The English “royal wedding” was a big yawn for many of us

I can’t help but think that the so-called “Royal Wedding” occurring in England on Friday was a last-burst of sorts for those people who prefer to think of our society as somehow white in character, and essentially tied in some way to Great Britain (even if many of those individuals aren’t the least bit English themselves).

By the time we get the next generation’s English royal wedding meant to ensure the line of succession even further, we’re going to be a nation of so many people to whom the English history has no bearing.

WE REALLY WILL be a country that will care less about what a wealthy English royal chooses to do with regards to marriage (unless, by chance, he takes a bride who turns out to be a former stripper. Tawdry taints of sex will always catch our attention).

But I can’t say that the wedding festivities and all its ritual and rigamarole caught the attention of the one-sixth of the U.S. population that is Latino. In fact, I’d say it was the ultimate “yawn.” You might as well expect us to get worked up over a cricket match.

Now I’m not saying that we’re going to suddenly shift the focus of U.S. society to other European nations. The vast majority of us Latinos would be equally bored if the Spanish royal family were to have a wedding of similar circumstance.

There are people in this country who in recent weeks have made jokes about the British wedding hype as being overdone. They usually include a line the gist of which is, “Didn’t we fight a war to be free of this?”

TRUST ME WHEN I say that the growing Latino population is more than willing to accept such thoughts. We’d be more than willing to believe that this was all a whole lot of nothin’.

In fact, a part of me is having second thoughts about writing this very commentary because I believe the 600 or so words included in this piece are 600 or so too many.

But I’m proceeding just because I feel the need to acknowledge that I deliberately ignored a story that some people want to think is some grand historic moment. Baloney!

Just for kicks, I tried typing the phrase “royal wedding Latino” into an Internet search engine. About the only relevant pieces of copy that turned up was a story published by Fox News (about an expert jeweler who makes detailed knock-offs of the ring that William gave Kate Middleton, he happens to be an immigrant from Chile) and another piece that tells us of which “Latinos” actually got invited to the wedding.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, it amounts to Queen Sofia of Spain, along with the deputy prime minister and his wife, and the official engagement photographer – who is from Peru. Technically, none of them are Latino, a phrase that implies U.S. residency.

If it reads like I’m taking a mocking tone to all of this, you’d be correct. It’s the ultimate fluff event and we Latinos, who mostly have our ethnic origins in nations that endured their own revolutionary movements from European powers that wished to colonize us, are more than willing to treat it as such.

If anything, that sentiment probably makes us more “American” than many of the Eurocentric-types who want to think they’re the “real Americans” in this country.

So yes, Kate (or is it Princess William?) looked lovely in her wedding gown, although she looks adorable in just about anything she wears.

BUT THE CHANCE to see her live on television wasn’t worth the idea of having to wake myself up at 3 a.m. (local time) for the privilege.

I took a pass and got some sleep. And I strongly suspect I wasn’t alone in doing so.

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