A few hours after the death of Queen Elizabeth II was announced today, the scene outside the British Embassy is, I’m sorry to report, mostly Americans—and probably 97 percent press. The sidewalk is choked with at least a dozen news cameras. To walk that stretch of Massachusetts Avenue, one dodges lighting rigs, police tape, and reporters with microphones hustling around. Among non-reporters, there’s an American woman in a black dress wearing a glitzy white fascinator and thumping a bible, two American women with “complicated feelings” about the Queen, and an American man pushing two American corgis around in a red wagon adorned with Nats stickers. I heard one British accent, but he turned out to be a reporter with the BBC. It was less a scene of mourning than a scene of reporters anticipating mourning. Then two British gentlemen passed in suits wearing red carnations and carrying a bouquet, presumably to the Union Jack shrine on the corner.
