The Chris Moeller Archives

The American News Media goes to a wedding

There are a lot of important news stories that America's traditional news media could be covering. President Trump just lifted trade sanctions on a giant of the Chinese communications industry that had traded with North Korea and Iran, ZTE, only three days after the Chinese government provided a half-billion dollar loan to a development project in Singapore that will include Trump-branded hotels, golf courses, and condos. The Israeli army has been murdering unarmed Palestinian protestors, using our weaponry, at protests over the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Another school shooting less than 24 hours ago, this one in Texas, took the lives of ten people.

Instead, CNN, Headline News, Fox News, and MSNBC-- as well as their news and information siblings, E! and TLC--  have been wall-to-wall with their coverage of the wedding of the sixth-in-line-to-the-throne of the United Kingdom. The wedding went on as scheduled today even though the American bride's father, who's actually a descendant of King Robert I of Scotland, suffered a heart attack this week and couldn't make the trip to Buckingham Palace for the divine and everlasting entangling of the couple's underemployed families. I suppose delaying and/or relocating the wedding to Los Angeles so that he could attend was out of the question. I didn't wake up to watch any part of the ceremony live as it occurred, but I saw some photos online afterward, and frankly, I didn't care for the dress.

What follows is what I wrote on the blog on the occasion of the wedding of Prince Harry's older brother William in 2011. Yes, Nosy, the piece also appears in my new book Lies My Blogger Told Me: The Best of the Chris Moeller Blog 2004-2017. Enjoy the fragment free here with my compliments...


God Save the Serfs
Friday, April 29, 2011

 "This is my fourth royal event... You weren't seeing double. They did do two kisses. That's history made. That's history. Everything else was true to form. It was a fantasy. It was a fairy tale... I think they should keep the kids home from school today because they probably won't see something like this for another 20 years." -Barbara Walters, royal bootlicker

"Why don't you up-Chuck and Di?" -Carla Tortelli, Boston barmaid


This morning's television coverage on ABC of the Royal Wedding between Prince William of Wales and British commoner Kate Middleton warranted the on-air participation of journalists Robin Roberts, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, and six other correspondents, each apparently instructed to apply as much Vaseline as possible to the camera lens. Oh, times they do change. Two hundred and thirty-five years ago, Americans fought a war over the entitlement of ignoring the British monarchy.

Royal titles in England are really just honorary anymore, we're told, yet William, by fortune of being born the eldest son of the likewise-bloodlined "Prince of Wales," will-- perhaps within 10 years-- be elevated to the throne of sixteen "sovereign" states on Earth. In so doing, he will become the head of the British armed forces, one of the largest militaries in the world, as well as the "Supreme Governor," or spiritual head, of the Church of England. The latter designation makes him, by law, "the highest power under God in (his) kingdom," and gives him "supreme authority over all persons in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as civil." This fact is mildly misleading as the church has very little influence in modern life. Of the 44 diocesan archbishops and bishops now in the Church, only 26 are allowed to sit in the House Of Lords, the upper house of the British Parliament that is not democratically-elected but filled instead by inheritance or appointment. A "King William" would hold the right his grandmum now holds to dissolve the Parliament at any time and to choose the Prime Minister of the government.

The wedding ceremony this morning really was lovely-- the recorded bits of it that I saw. William's commoner bride, Kate, is strikingly beautiful, and by fortune not a Catholic either or William would have to renounce the throne to marry her. (No adopted children either, please, not if you want them to inherit the kingdom.) As is the role of the modern monarchy, William and Kate today gave the British people (and many fawning Americans as well) "something to look up to," a new standard of elegance and extravagance, if you will. Of course, not inviting former Prime Minister Tony Blair to the ceremony was rather inelegant, it seems to me. Blair, an elected official of government during his time, was only responsible for canonizing William's dead mother by memorably dubbing her "the people's princess," but of course his choice of words at the time only served to remind everyone that the prince was NOT of the people, and living parents have the most sway over the guest list of any wedding.

The British could have chosen to go the French route of republicanism by salvaging the buildings of monarchy but abolishing everything else. They didn't. The Windsors wheeze on into the 21st century, sapping the country's treasury, royalists forced to constantly mention and promote the "charitable" works of the crown, snowing under the philosophical hypocrisy of having two different levels of citizenship in place for the nation, and somewhat incidentally, wrecking political debate by destroying the quality of British newspapers.

The royal subjects of the U.K. (and that's what they are, they're not "citizens") have been seriously debating the necessity of the monarchy in recent years. The royals behaved so badly so often towards the last commoner princess that their entire hustle almost collapsed. (Public perceptions have improved considerably over the last decade.) Diana's divorce from Charles was no small matter in respect to their children, Prince William and his brother. The two boys, again by ancient law, were the legal property of the House of Windsor, and the Windsors deeply resented the popularity of the boys' mother. As the first-born, William has been forced to deal with great public-- and presumably private-- pressure to marry and advance the hereditary line with his sovereign sperm. His younger brother, Harry, who is not in line for the throne, after first being spoiled rotten, was assigned to public relations duty, getting to join Grandma's imperial army and shuffling off to Afghanistan. But I'm sure both these boys make life decisions of their own volition.

In recent years, a number of political movements in the United States have attempted to brand for us just what it is that makes one "a real American." The almost-entire lot of these movements is comprised of bubbleheads, and so the results have been lacking, but I think I've actually stumbled upon it: If you still reject the British monarchy, in all of its ridiculous structure, forms, and rituals, 235 years after the Declaration of Independence, you are a real American. If you don't, then you are a deserter.

I wonder how many freedom-loving Americans, loyal to the principle that all men and women are created equal, would actually reject a royal title if one were offered? Ronald Reagan didn't. He accepted a knighthood during the years following his presidency (current U.S. officeholders are forbidden by law to accept such an honor from another government). George H.W. Bush doesn't think atheists are real Americans, but in retirement, he morphed into Benedict Arnold in respect to the Revolution. Bob Hope is on the list of betrayers. He was born in England and obviously preferred in some way to return. There's Ted Kennedy, that's a shame, and Steven Spielberg, and Alan Greenspan (whom I guess is kind of "stateless" now, like a corporation), and there's a who's who of U.S. military generals representing a whole host of U.S. wars other than the first one. An overwhelming majority of the overall list of Knighthood recipients, though, are other monarchs from around the globe. One hand indeed washes the other, I guess, but of course, none of those recipients are Americans. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Many of your more enlightened Brits (and I intend the use of the word 'enlightened' here with all of its historic meaning and power) have actually declined the honor, and it's the general mark of that person's worth in my estimation. The physicist Stephen Hawking declined the honor from the officially-sectarian government of his state. Paul (now Sir Paul) accepted a knighthood, but John returned his MBE insignia in 1969, settling that age-old question once and for all, I guess. Mick accepted a knighthood. Then Keith responded: "It's not what the Stones is about, is it?" Paul Scofield, Vanessa Redgrave, and John Cleese all declined, as did the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, and many others in the field of the arts actually. Even two fictional characters, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond, declined knighthoods in literary texts, and their public service to England certainly marked them each as patriots, unqualified.

Of course both William and Kate have the prerogative to accept the titles offered by their state that are legally worthless everywhere outside the United Kingdom, and that are morally-worthless even within, but it's frustrating that so many of our fellow Americans and our media diplomats to the world feel the motivation to panty-sniff the inbred descendants of Henry VIII. Undeniably we have our own special and skewed brand of star worship here, but at least to this point, we're not sticking our own economic and celebrity betters with the senseless and silly labels "prince" and "princess." U-S-A! U-S-A!"

posted by CM @ 10:08 AM