I don't mean to offend. It's probably going to happen anyway.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Creating Royalty

It's interesting. Last I checked, this country fought a couple fairly nasty wars to be free of the British crown. Yet here today, 237 years later, everyone is going gaga over the progeny of the royal family.

Beyond snarking at this stuff, it is rather a neat example of the human predilection for royalty. Even should there be no power behind the throne, people are taken with the notion that there are the special few who hold the reins of everything. Little girls wanting to be princesses notwithstanding, few people actually want to be royal, but there is a fascination nevertheless.

I am torn between not getting it, and getting it all too well. Idol worship, be it a royal family, celebrity, or charismatic politician, has quite the siren song. In all cases, there are people who have their positions based on birth alone. The royals are obvious. The Kardashians and Hiltons are celebrities because.... Well, they're celebrities. The Kennedys and Bushs have a similar case in politics.

I am inclined to think that this behavior comes from our natural human predilection to laziness. We don't want to fix things ourselves, but if you've got God Emperor Zeushiltonbama who can do it for you, you feel ok about watching America's Funniest Home Video reruns* and eat potato chips, because we've got our 'best people' on it.

Looking at Obama these days, it seems clear that a great many people, consciously or subconsciously, want him to be king. The fascinating thing about it is that we love a king, so long as he does what we want. We love super soldiers, so long as they obey the timid grumpy bureaucrats. We love a rebel, so long as she fights against the stuff that annoys us. 

The fact that I understand this stuff doesn't make it any less frustrating. The royal sprog means nada to me. Get back to the things that matter.

And while I'm at it, I oughta get those dang teenagers off my lawn.

*Is that a thing? I don't watch TV

3 comments:

  1. It's a distraction factor to NOT put real news up!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I meant to get to that, but I was blogging from my phone and my lunch break was over. I've mentioned several times over to different folks that the brits have figured out a perfect way to get everyone paying attention to something other than the important bits, and somehow that has leaked over here.

      I get the feeling Obama is building himself an ablative layer of lesser scandals to hide the grand mal incompetence/malice.

      Delete
  2. I see these stories as a blessing; seriously consider the benefit of them to individuals such as you or I.

    By seeing who follows the stories, who tweets, or argues over them; we can create a filter of people to ignore.

    Oh I'm not talking about the one off post in the midst of more serious stuff but the people who follow all the fluff cycle news -- those people get deleted from feeds, removed from status update notifications, etc.

    ReplyDelete

Please comment, but please be respectful. I reserve the right to delete any comment at any time for any reason, but I don't anticipate having to do that. Let's try to have real discussions?