royal wedding 2018: lingering cult of celebrity

royal wedding 2018: lingering cult of celebrity

Long live British royalty – preferably at their own expense. Who knows what the British public will pay for Harry’s wedding while “rough sleepers” increase and the UK callously cuts public assistance to the desperately-poor?  Those who defend the royal cult's tourism value seem to have missed the point that such crass commercialism delegitimizes what currently passes for royal grace and nobility.

While Meghan Markle and her consort may be fine people; their character traits seem less important than their fashion choices. For some reason, whenever royalty perform a charitable act; the nobility of their conduct is amplified and exaggerated as though the acts themselves are improved by royal participation. This phenomenon may be based on the assumption that simply being royal is enough to satisfy those who worship these inheritors of pompous titles and privilege.

The pending royal wedding is tailor-made for those who “know their place” while eagerly genuflecting before their “betters.” For example; prince Harry, the absentee duke of some inherited UK plot and the grandson of the ruling monarch, the woman without a last name. In other parts of the world, one's use of a single is either pop star marketing or derided as primitive when practiced by indigenous peoples. Undoubtedly, royalty will endure; at least until Britons and Canadians realize that the monarchy is just a pricey celebrity cult.

It’s worth remembering that British royalty once had arbitrary powers of life and death over their subjects and that much of their personal wealth is derived from the past habit of inflicting Britain’s needs on weaker nations. The Queen is the richest woman in the United Kingdom yet she and her family continue to shamelessly accept generous public subsidies while their finances remain secure behind legal immunity. Does anyone actually believe that the royals acquired their wealth and possessions through mundane business practices like buying assets with borrowed money?

I encourage all people to casually ignore royalty; a pompous, irrelevant and self-congratulatory institution whose time has passed. However, they do provide some entertainment value as prince Phillip's crude comments were was sort of funny.