(Mac chats with a nice English lady at the Dedication of the World War II Memorial at Arlington)
It is a weekend, and we watched a moderately old film on the flat screen we share in the Bunk House at Refuge Farm. We have a cis-gendered sort of viewing schedule, carefully adjusted to the possible taste of the amalgamation of what we vaguely remember America to look like. We are confident that at your house you have balanced the newer version of that America displayed in all commercials, regardless if that view is no more actually representative than the old one was. We have done our best, which is to have two of the current genders adequately represented, a BIPOC presence, and a general preference for movies that actually make sense.
Which is, naturally, not quite the same sense as what is happening beyond the Farm boundaries out at the County Road that connects us through the mail box.
Yesterday we skirted the edge. The movie, for some of us anyway, was fairly recent. Amanda watched with us in mild bemusement about the story of the passing of Princess Diana of Great Britain. To her it was an event as current as the World War Two newsreels they still showed on weekends when some of were kids. Only in color. The actress who played the Queen was remarkable in her fidelity to the seemingly ageless monarch. If those in the viewing circle squirmed a bit at the now-old imagery of the then-young Diana, it is just part of the territory. Loma recalled having a tour bus slow down in the tunnel in Paris to see the abutment, still scarred, where she perished.
Buck and Melissa were enthralled by the presentation in the hilm, and the depicted turmoil within the Royal Family of the day. That led to a more general discussion of Royalty and time. DeMille naturally had some perspective not shared by the rest of us. “I talked to the Chairman one time about the Queen. He said he had actually seen her one time. He was jogging from the Pentagon on the longer loop north along the river to cross the bridge and come down on the District side to return on the 14th Street span.”
Splash laughed. “Both sides of the Potomac are in the District. They refused to give it up when they returned Arlington to Virginia as ungovernable.”
“You actually bring up the point of that story. The Queen of England, formerly Empress of India, was seated in the back of a plush Bentley coming out of Arlington National Cemetery. She was alone in the back, just with her driver. It was around the time of the dedication of the World War II Memorial, which was the reason she was in town. There was something she wanted to do outside the view of the cameras, which is one of th reason Diana’s car crashed. The Chairman said he just stopped running in shock, and attempted to look respectable in his jogging shorts. The Queen glanced at him from her car, and he said he gave an approximation of a salute, it being the only time he judged he would ever see her.”
“That is sort of an unusual event on the usual jogging circuit.”
“Well, what he thought was funny was what Admiral Mac Showers asked him after the ceremony. The Admiral sent the Chairman an email telling him he had actually met with the Queen of England at the dedication. The two were among the few actual veterans at the ceremony. He said the Queen had smiled as he was introduced as a veteran of the Pacific Theater. A few minutes later he was actually speaking to Her Majesty, who mentioned that her husband Philip had also served in the Pacific. In the note, Mac requested a fact check on the Queen’s memory, since he didn’t remember it that way. In his mind, the Queen’s Consort had actually been in the China-Burma-India Theater. He asked the Chairman to check on the Queen’s recollection.”
Watching a movie about how this amazing woman dealt with a national tragedy which was also a personal conundrum made us think about the idea of being a Blue Check Fact Checker and the sort of language they have to use. Outright falsehoods, for example, are sometimes characterized as “unverifiable,” which is more polite than calling them bald-face falsehoods.
DeMille continued as the group considered other ways to characterize things. “Imagine for a moment a pal had been chatting with the former Queen Empress of the largest empire in human history, and wanted you to check her story! He did the research and found Philip had naval service prior to duties with the Queen as India was granted independence in 1948, and the Empire began to dissolve. He wrote Mac back to inform him that the Queen had been accurate in her summary of her husband’s career. That is fact checking on a level the Chairman said he would never experience again!”
“So he agreed with the Queen and told Mac his memory was unverified?”
“He said he was polite. And Mac agreed it was a good thing he had agreed at the time.”
“Always appropriate with Her Majesty,” said Splash. We suspected he might have put it differently at the time. But we think that about a lot of things, whether they are fact checked or not.
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