In the latest installment of his BBC radio broadcast, Tina Brown's beloved poolboy, Harold Evans, continues to express his bright-eyed and bushy-tailed optimism for the American way, even despite the current headlines. Rather than continue with more Hurricane Katrina coverage, Evans rehashes the childhood fairy tale of the Princess and the toad as an explanation for gang rape, Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, and federal power. Duh. After the jump, Henry the Intern deciphers Harold's accent and mixed metaphors.

For a moment I thought — okay, I wished — that Harold Evans was using his alloted time on BBC4 to relay a fable to young listeners. "This is the story about a princess and a frog, a kiss and a betrayal," he began.

But Harold would not give us an escapist reprieve from a week of horrendous images from the Gulf Coast. "It's not a fable," he said. "It's a true story that goes to the heart of politics in America, and in particular, the fate of the man President Bush has nominated to a pivotal seat on the Supreme Court, the conservative jurist John Roberts." And with that sentence, any hope for a lighthearted children's tale is dashed in the harshest way.

In Harold's story, the princess is played by Christy Brzonkala, a "public high school basketball player who enrolled in Virginia Polytechnic Institute with the expectation of qualifying for a sports career." The frog is actually a "very distinguished toad" named Bufo who lives in Southern California.

We'll start with the princess. In college she was gang-raped by Virginia Tech football players. "When she pressed charges through the university discipline system, the jocks on campus were hostile," Harold explained. "There was no frog to retrieve her golden dream." One football player was suspended, but the provost agreed with his family's appeal, and he was allowed back on campus and back on the team.

A few months later, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act because while "the incidence of rape has risen four times as fast as the national crime rate and half a million girls will be raped before they graduate," approximately "a quarter of convicted rapists never go to prison and another quarter get off with less than a year in jail," Harold said.

Brzonkala dropped out of college and became the first woman to use the Violence Against Women Act, with U.S. Attorneys taking her case. But in a five to four decision, the Supreme Court ruled Congress had overstepped their authority. Brzonkala became a waitress.

Now, onto the frog. California courts blocked real estate development on Bufo's home turf. Roberts, as an appeals court judge, criticized the decision and blamed the frog. Bufo, he wrote, is just "a hapless toad that for reasons of his own lives his entire life in California."

And finally, what this all means. Democrats, Harold said, are afraid Roberts "may bring to the Court extreme views on the limits of congressional power" with implications on "a variety of civil rights." Harold, though, is optimistic as usual: "I take comfort from what we learn of the character of the man. He has shown compassion, he has a quick intelligence and modesty - and he has a passion for the meaning of words." For the record, all of those are traits Harold possesses.

That is possibly the strangest and most serious use of a princess and a frog. The princess is raped, the frog is evicted, and the characters never cross paths.

Extra credit to anyone with a clue about Harold's concluding literary reference: "[Roberts] has a passion for P.G. Wodehouse. And anyone who appreciates the Empress of Blandings Castle — the story of a pig, you will remember — might turn out to be not the villain of the piece, but a prince after all."