Last week I gave an on-camera interview to Court TV about Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic. As the day of trial draws nearer, media interest in them has flared up again. Coincidentally, that same day I also gave an interview for an upcoming A&E show on “American Royals.”

The term “American Royals” is an oxymoron in fact, and yet a reality to a lot of us. It is a reference to celebrities and/or rich people in this country. When they are (celebrated or rich). Because of their wealth and/or fame, they are accorded attention and/or privilege to a point where many (not all) come to believe it is theirs by birthright. This is actually just the ego running away with itself, although it happens every time someone turns on a dim bulb, or, about a million times a day, right here in Little Ole New York.

The idea of being royal is enticing when you hear or read how the richest or the best connected live and behave. I once asked Prince Edward Windsor, now the Earl of Wessex, if I might take a picture of him at a dinner he and I were attending (he was guest of honor). Nawww. He responded with a curt: “We’ve already had our picture taken; I don’t see why you should.”

I could see why: it was going to be my picture for my web site. Although I wasn’t going to play paparazzi (not right there in the dining room of our hostess anyway), so I refrained. He is not the only one. Many celebrities travel around with brutish “bodyguards” who slam into photographers looking for a picture, ignoring the reality that much of anyone’s celebrity nowadays only comes from photographers’ attention.

That’s the good news. The bad news is when it turns bad. Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic, just like thousands of others who came before them, rarely if ever minded having their picture taken as long as it was going to show up in the glossy pages of some fashion magazine (or on this web site). And why should they mind: it was a nice way of telling the world that they were out and about and So Attractive too.

Now they don’t like it, and how could they? Because mainly the media lensmen are looking for clues. Clues to what? To anything: How they’re feeling that day, or if they had indigestion, or if they feel sad, depressed, guilty, angry, pained or otherwise harassed. And harassed is what is now happening to them. Harassed by the same people who were previously showering them with the white light of celebrity a/k/a American royalty.

Peter Bacanovic and Martha Stewart

Furthermore, from this dreadful fix they’re in, both Stewart and Bacanovic have got a thoroughly disproportionate amount of media attention compared to say the boys at Enron who really did profoundly and adversely affect the lives and pocketbooks of tens of millions and thus far seem to be free from (judicial) care, or Mr. Quattrone, the Wall Street banker whose case was declared a mistrial last week because the jury couldn’t decide if he did what he was accused of (which also would have affected the lives and pocketbooks of a great number of people).

For a measly sale of stock before the day was out, both S & B have been hoisted up on the petard of their own celebrity. I think it’s because they’re good looking; that’s my theory. Reporters investigating want to know about Martha and Peter’s sex lives; were they sleeping with each other? If not, who? Or is it whom? As if it had anything to do with an alleged legal misstep. Those pretty faces sell tabloids that the faces of Quattrone, Enron&Co, Dennis Kowslowski et al couldn’t sell in their wildest, even plastic surgeried dreams.

Meanwhile over in London, the real Royals are engaged in a fight with a ghost of Shakespearean proportions. Princess Diana’s former butler has published a book about life with her and the Royal family. In it he reveals things like what Diana watched on TV, or when the Queen played with her dogs (usually in the morning and the early evening). Along with this is more evidence that Prince Charles was at best, as they say, a beastly husband.

For years before Diana’s death and even afterwards, Prince Charles’ courtiers and lackeys put out the word that Diana was crazy, paranoid, stupid, and crazy. They countered any arguments about his adulterous relationship with Camilla Parker-Bowles while married to Diana by claiming that Diana should have known what she was getting into when (at nineteen) she married the prince (who was then 32). In retrospect, it seems that the prince was the one who didn’t know what he was getting into. And he was no teen-ager.

AP Photo

Mark Bolland, Prince Charles’ former public relations adviser (now called “spin doctor” in media jargon) gave an surprisingly frank interview the other day to the Guardian in which he was quoted in reference to previous forays with The Aftermath of Diana:

" The prince ... isn't strong, so it's not that difficult to be stronger than the prince in this kind of situation ... and he was at his weakest really. He's not strong about many things. He's not a strong person and in this particular case he was very, very weak and I think that was frustrating for everybody."

I’ve never met the prince, nor even been in his presence. He’s been described to me by many who have met him, even know him well, in a variety of ways. As a social character he is evidently a very nice man, full of interests of all kinds, intellectual and otherwise.

Others who have been in his company in fairly intimate circumstances (a leisurely luncheon in a ducal palace, for four at table, for example) have said that he’s a stuffed shirt and a bore.

The consensus outside his circle of “friends” who are naturally prone to sycophancy (as common among most of us as the common cold) is that his common (that word again) sense quotient is alarmingly low. In other words, he’s a dunce when it comes to the ways of the world.

That is what a royal is, after all. American, British, Slobbovian or otherwise. A dunce. Out of it. That may be the definition of royal. For all “royals” tend to live in a tradition of austere isolation from the ways of the world and us ordinary mortals. They are coddled, protected, deluded and lied to, daily (as long as they have the money).

No one is going to say to Prince Charles: “Look you damned fool, you’ve mucked up the entire monarchy with your ‘love of a woman’ whom you were involved with long before you brought Diana into your royal web. You never should have married Diana in the first place, and she was too young to have known it or understood it because, you cad, out here in the real world people do stupid things, like fall in love with princes who live in palaces.” Or queens; I guess.

Prince Charles lives the life of utter utter privilege. And that utter utter privilege, inculcated by sycophants and courtiers (same thing) has been with him all his life. Everyone addresses him as “sir,” for godsakes. Imagine going around in life being addressed as “sir” or “ma’am” by everyone except your family. You wouldn’t have any common sense either.

My late friend Lady Sarah Churchill who grew up in that world (where her father was the 10th duke of Marlborough) told me about being in the company of the Prince and Princess of Wales after the funeral of one of Lady Sarah’s sisters. After the service, everyone, including Charles and Diana, went back to the family house for something to eat and drink. When it was over, Charles got up and left – without her – and she stayed on to help clean up, and wash and dry the dishes.

Charles went back to his ivory tower and Diana stayed in the kitchen, like the commoner she was bound to remain. (When they were divorced, Her Royal Highness, she was no longer, by royal decree — She remained an American Royal).

Now Diana is long gone, still revered in memory and still selling papers, magazines and books. Her butler will become a millionaire writing about her life among those royals. And Charles is embroiled in “secrets” the butler might have that have yet to be revealed, namely: who was the royal person reported on audiotape to have been caught in a compromising (homosexual) position with a member of the Charles’ royal staff? Many already seem to know “who” but aren’t saying publicly. An Italian newspaper is said to be ready to print HIS name. Otherwise, the “secret” is thought to be explosive enough to bring down the monarchy. Something which is far-fetched in this world that loves royalty and has little loyalty.