Once again we are confronted by the controversies and con jobs of the royal family now residing in Buckingham Palace and other crested dwellings. Does the dirty laundry of those long considered above others tell us something about life in our times? Actually, it does not.

Yet over the bushes and through the woods goes the press, and once again we are treated to the queen of England seeming barely in this world and Prince Charles looking as though life had whacked him, all mixed in with yet more footage of the People’s Princess, Lady Diana.

As an American who was never greatly impressed by Diana, however good some of her intentions were, and who is even less impressed by the royal family, I find it oppressive that we are treated to endless talk about what some butler claims to have seen or some controversy about things he was either given or walked off with after 21 years of service.

My mother was a maid, and I found out long ago that neither high finance nor high breeding makes someone more human – or even human at all. Working sometimes six days a week in the homes of wealthy people, my mother had some stories, as all servants have, and the stories are always the same. Some rich people actually believe they are superior to ordinary humanity in some innate way.

Others assume that superiority results from what schools one attended, what circles one has been allowed into and where on the planet one has traveled to or resided in. Some are happy, others almost happy, others unhappy and others tremble at the edge of an abyss. None fails to bleed when cut or to die when enough of the pressure of time and life and bad luck presses down upon them.

We Americans, being an anti-aristocratic people, have known this for some time. Much of our popular art is about proving that those at the top are either no better than anybody else or could do with a few jolts of down-to-earth soul juice from those who stand barefoot in the dirt. Sometimes our popular art tells us that the best mix of all, culturally speaking, is the guy from the top and the girl from the bottom or the babe from the penthouse and the man from the street.

At other times, the guy with diamonds blinding him and champagne making him drunk has to learn that there is nothing at all up there on the top other than some boring and pretentious twerps with a bit of money. He then flees home to beg forgiveness of the girl next door. One even sees that in a recent Martin Lawrence film, “A Thin Line Between Love and Hate.”

The British, however, are overwhelmed by the human qualities of their purportedly royals, whom they love to see, finally, dragged belly-down and feet first through the filth and stones of the street. Tradition is then reversed and the peasants have the opportunity to laugh themselves silly at the elite or sneer at their foibles.

It is the royals who have become the court jesters. Perhaps there is some justice in that after all. Cheerio!