"But I do think about race, class, power, and postcolonial inequalities quite a bit, and so I harbor an unwavering contempt for an institution that stood at the pinnacle of empire and places inherited privilege at the very heart of the British establishment.
There is also, if I’m honest, a lack of understanding on my part. I have never fully comprehended the monarchy’s popular appeal. Why would hundreds of thousands of people queue for hours and miles for a glimpse of the coffin of a leader they never elected, or get excited about the wedding of two wealthy people they are never going to meet?
But while I loathe the monarchy, I love the Netflix series
The Crown...."Writes Gary Younge in "Heavy Is the Head/The British Royals in the age of streaming" (The Nation).
"The unhappiness is bequeathed from generation to generation, each apparently more miserable than the last, producing a litter of peevish, entitled libertines, almost all unhappy in love.... [B]eyond the rarefied setting, the challenges they face are essentially a philosophical and universal one: What must we be ready to give up to assert our freedom in the world? How do we balance whatever structural roles we occupy—at work or elsewhere—with our human needs and responsibilities? What would we sacrifice for love?"
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Imus: I thought it was extraordinary until Charles explained to me it wasn't, but, ah front page of the Washington Post and the New York Times this morning, above the fold, the story is, ah, well the fold I guess meaning, well you know what it means..
McCord: ..yeah..
Imus: ..ah Can The Royals Survive? and I'm thinking, ah I..di..wo..wu..whuwhu..okay. But I guess that is a significant story..
McCord: ..right..
Imus: ..because ah because people in Britain are calling are questioning their expression of, of ah grief, that it's apparently not appropriate or not what they think it should be or..
McCord: ..um hmm..
Imus: ..[unintelligible]..
McCord (over): ..[unintelligible]..
Imus: ..yeah, they haven't responded well, they haven't ah..
McCord: ..yeah..
Imus: ..they're not flying the flag at Buckingham Palace because..
McCord: ..yeah..
Imus: ..I guess they're not there, but. I mean they haven't they haven't performed, but they they're they they they don't perform well in in virtually almost anything they do, other than wearing hideously stupid hats and looking as though they're all related through obviously more than marriage, just just an inbred bunch of goobers..
McCord: ..they do look goofy I sw..
Imus: ..jug eared..
McCord: ..[unintelligible]..
Imus: ..inbred nitwits..
McCord: ..any formal ceremony and they wander around, and they're in..
Imus: ..well..
McCord: ..the ermine robes and all those goofy little hats..
Imus: ..yeah..
McCord: ..with all the jewel..
Imus: ..the Queen and the Queen-mother and they're just sickening people. Anyway..
McCord: ..carrying scepters and..
Imus: ..But they they are the essence of that country and have been..
McCord: ..yup..
Imus: ..for hundreds and hundreds of years, and they are not going to get rid of them..
McCord: ..yeah..
Imus: ..ah if for no other reason than just to keep them around to beat up on them. Which is somewhat more entertaining..
McCord: ..keep them around for amusement..
Imus: ..yes, yeah..
McCord: ..rope them off, sell tickets..
Imus: ..rope them off, and sell tickets and charge admission to look at them. Which is essentially what they do now. Their they they their their primary source of ah, they are a tourist attraction.
McCord: ..that's right..
Imus: ..So.
September 4 1997 Imus in the Morning
I have never fully comprehended the monarchy’s popular appeal.
So shouldn’t he try to understand that appeal before he starts writing? It seems fundamental to me — sort of like writing about chemistry without trying to understand what an atom is,
“ I have never fully comprehended the monarchy’s popular appeal.”
Things I have never understood:
1. The religious fervor and belief in the CAGW scam.
2. The religious belief in the effectiveness of masks against Covid.
3. Why it was a good idea to shut down the world’s economy.
4. Why anyone would fall for CRT and DEI.
5. That men can have babies.
6. Why it is a good idea to allow the Left to perform medical experiments on children.
7. Why it is okay to allow abortion in the 9th month.
8. Why it is a good idea to open the southern border.
9. How Joe Biden got the office of POTUS.
10. Why anyone would vote for a Democrat.
wait a Minute!
someone writing at The Nation, says they don't like royalty.. but secretly do? SHOCKER!
DEI is genitive singular or nominative plural of god. Verbum dei, word of god.
"But while I loathe the monarchy, I love the Netflix series 'The Crown'..." Getting his history from TV shows again, eh?
I never understood why people don’t blast Davos as the tax write-off ski junket boondoggle that it is.
"But I do think about race, class, power, and postcolonial inequalities quite a bit..."
