, was one of her favorite places, but Davies noted that “visitors didn’t always share her enthusiasm” for it. “It was draughty, and a little threadbare … but such details fascinated the public: a queen who stored cereal in Tupperware, used a two-bar electric fire for heating, and kept a Big Mouth Billy Bass, a battery-operated fish, on top of her piano, seemed less remote, despite being woken each morning by bagpipes.”
Her eldest son, Charles, who was just three years old when his mother ascended the throne in 1952, is now King Charles III. It’s a sudden departure in a nation where more than 85% of the population has known only one monarch, a female one.
“I always thought of Queen Elizabeth as an avatar of nepotism and colonialism. But as time went on, and victimhood became the fashion, I began to have a creeping admiration for her stoicism.”
“Then, in 2011, I covered her fraught trip to Ireland, the first by a British monarch in a century. Suddenly I understood how one small movement of her head could soothe over 800 years of bloodshed and hatred…The queen showed all the empathy and warmth she could not summon when Diana died. By the end of the visit, the Irish had melted. They were calling Elizabeth their ‘prodigal mother,’ ‘Liz,’ and some were even waving Union Jacks.”
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A shift in outlook
The midterm elections look far more competitive than they did just two months ago, with Democrats energized by the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
For example, “in Arizona, Blake Masters removed language on his campaign website that once said he was ‘100% pro-life.'” The candidate for US Senate shifted “from supporting a national abortion ban to a ban on third-trimester pregnancies.”
Oren Cass wrote, “Earlier this summer, a highly unpopular President Joe Biden floundered in the White House. He was facing multiple crises — Russia’s war in Ukraine, crime on America’s streets, record migrant crossings at the southern border, surging gas prices and inflation and stalled economic growth.”
“Polls and forecasts pointed to a Republican Party romp in the upcoming midterms. But Republican candidates failed to capitalize on that momentum, and party strategists are beginning to sweat about their likely margin in the House of Representatives and their chances of winning a Senate majority at all.”
While Democrats’ chances to retain control of the Senate have increased, Republicans have gone into recrimination mode, as recent strife between Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rick Scott, who heads the GOP’s Senate campaign arm, demonstrates. McConnell suggested that “candidate quality” could impair the party’s chance of retaking control of the upper chamber. “Although Scott stands by his candidates,” Julian Zelizer wrote, “many commentators agree with McConnell, arguing that former President Donald Trump has inserted himself in the midterms and endorsed several inexperienced and unfit candidates who are now struggling to pull ahead…”
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The impact of school closures
A recent report carried a sobering message, as Jill Filipovic noted. “Our school children have suffered unprecedented learning losses, with 9-year-olds seeming to have lost some two decades worth of progress on math and reading skills, according to new test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.”
Filipovic added that “this should make the progressive-minded among us who supported school closures pause and ask ourselves if we got this one right — and what we could learn from this whole debacle…”
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Putin’s energy move
Russia turned off the tap. As David A. Andelman noted, the Kremlin stopped the flow of natural gas to Europe through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, saying it won’t resume until the West relents on sanctions it has imposed on Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine. “There’s no other name for this than extortion,” Andelman wrote. “That’s a bad idea in the short run for Europe and in the long run for Russia…”
Mar-a-Lago documents
Former President Donald Trump won a court victory Monday when US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon granted his request “for a special master to review documents the FBI seized last month at his Mar-a-Lago resort,” wrote legal analyst Jennifer Rodgers. The judge “also enjoined the FBI and the Department of Justice from reviewing or using those documents in its criminal investigation.”
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Space junk
There are tens of millions of pieces of space junk orbiting Earth — “anything from dead satellites … to pieces of metal, screws or flecks of paint” — wrote self-described space environmentalist Moriba Jah.
“Until now, space has been seen as a free-for-all — the next frontier to explore. But what we forget is that it’s also an ecosystem — and like any ecosystem, exploration of it has come at an environmental cost. Even the tiniest speck of debris, orbiting at around 15,700 miles per hour, can damage satellites and disrupt the services that have become essential to our daily lives. Even worse, large pieces of debris can fall from the sky and crash on Earth.”
Pakistan floods
Historic flooding has left a third of Pakistan underwater. “If indeed it is global warming that is causing or even simply aggravating these extreme weather events, as scientists generally concur,” wrote Paul Hockenos, “then the South’s ever angrier nations are completely justified in their demands that the world’s wealthier regions — those ultimately responsible for this made-in-the-developed-world crisis — pay for its losses. In particular, the historically largest emissions sinners — the United States and Europe.”
“But these poorer countries shouldn’t count on it because not only is most of the Global North in denial about its oversized role in creating the crisis — it is dead set against condoning the principle of liability.”
Shrinking lawns
While he is looking forward to his upcoming retirement, anticipating “cooking big meals, having friends over and dining al fresco on my back patio,” it will happen in a garden “now almost entirely free of grass.” He replaced his front lawn with “a ground cover called kurapia that is drought tolerant and uses significantly less water than a traditional lawn — as much as 80% less according to some studies,” Vescia wrote.
9/11, 21 years later
Sunday marks the 21st anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, Pa.
Liz Truss takes over
In front of a blazing fire at Balmoral, two days before Queen Elizabeth II’s death, she carried out her constitutional duty of meeting and officially appointing the new UK prime minister, Liz Truss.
As Rosa Prince wrote, Britain today is feeling a lot like 1979, when Margaret Thatcher won the nation’s top office. “In 2022, it is as if the country itself is twisting into a shape Thatcher would recognize. The supporting characters are all playing their parts: union leaders souring industrial relations, Russia sowing discord and inflation spiraling to a degree not seen since the 1970s.
“There can be no denying that this new prime minister inherits a set of political circumstances more akin to those in play when Thatcher first came to office in 1979 than that facing anyone else who entered Number 10 in the intervening years.”
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The Obama portraits
When Joe and Jill Biden hosted Barack and Michelle Obama at the White House Wednesday for the unveiling of the former first couple’s official portraits, the stakes were especially high, wrote art historian Adrienne L. Childs.
The portraits hadn’t been publicly seen before the ceremony and even the identities of the artists were secret. As it turned out, Childs wrote, “The paintings are stunning…”
Hyperrealist painter Robert McCurdy “treated Obama in his iconic style, meticulously rendered on a stark white background. No desk, flag, or family portraits to set the presidential scene. Just Obama in minute detail. Obama joked that McCurdy would not even reduce the size of his ears for the portrait. What appealed to the former president was McCurdy’s honesty and ability to render him in all of his humanity.”
“Sharon Sprung captured the sophisticated and fashionable Michelle Obama. In what is reminiscent of a Gilded Age society portrait, Obama is pictured in a celestial blue Jason Wu gown. Seated on a red couch in front of a pale peach colored background, the artist uses large fields of warm reds in the background and a soft treatment of the figure to produce a romantic depiction of the former first lady.”
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