Yanks like farting royals, Gov. Bevin subjugates women…

Exciting news from Blighty, eh?

Don’t tell me, M has demanded that you return home permanently, with immediate effect and on pain of death?

I understand that my Bond-like good looks and debonair charm might lead anyone to think that I’m a licensed-to-kill snoop. But if intelligence gathering and bumping off the Queen’s enemies was my game, I wouldn’t waste my time talking to you. And you’d be dead. Ergo, that is not the news I’m referring to.

By M I meant your mummykins. Hang on a second. You aren’t talking about this royal sprog are you? Are you telling me that despite my misfortune of having known you for several years, you still haven’t worked out that I’m a dedicated republican and full-time royal-hater, even of the cute little ‘uns?

Come on, old bean, don’t give me any of that anti-House of Windsor poppycock. Now’s the time to rally around the Union flag. Regal offspring dressed like George Will, fisticuffs with Europe and two genuinely mad Old Etonians lined up to be the next PM. I feel the patriotic bloodlust coursing through my veins like it’s 1939.

Fools rush in, eh? The Albion is a bloody shambles, worse than here. But believe it or not I once had someone here in Louisville ask me if I was going to get up at three in the morning to watch Prince William marry that bird, and it was the closest I’ve come to committing a felony for the best part of my 40 years in the colonies.

Well, deep down most Americans wish they were still Brits. They pretend otherwise and then wet their knickers as soon as any royal so much as farts in public. One day the War of Independence will be renamed the War of Sorry We Didn’t Know What We Were Thinking Can We Come Back Please? I mean, why else would LEO pay us for this crap?

Yeah… wait. What? We get paid? [Ed. note: They do, for now.]

Let’s not dwell on trivialities, my Belisha-headed friend. We do this for the good of our fellow Kentuckians, as I’ve told you several times. Speaking of which, how ’bout that Matt Bevin and his war on perfectly legal abortion? What a great guy. Looking out for our womenfolk — as only someone from the Crucible can.

Ooh, a subject I can really get stuck into. (And we’ll come back to payment for this later, sunshine. I’ll get mine, don’t you fucking worry.)

Spoken like a true socialist.

But I’m not that convinced Bevin’s doing it for any other reason than to prove his conservative chops to a national audience. There seems to be no legal reason to do it, especially since he’s very likely to lose in court, and his lawyer’s making claims that are flat-out laughable. All about his national ambitions, as is virtually everything he does. I mean, being the governor of the first state without a single abortion provider is like, I don’t know, the closest he can get to being the first to reinstate slavery.

Agreed, although I think it’s probably safe to say he does genuinely believe that abortion is the very devil and that anyone who indulges in it is inherently evil and must be stopped. Churlish to argue otherwise. Not that being churlish has ever stopped you.

It’s weird how political the subject of abortion is in this country — and gets more so by the minute. And yet in Europe, where religion is very much more a private and declining thing, as it should be, women are statistically less likely to have abortions. I wonder why that is?

Boils down to good public education and a sound grasp of economics, two things that feature low on Bevin’s list of interests. Public education about the well-established links between sex and pregnancy, and by extension making sure kids have adequate access to birth control. Economics, because wherever maternity leave is mandatory, wherever childcare is subsidised, wherever birth is financially supported, abortion is less common.

So in fact Bevin isn’t really antiabortion, because if he were, he’d support those things, and he doesn’t. Maybe we were too generous about him. He isn’t a true traveler when it comes to abortion. He is a true traveler when it comes to the subjugation of women, being a fantasist in the most boring yet damaging way about sex possible and in not being willing to spend a shilling of his vast wealth on anything except the military and the church. (Both of which, interestingly, have well-publicised problems with institutionalised rape. Funny how that works.)

It’s what Jesus would want. And for once you weren’t actually being churlish. Well, at least there’s one little ankle-biter who won’t be getting aborted, and that’s our soon-to-be-tenth-in-line to the throne, the latest in the glorious Windsor dynasty.

And more’s the pity. I think I prefer “Duck Dynasty.” And I really hate “Duck Dynasty.” Now… where’s my silver?

This article appears in September 13, 2017.