Dori: Thank goodness we don’t have royals like Prince Andrew in ‘King’ County

A few days ago, I stated that politicians like Dow Constantine, who has his Executive Protection Unit drive him around to bars on the taxpayers’ dime, consider themselves to be a kind of royalty. While royalty is often glamorized in the U.S., this scandal with the U.K.’s Prince Andrew and his friendship with convicted pedophile and alleged child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein is showing us how detrimental having royalty in charge can actually be.

I normally stick to local news, but I just had to comment on this. I do not understand anybody’s fascination with the royal family. The mother of one of my best friends had royal family everything all over her house when we were kids. Why? We are all just people. This idea of royalty elevates people to this class of being better than us when they haven’t earned anything. They are just part of a lucky birth club.

If you know me and know my ideas of capitalism, I believe firmly in a meritocracy. We should all pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and earn whatever we get through our own skill and hard work. That is why we fought the American Revolution in the first place and established, at the time, a one-of-a-kind republic — a place where your own efforts, not your birth, determined your success in life.

I want to go through highlights from Prince Andrew’s BBC “Newsnight” interview just to shed light on how ridiculous he sounds in all of this.

Dori: What is the big deal about the royal baby?

Prince Andrew and Epstein met back in 1999, when Epstein had already been convicted of pedophilia. A woman named Virginia Roberts has claimed that she had to have sex with Prince Andrew in 2001 at the direction of Epstein — when she was just 17. Prince Andrew said of the friendship:

Do I regret that he has quite obviously conducted himself in a manner unbecoming? Yes.

Epstein was a child rapist, but because the royals have to be so proper, he says that Epstein did something “unbecoming.” Yeah, raping children is unbecoming, Andrew. Sorry I didn’t call you “Prince.” You know what? I’m just going to call you Andy.

Then Andy talked about staying at Jeff’s apartment years later.

It was a convenient place to stay. I’ve gone through this in my mind so many times. At the end of the day, the benefit of all the hindsight that one could have — it was definitely the wrong thing to do. But at the time, I felt it was the honorable and right thing to do.

Yeah, I mean, the child rapist’s house was a couple of blocks closer than the hotel. And it was cheaper too, no doubt. I’m sure cost is a factor for Andy when he’s choosing where to stay.

There’s a photo of Andy with the 17-year-old girl that has surfaced. Here’s what Andy had to say about that:

From the investigations that we have done, you can’t prove whether or not that photograph is faked or not, because it is a photograph of a photograph of a photograph.

Listen to his language there. He didn’t say that it’s not a photograph of him. He said that the reporters cannot prove it is one. He knows if the photo is of him or not.

Then he claimed that on the night in question, he could not have been with the 17-year-old girl, because he was taking his princess daughter to a pizza chain in a working-class suburb of London.

On that particular day, I was at home, I was with the children. I had taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking for a party.

Do you remember what you did for your kids’ birthdays in 2001? What about their friends’ birthday parties? Well, Andy remembers exactly what he did on one of these occasions. On that date in 2001, he took Beatrice to Pizza Express.

Also, what is the likelihood that one of Princess Beatrice’s friends had their birthday party not at a manor house, but at a regular old pizza chain?

Anyway, the woman accusing him has described dancing together and Andy “sweating profusely.” The profuse sweating looks to be the only thing he and I have in common.

Oh wait — it turns out that we don’t have that in common at all, according to what he said next.

There’s a slight problem with the sweating, because I have a peculiar medical condition, which is that I don’t sweat — I didn’t sweat at the time.

What in the world? Is that from centuries of inbreeding?

I had suffered what I describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at, and it was almost impossible for me to sweat.

So he made sure to work in that he was a war hero who was shot at. Who is schooling him in PR?

This was the worst interview ever. Unsurprisingly, Prince Andrew is going to step back from all public duties after that.

For all of our problems here in the Puget Sound, thank goodness that we do not have to deal with real royalty. Can you imagine if Dow Constantine actually had a royal title? Thankfully, the only official king around here is the title of our county.

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