British Prime Minister Gordan Brown just announced to the Joint Session of Congress that the Queen of England has extended an honorary knighthood to ‘Sir Edward Kennedy’. I don’t think Americans are entitled to use the term ‘sir’, though. My favorite story along these lines:
Keith Richards has criticised his old friend and fellow Rolling Stone Mick Jagger for accepting a knighthood.
“I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the establishment when they did their very best to throw us in jail,” the Stones guitarist told the music magazine Uncut.
Richards was referring to his and Jagger’s 1967 conviction on drug offences, later overturned on appeal.
“Just as we were about to start a new tour, I thought it sent out the wrong message. It’s not what the Stones is about, is it?” he said.
“I told Mick, ‘It’s a … paltry honour’.
“He defended himself by saying that (Prime Minister) Tony Blair insisted that he took the knighthood. Like that’s an excuse. Like you can’t turn down anything. Like it doesn’t depend how you feel about it.”
Also amusing:
Marianne Faithfull said, that Jagger is ‘a tremendous snob who always craved a knighthood’. ‘I never heard her say that about me,’ [Jagger] says. ‘But I know she’d love to be a dame, more than anything else. But she’s not really dame material.’
Meow.
But it’s a nice honor for Senator Kennedy. It’s a nice gesture by the British.
New York Times coverage.
Perhaps he could
strikethreaten Dick Cheney with his sword.Not if Cheney’s got a gun ..
Politically, he’s been MY knight in shining armour, to be sure!
.
“No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”
Winston Churchill, for instance, initially refused to accept a knighthood from King George VI after losing the 1945 election, asking how he could possibly accept the Order of the Garter after having been “given the Order of the Boot by the people.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."“Honouring” an American with a knighthood is like… I can’t think of something sufficiently absurd and condescending for comparison. It puts the queen above our elder statesman in an exalted position, bestowing a little token of her affection for services he’s rendered unto her?! No. This is not a “nice gesture.” Kennedy is an American Senator and whether his lifetime of service to the USA pleases the queen has no significance whatsoever.
Kennedy joins Sir Alan Greenspan. Comparatively what did Greenspan do?
Earlier on BBC News, the granting of an honorary knighthood to Ted Kennedy is in recognition of his unflinching efforts for peace in Northern Ireland and the education for school children around the world – that would include Her Majesty’s subjects in the Commonwealth.
Ted deserves this gesture ..a big thank you. It’s good to have it delivered while he battles cancer….better than post-humous.
I’m fairly certain that these days a Knighthood is the equivalent of giving someone the Presidential Medal of Freedom. As such it’s just an honorific extended to them in recognition of service to the world, with emphasis on the fact that they’ve done some especially good work for either the UK or the Commonwealth of Nations.
That said, the whole thing also makes my reflexive anti-monarchist hackles rise, so I can understand the discomfort. But then, the “Presidential Medal of Freedom” also makes my anti-monarchist hackles rise a bit. Or maybe just my reflexive-anti-totalitarian hackles because even the name sounds somewhat Orwellian…
considering who the previous recipients from the u.s. were it certainly seems to me that sen kennedy is far more worthy of this dubious honor than those who preceded him, rudy giuliani and casper weinberger:
so be it.