It’s good to be the future king.
Robust, demanding, and blessed with enough hair to make his follically challenged daddy, Prince William, green with envy, Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge, the excessively named third in line to the British throne, doesn’t yet talk, walk or do long division. Yet he’s far more than your standard royal tyke.
This blue-blooded baby, born a healthy 8 pounds, 6 ounces in July, may be the most important child to come into being in the modern era. For if George didn’t exactly save the fusty British monarchy from ruin, he spared one snooty, overpampered family from an inevitable slide into irrelevance.
Not bad for someone barely 3 ½ months old.
At his christening last week, Baby Boy George looked buff in a lacy, 1840s-style gown before four generations of royals — including his surprisingly hands-on parents and overjoyed great-granny, Queen Elizabeth — as he ushered in a new wave of international goodwill. One that’s been in short supply on the other side of The Pond from the time King Henry VIII chopped off two wives’ heads to the dubious day Prince Charles was secretly recorded on the phone telling now-wife Camilla Parker-Bowles that he longed to serve as her feminine hygiene necessity.
As viewers of the movie “The Queen’’ well know, the House of Windsor was shaken to its hinges by the popular grief erupting from the 1997 death, in a Paris car crash, of Princess Diana. Buckingham Palace was exposed as a dank prison where the luminous young princess was treated worse than leprosy by her bloodless in-laws and cheating ex-hub.
For months after Diana died, royal-haters were treated to TV images of Queen Elizabeth, circa about 1954, stiffly shaking hands with her then-6-year-old-son, Prince Charles, after returning to England from a six-month trip. She seemed to enjoy the company of her Welsh corgis more than that of her human children, who called mom “Your Majesty.’’
The show of motherly indifference was contrasted with clips of Diana returning home from abroad, wildly throwing her arms around her squealing boys, Princes William and Harry.
Off with their heads? More like cut off their allowances!
Or let them get jobs.
The world was also privy to pictures of Prince Harry’s naked game of strip billiards in a Vegas hotel room (go Harry!).The queen was not amused.
Perhaps to compensate for the fact that William and commoner Kate Middleton lived together in sin before marriage (horrors!), we endured the couple’s televised 2011 wedding extravaganza at Westminster Abbey, an event as tacky as a gathering of Elvis impersonators, complete with lily-white revelers in awful hats and Sir Elton John. The maid of honor, Kate’s sister Pippa, outclassed the bride with a sexy, form-fitting gown that blew away Kate’s frumpy frock.
The nuptials served as “opium for the masses,’’ sniffed Brian Reade, columnist for the Daily Mirror.
The event contained a “lethal dose of fairy-tale schmaltz’’ designed to distract plebes from the recession, he wrote.
But now, all is forgiven.
On George’s second day of life, the queen cradled the infant in her arms, a stunning display of royal love not captured by palace photographers. It was the most significant cuddle in 120 years, when Queen Victoria held her great-grandson, the future King Edward VIII (who later abdicated to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, then palled around with Adolf Hitler. Oy.)
Those days are in the rearview now.
George has melted the Windsors, turning the clan human. This kid has a future.
Royal preschool first.
Bad old daze again
City cops are arresting far fewer homeless subway panhandlers than they did just two years ago. And who suffers most?
Women, particularly those from outer boroughs, who get hassled as they ride the trains at night to work or play.
Anti-cop sentiment, fueled by pols (Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio?), has led cops to bust fewer people for minor crimes like open containers. So says city Councilman Peter Vallone Jr., chair of the Public Safety Committee.
“Once you allow low-level crimes to fester, more dangerous crimes follow,’’ he warned. No kidding.
The bad old days are making a comeback.
Fooled by O’s ‘cover’ story
If you can’t believe a promise from your president, what can you believe?
President Obama said in 2009, “We will keep this promise to the American people . . . if you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.’’
But 50 to 70 percent of the 14 million people who buy insurance individually can expect to have their coverage canceled, ObamaCare sources told NBC. An expert says it could be higher.
Obama admitted on Wednesday that folks were being dropped from “substandard’’ plans — and will have to buy new ones.
No wonder the anonymous woman whose face graced the health-care site has mysteriously vanished.
Chris Brown is a beat-the-rap star
Here we go again.
Crooner Chris Brown, 24, was charged last weekend with assault for bashing a 20-year-old man in the face in Washington DC after the guy tried to jump in front of a picture Brown was taking with female fans.
“I’m not into this gay s—t. I’m into boxing,’’ the same-sex marriage proponent allegedly growled as he broke the fan’s nose. (Brown’s people say it was the “victim” attacked when Brown tried to prevent the women from “trespassing’’ on the R&B star’s tour bus.)
The charge was reduced to a misdemeanor. But Brown, still on the hook for his 2009 beating of singer Rihanna in LA, could get jail time for violating probation — unless he gets the same pass he got when a star-struck LA judge gave him not a minute in jail for the Rihanna attack.
There goes the nabe
What a bonehead move. The city is about to dump probation offices, which draw some 20,000 drug addicts, dealers, sex offenders, psychos and child abusers each year, on a kid-heavy block of the Financial District.
Probation is moving from Broadway to John Street’s “Stroller Alley’’ — nicknamed for the children, nannies and moms who amble there in peace. A city spokesman said two public hearings were held on the move, but few in the ’hood knew of the treachery until now.
This is a disaster waiting to happen.