The emperors have no clothes

Arriving on our shores on May 3, Queen Elizabeth II met with the kind of pomp and circumstance to which she is accustomed. The monarch enjoyed much fanfare as special guest at the 400th anniversary commemoration of Jamestown, the first permanent English colony. She was greeted by admiring well-wishers, including many Virginia tribal representatives. She celebrated the 104 Englishmen, boys and investors who landed on the shores of what we now call Virginia in 1607. She attended the Kentucky Derby and was the guest of honor at a lavish white-tie state dinner at the White House.

It was a lovely visit. That is, if one does not require that official denial be checked at customs. The queen expressed sympathy for those affected by the April 16 killings at Virginia Tech. But she issued a royal punt when acknowledging her kingdom's role in importing African slavery and conducting state-sponsored genocide of Native peoples following the establishment of the permanent Jamestown colony. ''Human progress rarely comes without costs,'' she offered. It was a dismissal of the most regal sort, and it helped set the tone for the weeklong commemoration of the arrival of Europeans to the Virginia coast.

Queen Elizabeth II wasn't the only one who was affected by historical blindness. President Bush welcomed her to the White House on May 7 with choice words of his own. ''The settlers at Jamestown planted the seeds of freedom and democracy on American soil,'' said the president, ''and from those seeds sprung a nation ... '' This ill-advised remark, although no doubt true in his mind, evokes an agricultural metaphor that is not just historically false but disingenuous, too.

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