To Sir, With No Love

I'm not knocking English gentry or American broadcasting, but I am knocking our sycophantic disc jockeys and ass-kissing TV-tabloid hosts who insist on prefacing Elton John with Sir. Yes, he's a knight—in the United Kingdom. And I respect that John "earned" his knighthood through admirable charity work. On this side of the pond, however, Elton's a pudgy, half-crazed pop singer who ruined a string of excellent songs with the musical abomination known as "Crocodile Rock."

Yet ever since Queen Elizabeth tapped John's shoulders with a sword, obsequious talking heads in this country kow-tow to English protocol as if the American Revolution never took place. There's nothing knightly about an out-of-control spend-a-holic who admitted to dropping almost £300,000 on flowers.

And look at that photo. Is that the stuff of knighthood? Had Sir Francis Drake sailed into battle dressed as Donald Duck, the Oxford English Dictionary would be written in Spanish.

Sir Paul McCartney? Hey, just for "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey," I'll call Paul His Royal Highness and let him use my back as a step-stool for climbing into his Rolls. But as for Elton John...well, DJs and broadcasters, this is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, not the Land of the Spree and the Home of the Knave—this madman across the water doesn't rate a Sir on these shores.