Web Letters: Mrs. Obama Meets Mrs. Windsor

I have watched over the last few years The Nation struggle, with some success, with elements of populism that offend the liberal conscience. But now I have an idea of why it was such a difficult struggle. If your columnists keep such company as Ms. Williams with her "elderly British friend" and "dear friend" who not only knew that the Queen sent puddings for Christmas but actually took the bother to imitate that practice being a "true and loyal subject"...

I am an elderly British person and, of course, like any self-respecting critic of British society, a republican. I know nothing of Queen's puddings and celebrity hysteria surrounding associated royalty dead or alive.

But what is more worrying is that for sure Ms. William's British friends would hate my left-populist being if they ever met me--unlikely because I don't frequent Fortnum and Masons and above all am unlikely to be aquatinted with an American University professor as besotted with the trivia of elitism as it appears is the case of Ms. Williams.

Jeffrey Harrod

Den Haag , Netherlands

Wow, this was a wonderful little article. For some reason, even in a time when I feel all is lost, that some groups behind some proverbial curtain are controlling the world and everything everyone thinks and does, I read this article and that weight was lifted, and for once things seemed real, not planned, and even if they were planned, it wasn't sinister.

Thank you to the author.

Nicholas Simone

Flagstaff, AZ