I get it. A lot of Americans and a certain percentage of Britons are obsessed with Royalty, and aristocratic systems generally. And due to the insane obsession of like-minded idiots globally, there is money to be made in tourism, which thanks to the lunatic commitment of Anglo-Saxon countries to extremist capitalist free-market ideologies, is alongside banking and retail, one of the few meaningful sectors still standing in the British economy. But the non-stop coverage in the media is ridiculous.
So a certain couple in a certain family, which was once known as the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas has had a second child. A child, which if the increasingly symbolic institution of the monarchy still exists many many decades from now, could theoretically be queen, depending on the deaths, abdications, or other misfortunes of her nearest relatives. So the fuck what ?
I'm no anti-royalist, but the monarchy is, whether one likes it or not, an institution of dwindling importance in the everyday lives of the monarch's supposed subjects, and increasingly the role the political elites want the monarchy to play would seem to be a combination of providing cover for unpopular political decisions by the ruling party (and really, the fact that the Queen is trotted out every year and forced to give what is increasingly little more than a party-political-broadcast on behalf of whatever party currently controls Number 10 is frankly disgusting) and serving as a shiny object to distract the gullible masses from the problems affecting their everyday lives, largely as a result of the decisions of those same political elites. And boy, could those elites ever do with a distraction right now. Which brings us to:
This shit, from the front page, online and print of the Telegraph.
I don't really care personally that much what the couple in question (it's William isn't it, and one of the Middletons...Kate, I think ?) call their daughter, but in so far as I will engage with it, there's two ways of looking at this: a) They call their daughter what they want, without any consideration for the politics and optics thereof as representatives of the aforementioned political institution, or b) They take into account the politics and optics thereof, in which case, as a Christian name at least (nobody cares about middle names), calling the child Diana is one of the stupidest things they could possibly do.
The passage of time, the elevation of William over his father in the attention of the media and the public, and the marriage and subsequent children from said marriage of William & Kate have done a great deal to heal the wounds of that particular era of the British monarchy. Why rip them open anew by giving the poor child the name of her grandmother, and reminding everybody of just how toxic that era was ? And no, whatever you might think of Charles or the Queen, 'Saint Diana' wasn't exactly blameless in what went down all those years ago. If as a purely personal matter, the couple want to name their child 'Diana', 'Elizabeth', or 'Mongo the Magnificent' for that matter, then hey, more power to them. But if we must turn this into a symbolic political decision, then fer fuck's sake, just about the only stupider choice of name with which to burden the poor child would be probably 'Camilla.'
I mean, c'mon Telegraph, make up your mind what business you're in. Is it providing consistently half-arsed tabloid-journalistic propaganda on behalf of the Tory party ? Or is it just trolling the entire nation for shits and giggles ?
Oh, and lest you might be under any illusion that the Telegraph actually gives a shit about the actual female child who recently entered this world, contemplate this (complete with multiple pictures of seemingly far-more important older brother):
So, the poor child must not only be named Diana, but be Diana, as in some sort of symbolic re-incarnation of the now be-sainted and fictionalised princess of yesteryear. Although, in the meantime, we'll unofficially just call her 'the spare.' As in spare tyre. As in disposable easily replaceable cog. Wait...hey, the Telegraph finally found a way to make the monarchy relevant to the modern economy and the ordinary working experience. Result !
Update: Charlotte Elizabeth Diana. Fine. Can we more on now ?
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