Some Day Your Prince Will Come.. or Maybe Not

Back to Disney World, my metaphor for the week. They say (the Disney Cast members – there are no employees, but there is a hierarchy), that the park is the happiest place in the world. Nothing bad happens at Disney World. No crime, no poverty, no dirt, and they shut the hotel phones off at 2am so there’s no bad news. At least in the middle of the night. You can’t even get that call at 3 a.m. It is a Magic Kingdom. If only Elliott Spitzer, (who, based on what all the forgiving media are saying, seems to have no friends, no network, no lack of arrogance), had been the Governor of this realm instead of NY, he could have made it all disappear. If only he had been a cast Member instead of a philanderer. Oh, and according to some reporters this morning, he probably had a prefrontal cortex that is not working properly. There are many doctors who believe that there is a direct connection between personality and this part of the brain. You couldn’t make this stuff up. And if you ask me, the only connection between personality and the brain, in this case, is that he has a serious lack of both. But that has nothing to do with the happiest place in the world—the Magic Kingdom.

Jordan, Belle, Clare
If I were the Governor of a Magic Kingdom, the first thing I would do is forbid any wife of any guy who does something stupid and humiliating, to stand next to him at a press conference. McGreevy’s wife was on this morning talking about why she did it when McGreevy confessed he was having a homosexual affair. She said it was a personal decision. “Yeah”, I said to myself—the only person I can count on to listen. “Where are you going with this? Of course it was personal—so why did you choose to humiliate yourself publicly?” She went on to say she did it for their child. “What!” I yelled at my mirror because I was in the bathroom listening to the interview with the sound turned all the way up. “You did it for your kid? You stood next to him because you wanted her to know that having an affair with another person (gay or straight) was just fine? Forget his office or obligation to his constituency to appear to have a moral core.” I didn’t actually yell all that at myself—but that’s what I would have said if I hadn’t had to finish brushing my teeth.

Fireworks in Albany? No, Orlando!
Anyway, we had a marvelous time in the happiest place in the world. We even met a cast member who works in one of the shops that confessed she never wanted to leave the park – she so loved it that even on her days off she brought her daughter back to play. I’d say that’s happy. You may wonder why we went to the Magic Kingdom—short of a wizard putting a curse on us. Well, it turned out that Jordan and Kerry’s daughter Clare, wanted nothing more than a trip to Disney World once Clare was 21. So we used Clare’s birthday and Jordan’s college graduation as an excuse to spend three days in a place neither of the adults would go under ordinary circumstances. But as it turned out, the girls only insisted we make two trips to the Park with them and then we spent the rest of the time at the pool, the gym, or the cocktail lounge. And although both Kerry and I worked for some hours, we had a fine time. It was a delight to see our daughters shedding tears of joy over Beauty and Snow White (actually Belle is our favorite heroine because she reads), at a character breakfast at Cinderella’s Royal Palace.


Wait a minute. I just had another one of my famous epiphanies. Maybe the reason these women stand by their man (I really think it’s abuse not just standing), is because they are suffering from fairy tale fatigue. It’s not that they are tired of fairy tales, it’s that they are exhausted by having to play Princess to a disgraced Prince. We have spent our whole lives believing that someday our Prince will come or, if you kiss a frog, he will turn magically turn into a prince. But most of us realize that there are hardly any Princes that aren’t damaged and if you kiss a frog you will surely get warts or at the very least wet. But some girls, (many wives of powerful men in elected office), even with degrees from Harvard and Yale, never stopped believing that once you’ve found your Prince you need to remain a loyal subject no matter the cost. Once you are a Prince you may think you are above the law and ordinary peons, so you can do whatever pleases you – never considering any consequences or the effect it might have on your Princess (note I did not say Queen—because the Queen was always wicked). It is why the Prince never thinks he has to step down from the throne.

This fairy tale needs a happy ending. But, unhappily, I’m not sure there is one – except that our girls know that dreams can come true in the Magic Kingdom and that’s where all the real Princes dwell—so look for a knight, an artist, or a political activist -- anyone not wearing a crown and royal robes.

By the way, I was so distracted by the Spitzer story that I hardly remembered there was a primary in Mississippi today. Shame on me. Barack Obama will win this one and if he campaigns again like he did in Iowa, he will surely win many more. We’re just sayin...Iris