NEW YORK (The Trough) — The King of England, visiting America to ostensibly celebrate the 250th anniversary of its violent secession from his bloodline, took the stage at Christie's to formally mourn the death of the transatlantic court minstrel. In a 210-second address, His Majesty declared the agonizing, port-soaked silence of Lionel Richie to be an aesthetic betrayal on par with the gala’s unforgivable use of a sans-serif typeface on its cocktail menus.

New York's supposedly egalitarian elite willingly paid $3 million for the privilege of standing behind velvet ropes just to be scolded by a monarch whose primary geopolitical concern was whether the "All Night Long" singer was adequately resting his vocal cords.

"The Crown views the deliberate withholding of 'Dancing On The Ceiling' as a direct violation of the Treaty of Paris," noted Alistair Pomp-Whitby, the Royal Attaché for Auditory Fealty and Grooves. "If one cannot summon an American idol to croon for the sovereign, what even is the point of Empire?"

Billionaires and cosmetics moguls craned their necks to absorb the King's hypothesis that Richie was off somewhere "gargling port," proving that the American revolution was, culturally speaking, a complete waste of time.

"When he implied our most treasured R&B icon was essentially a lazy, over-hydrated court jester, I wept at the sheer superiority of it," said Manhattan socialite Blythe Van Der Woodsen. "It was the absolute death of colonial dignity."

Two and a half centuries after throwing tea into Boston Harbor to protest unfair taxation, Americans now happily pay $14,000 a second just to hear an Englishman complain about the entertainment.