If it’s good enough for First Lady Michelle, why not King?

Imagine, if you will (oh, yes, you can!), the wife of a Saint Lucian prime minister—or, for that matter, the governor-general Pearlette Louisy, making an official appearance at, say, the George Charles Secondary School. In short-sleeved slinky blouse, bare arms on public display, she is wearing silky black slacks that leave no doubt whatsoever as to the shape of the lady’s, er, bumper assets. Well, already you can hear the protests, right?

Now stretch your imagination still further: suddenly the sound of Beyoncé comes blaring out of loudspeakers, the signal for the governor-general (or the prime minister’s wife) to step forward, animated shoulders moving rhythmically this way and that, her smile a clear indication that she’s having a fun time. Meanwhile her cocooned booty is whipping left and right, jerking, grinding with the beat and bringing to mind Shakira—whose hips don’t lie.

Are you still with me, dear cloistered Saint Lucian? Or are you on the floor, having fainted at the mere thought of a leading lady carrying on, you know, like a regular black woman on the dance floor? Is your pumping heart okay?

Now think back to the fuss that continues to be made about that incident at Pigeon Point three or four Jazz festivals ago, in the midst of a particularly depressing time brought about by the death of Sir John and a reported attempted palace coup to remove the new prime minister, when Stephenson King joined a rocking Wyclef Jean onstage for a few rollicking minutes of let-it-all-hang-out.

Remember the next day’s headlines? “Jean Jumps King” was one of them. Remember the salty and salacious innuendos on YouTube, placed there by clearly affronted and embarrassed Looshans who evidently wanted to share their discomfiture with the whole world? The way a large portion of the local population behaved, you’d have thought the newly-installed prime minister had been caught bent over with his pants around his ankles. Or that he had been videotaped dallying with a dame not his lawfully wedded wife. Or that his secret affair with a schoolgirl had been brought to light. Actually all King had done was to engage in an onstage game of leap frog with a world-renowned rootsy black superstar from Haiti.

A brother, for crying out loud!

And now it’s America’s current First Lady who is all over the internet shaking what her mama gave her like she’d been taking private lessons from Beyoncé and the earlier-mentioned Shakira. That’s right, folks, there she is, Michelle Obama, pictured as she joined excited kids at Washington DC’s Alice Deal School in a recent demonstration of the Dougie.  As if to say, “Top this if you can, Laura Bush; you, too, Hilary!”

Then again, the First Lady has never been interested in projecting a public image more in keeping with Mother Teresa. And now it’s your turn, Rosella, to stick it to the local Pharisees and Sadduces, all ah dem whitened sepulchers who gave your guy such a hard time after his little gig with Wyclef Jean.

After all, if it’s good enough for the president’s wife, hey, how can it be bad for our King and queen?