THE PROPRIETY OF ELIZABETH II OF GREAT BRITAIN VERSUS THE VIEW OF BARBARA WALTERS ON AMERICAN TELEVISION............

With all the current fanfare and focus on the 30th Olympiad London Summer Games. kicked off with Opening Ceremonies broadcast to a billion people plus and setting a ratings record for Olympics hosted outside the United States, including the 2008  Summer Games in Beiing, China.   It was both especially entertaining and refreshing to see the Queen of England Elizabeth II, play more than just her ceremonial role and enter into the production making her theatrical premiere opposite actor Daniel Craig in a send up of a James Bond 007 movie scene.  It culminated in a  simulated skydiving moment for both of them, out of a helicopter over the Olympics Stadium in the East End of London, and was a genuine departure from the staid, traditional, monarchical, head of state role, she is accustomed to carrying out and has been for seventy five years on the United Kingdom and World stage.  At age 86, she welcomed the invitation to play this characteristically unexpected part in the Opening Ceremonies Extravaganza and so willingly embraced it they completed the videotaping in one take.  Therefore it was untoward yesterday to see and hear Barbara Walters roundly criticize Queen Elizabeth for a deficiency of smiling and dressing as though she is living a century ago.  As a television news and entertainment figure for the past fifty years, where smiling and cutting edge fashion are the expected, if not at times artificial, requirement; it is roundly unfair for Walters, less than two months away from turning 83, to  critique a woman whose allegiance to duty, majesty, and decorum, is fifty percent longer in duration than her only three year junior's public profile has been.  The fall out Walters Queen bashng  stirred even led comedian D.L. Hughley, a guest on Walters, "The View", to question and critique why anyone would be critical of Elizabeth II, over matters like this and he said it with Walyers sitting a short distance away from him.  Civility and Courtesy, are values even someone as intelligent and astute as Barbara Walters needs to re-learn and maintain.  It is very highly certain, were their positions reversed in this or any other public discourse, Her Majesty The Queen, would respond adroitly and with tact in the comments she would make.  What an awkward and out of place way to end a week when prominent Americans like Barbara Walters and Mitt Romney have questioned the readiness of the London Olympics Committee and now the United Kingdom's Sovereign, to do what they are ably charged with carrying out and completing............Fr.  Troy