I think the author is being disingenuous. What he should have said is "ALL I think about is race, class, power and postcolonial inequalities." Otherwise, how could he write an article that would impress the editorial staff of a Marxism-saturated rag like "The Nation"? The competition for quality far-left propaganda there is so keen that a run of the mill commie doesn't stand a chance of being published.
I am starting to honestly believe that we would be better off with inherited monarchies, enjoy the good ones, suffer through the bad ones, it's not our responsibility. Winston Churchill once said that when democracies go to war, it's far more terrible, because to get to war requires whipping the population up to such a blood lust that it becomes impossible to back down, where when the royalty were all basically cousins, there were always channels of communication and ways to compromise and back down.
Buwaya is right.
For my money, our victory in the Revolutionary War was one of the most significant events in human history. It was a close run operation. We could have lost. If it wasn't for Washington and the French, we most certainly would have lost.
Not to say that the current Monarchy particularly embodies this, but Monarchs are fundamentally the champions of a nation and people. Gary Younge, being neither of the English people nor English nation regardless of what a bureaucrat's stamp may claim, does not grasp the bond the English people and nation might naturally feel with the English crown.
I suspect though he is less confused and simultaneously more prideful and protective of reflexive ingroup support and admiration of people like him.
"Ev’rybody’s building the big ships and the boats
Some are building monuments
Others, jotting down notes
Ev’rybody’s in despair
Ev’ry girl and boy
But when Quinn the Eskimo gets here
Ev’rybody’s gonna jump for joy"
Big Mike, great point at 6:33. But why should he bother to understand the phenomenon before letting us know his opinion of it? The pronouncement is all. So what if it was King George VI, not King George V? What's the dif when you're going to play the colonialism card. It trumps all suits.
I think Mr. Younge missed his calling. He should be working on a new edition of How to Win Friends and Influence People. That is where his talents lie.
I can, maybe, understand the British obsession with the royal family. I could never wrap my head around the American one - This country, as flawed as it was and is, was founded as an express rejection of the royal family and what they represented. F the King.
Leland said...
I never understood why people don’t blast Davos as the tax write-off ski junket boondoggle that it is.
1/26/23, 7:22 AM
THIS^^^^^
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, a very elite heiress, was long The Nation's editor and publisher. Many of their star writers were pro-Stalin yet personally wealthy. Some spied on America; others supported Russian spies like Alger Hiss.
Trust fund commies.
is The Crown as good as this?
I credit Shakespeare, who really created an exalted aura around British royalty, where, for example, Moliere in France ridiculed the French aristocracy. Well, the French aristocracy ended up at the guillotine.
I wonder if Gary Younge felt a tingle up his leg for Obama or thought the Greek columns were inspiring.
Better to have an acknowledged monarchy than turning the POTUS into one.
Imus always seemed like an idiot to me, but one with a great voice. Not that I listened to him much, I tried twice and both times he was trying to sell his "buffalo shirts" and I tuned him out, same as Howard Stern, who was always trying to talk young women into taking their shirts off for him. Yawn.
That writer says "I" a lot.
Well, they did get rid of the thing once, in 1649, only to change their minds again and bring it back just 11 years later. Then watched what happened when others did it, like in 1789.
England has a long and rich history, and the monarchy was in the thick of it for most of it, guiding the country from a collection of squabbling Anglo-Saxon states in a European backwater to an empire on which the sun never sets. Even when it lost real power, the monarchy continued to serve the country as a rallying point during WWII and a unifying symbol. The English monarchy has been a large net positive to the country.
Yeah, I'm baffled by the appeal.
As for members of the royal family being dysfunctional, I would like to congratulate Gary Younge on being born yesterday. We'll get you potty trained yet!
Esteban said...
I can, maybe, understand the British obsession with the royal family. I could never wrap my head around the American one - This country, as flawed as it was and is, was founded as an express rejection of the royal family and what they represented.
I have pondered this myself.. The Spousal Unit is something of a Royals watcher, although I think primarily the previous generations (E-II and earlier). I don't get it. I don't see any point of any monarchy, either theoretically (some form of democracy should be the default and universal form of government) or realistically (most of these royal dopes are entirely unexceptional or worse and have no business having any sort of power).
Maybe it's just part of our shared history and mythology that people find fascinating with them. Plus the usual interest in stupidly rich and famous people.
The Nation and the royals. You want intersectionality? This is the intersection of yecch.
Come on, it's the Nation, ya know, commie. Commies hate royalty unless it's Communist Royalty like the North Korean Kim family dynasty.
