The Royal BS…

I think that UK (and significant chunks of the rest of the world) is facing its worst identity crisis ever and a complete void in terms of a baseline on what is important in the culture. To fight this vacuum in their cultural timeline they have turned to celebrating the one thing that still is newsworthy; after many millennia of abuse, scandals and tyranny, the British Royalty still can be quite the bullshit spinner!

And, I agree to the point that the economy is in serious depression and probably facing a steeper decline (according to some); and people need a diversion to liven up daily misgivings. I also agree to the point of media being greatly proliferated since Prince Charles and Lady Diana got married, now that we have a billion TV channels and a million other channels to supplement what non-media time was left in our life.

But that kind of makes my point!

The Royal Wedding hit a new low (or a new height of farce) when the Canadian federal government this week released its official "Royal Tour 2011" app on iTunes, offering mobile access to photos, video and tweets about Prince William and Catherine's nine-day trip, which begins on June 30. The last time something from UK drove such extreme media and people frenzy across the world was probably when The Beatles sang Please Please Me with Lady Diana being (ironically) the unfortunate victim of paparazzi overdrive, a close second.

And, not only does the extreme commercialization of a family even strike me as odd, I also kind of feel sad for the couple depriving them time on their own without every worthy and unworthy journalist mongering for a piece of something that can be published on some media clip somewhere. The problem is that the frenzy, although full of good stuff at this time, will soon run out of positive steam (as is pretty much the case with all media BS) and give way to the ugly trio of invading into privacy, creating scandals for mass consumption and speculation. We know amply from the past that when those three musketeers cling swords around the Royal families, the outcomes are pretty steep and almost always downhill.

The Charles-Diana marriage started off with similar fervor among the press with the (thankfully) limited channels of news and information flow in the ‘good old days’ of the news paper and BBC guaranteeing limited coverage. And the short lived happy marriage was led into digging of the past, photographs invading into the privacy of a royalty and a victim of royalty to the point where it became the symbol of all that was culturally immoral in the society. Whether it was the absence of Royal mojo or just a lesser media blasted life that led to the affairs that were so explicitly pictured and portrayed, it did not go too good for anyone with the candle in the wind blowing out rather immaturely and undeservingly.

Prince Charles had his fame when his name was showcased over the news when wishing to be a tampon on secretly recorded tape, in conversation with Camilla Parker-Bowles, so colorfully renamed as the Tampongate scandal.

Before Princess Diana became the most written about and hunted royal in modern history, and pictures of Fergie getting her toes sucked were splashed around the world, Princess Margaret captured the imagination and the paparazzi interest from the 1950's right up to her divorce from Lord Snowden in 1978.

To give the due and deserved credit, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge do make a good couple but I do hope that the marital curse of British Royalty gives it not the same fate that has been repeated in history over and over again! With the history of thorns that adorns the Windsor, it is deemed unlikely.