Martin A. Davis Jr.: More people cared about the queen's visit than about the event she was celebrating ... Jamestown's 400th birthday

In a battle of celebrity versus substance, substance almost always loses. Such was the case this past week in D.C. and Virginia, where the Queen Mother set hearts a-flutter. Wherever she went, people clamored for tickets to see her, fretted about protocol should they actually meet her, and gleefully endured traffic snarls and cool weather to greet her.

The principal reason for her visit, however, isn’t generating the same buzz. Four hundred years ago this weekend, the Jamestown settlement was founded. It was the site of our first representative government, the cradle of tobacco (a noxious weed today, but a cash cow back then and the reason the slave trade exploded), and possibly the entry point of earthworms (slimy, but a big, big deal). Yet many, it seems, could care less.

To be sure, scholars and the well-read are debating recent discoveries. (The fort was unearthed just 13 years ago, while Werowocomoco — home of Chief Powhatan — was found in 2003.)

But the masses seem more enamored of Her Majesty’s graceful handling of the botched red-carpet rollout at the airport, and the president’s bumbling over the date of the queen’s last visit.
Why, we should ask, does celebrity trump substance? Why fall all over the charming queen when we can crawl (personally or virtually) all over the first permanent English settlement in the New World? In large measure, because too few of us have much ‘‘substance’’ with which to work. It’s hard to know what to do with Jamestown if your only exposure to its role in American history was the 1995 Disney movie Pocahontas.

Yes, fortunate young people receive an education that values history. But too many students must make do with whatever information they can glean from cut-and-paste textbooks, frequently untrained instructors, or, if they’re lucky, their parents....