Bolshevik Menshevik Trotskyite Leninist The Nation loves them all.
If you love The Crown you probably do understand monarchy, though you might not want to admit it -- that is to say, you may have more of an interest in pretty or distinguished people who live in magnificent palaces than you want to admit.
Yes, The Crown does illustrate a universal, existential dilemma, but that also makes me wonder if universal and existential dilemmas are really that close to our everyday life. We may see something of the same problems in our own life when we watch the show, but we really relish seeing such problems enacted more dramatically on a larger, more spectacular scale and with much more at stake.
Watching a royal wedding or funeral may make people feel as if they are in something like a real-life Shakespeare play. France, I'm told, also has a fascination with foreign royals. Is it really that hard to understand? It's the appeal of history, legends, fairy tales, soap operas, reality TV, and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. When other people have all that, you may not want it for yourself but you're interested in it, maybe because you don't have it at home anymore.
It's fun to live in the most successful postcolonial nation of all time. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand are generally not too bad either, but suffer from the lack of America's Bill of rights (especially the first two amendments).
I never bothered with the politics pages of the Nation, but I have checked out their reviews to see if there's anything interesting there (there usually hasn't been). Whether in paper format or online, the Nation was always more accessible and less snobbishly stand-offish than the New Republic. The magazines are ideologically a lot closer now, maybe closer than they have been since the days when Henry Wallace and Michael Straight ran the New Republic, and there aren't any stars writing for either periodical, but that distinction persists.
Imus could be quite comically flaky, but he was mostly the straight man, with the comedy happening around him.
I don't hate the Royals; I don't love the Royals. I'm indifferent.
I do not share the seemingly ubiquitous fascination with celebrities of any sort. I care deeply about the people I know personally.
The reaction when Diana died was stunning to me. How can you mourn the death of someone who never met you and what's more would never want to meet you?
Chesterton observed that it would be wise not to take down a fence prior to knowing why that fence was erected. It has also been observed that when you see a turtle on top of a fence post, such turtle didn't arrive there by happenstance.....All my life I have had to sweat the bread and curse the light. That's the common fate. It's pleasant to contemplate that there's a group of people who have achieved a high level of status and wealth without ever having to try or really do anything accept occasionally wave decorously. They don't have to be especially good looking or smart or even respectable. They just have to be.... In most ways, they're cooler than Hollywood royalty who have to constantly diet and exercise to remain youthful and good looking. And even then, they get deposed every ten or fifteen years. Rock royalty probably have better sex lives and get to let it all hang out, but there's all those tour dates and you have to get sweaty in front of crowds. No, royalty royalty is the way to go. Their very lack of being special is their selling point. They've very lucky. I'm glad to live in a world where lucky people get to enjoy their luck, especially as it unmerited.... The great lords used to install rolling meadows on their estates. On those meadows flocks of sheep would graze. The purpose of those sheep were to assure the watcher that he lived in a serene, predator free environment. Thus so with royalty.
I have never fully comprehended the monarchy’s popular appeal
I think it's fatal when a writer doesn't have sufficient imagination to understand how others think.
I have a lack of understanding about why people value expensive, over-powered cars, especially old cars like Chevettes. I think football is exciting but have never fully comprehended why people remember anything about a game days later and then compare their memory of that game with other games they remember and argue. I've been told they think it's fun but are we put on earth to have fun? Aren't we supposed to draw an approved moral from all we do and see?
"Chesterton observed that it would be wise not to take down a fence prior to knowing why that fence was erected"
I once read an account of how many soldiers it took to operate an artillery piece, and there was one guy that nobody could account for, but respect for the competence of their military forbears made officers reluctant to change the number. It turned out that the guy's job was to hold the reins of the horses as the gun was fired.
"I do think about race, class, power, and postcolonial inequalities quite a bit"
I'm sure you do. (If you had a real job, maybe not so much.)
The reaction when Diana died was stunning to me. How can you mourn the death of someone who never met you and what's more would never want to meet you?
NYT Diana's Death Resonates with Women in Therapy by Jane Gross. Sept 13, 1997. Worth your one free article.
Tim in Vermont - the royal associations in Europe failed to stop the events that led to WWI. After four years of war, bye-bye Hohenzollerns, Romanovs and Habsburgs. Too bad they didn't have Zoom.
The mayor of London is Sadiq Khan.
The UK prime minister is Rishi Sunak.
The English royals are not long for this world.
"But I do think about race, class, power, and postcolonial inequalities ..."
Zzzzz
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