The obsession of the royal family and Lil’ Sebastian
- col-dave-mast
- May 10, 2023
- 258
Ahh, the royal family.
Those zany Brits and their royal celebrations.
Where would America be without them?
On Saturday, May 6, the coronation of King Charles III at Westminster Abbey, London took place in a ceremony that included Britain’s Prince William and Kate, Princess of Wales, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
How do I know this?
Because it was being covered live on every news channel in North America, a country half a world away.
Now I must admit I had to look all of those people up and couldn’t pick them out of a lineup because there was no way in the world I was going to invest any time watching the proceedings.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out what this country’s fascination is with the royal family.
Every time one of the princes goes out on the town and their respective wives do any inconsequential thing, it’s plastered all over the U.S. news.
To coin a phrase from the late, great Slim Pickens, “What in the wide, wide world of sports is a-goin’ on here?”
Why do Americans obsess over these people?
I’m at a loss.
In celebrating the royal family here in the States, I’m kinda like Ben Wyatt from “Parks and Recreation” when it comes to understanding the people of the state of Indiana’s obsessions with Lil’ Sebastian. While everyone else goes ga-ga over the tiny horse, I do a fourth wall take into the camera and pose that “what’s all the fuss over?” look. I just don’t get the fascination.
Like Wyatt, maybe I should feign real interest and join the party, but that doesn’t feel right.
In a certain sense, the royal family’s popularity here in America is much akin to the love affair with the Kardashian family, whose only true gift to the nation is, what, being rich?
It’s almost as though certain members of society are going to force feed us these rich and powerful people and demand that we make them popular.
Maybe it’s our fascination with being rich and famous that draws us to this type of people. Perhaps it’s the pomp and circumstance of the royal family that endears them to so many here in the U.S. I don’t know. Maybe it’s Walt Disney’s fault?
I can’t understand why the national media goes ape over this monarchy that runs a country Americans left because they hated what was taking place there a couple hundred years ago.
Wasn’t the Revolutionary War a direct result of how the monarchy was depressing the common folk in England?
Yet I can’t fault the media for its effort because obviously there are millions of people who fancy all of this incredulous activity; otherwise, the media wouldn’t continue to dote over this family like it does.
Any time Megan Markle steps out of her house, she’s being scrutinized by not only the people of England, but also by Americans, who seem to believe what she is drinking or wearing has some bearing on our lives.
Maybe this obsession hearkens back to the days of Princess Diana, who seemed to capture the fancy of every American because she was royalty while at the same time portraying an everyday commoner.
Twenty-three million Americans watched the marriage of Prince William to Catherine Middleton. Thirty million watched the funeral of Diana, princess of Wales, in 1997.
Those numbers fall in line with the average number of viewers who watched top-rated TV shows like “Friends” and “Seinfeld” in their prime.
To quote another great American, Charlie Brown, “Arrrghhh!”
Of course, to put the shoe on the other foot in all fairness, when 180 million people watch grown men punt and pass a football and pummel each other at breakneck speeds in an all-out homage to brute force and male dominance such as is the case in the Super Bowl, I guess 30 million watching the monarchs do their thing isn’t all that out of whack.
By the way, the Kardashian family? They have more than 1 billion followers on social media. No, let me correct that, on Instagram alone.
So I guess like Ben Wyatt, I’ll just have to push my incredulity of the royal family and its fascinating lives way down into the depths of my soul and feign a true joy, just like Wyatt did in celebrating a tiny horse that created an aura of 5,000 candles in the wind.