The Royals are still human
Feeling just a little bit ashamed, maybe? Because you sure as hell should be. And paltry remorse doesn’t cut it.
All you trolls and trollops who went off the wacko deep end — particularly hit-squad bloggers and social media skanks but mainstream newspaper journalists too — with frenzied speculation about the whither and whereabouts and what-the-? of the Princess of Wales.
Who is not, contrary to the fetid imaginings of conspiracy theorists, dead, nor faked by a body double, nor replaced with a doppelganger, nor in a coma, nor bloated by Botox, nor recuperating from plastic surgery, nor recovering from a tummy tuck, nor abducted by aliens, nor on suicide watch over her husband’s alleged (heatedly denied) extramarital affair with his baby mama (heatedly denied), the Marchioness of Cholmondeley (neither word which I know how to pronounce).
The mocking and ridiculing of Princess Catherine, née Kate Middleton, is a cautionary tale of where misinformation and complete lack of information will take us in this era of slapdash reporting, citizen journalism and freewheeling unchecked, unsourced online buzz. Because everybody is entitled to an opinion and these days hardly anybody can resist the temptation to share it, especially laden with sarcasm. So Catharine’s absence from public view for three months following what the palace described as abdominal surgery was rich terrain for internet rabble-rousers, keyboard warriors and two-cent smartasses.
PR spinners at Kensington Palace misled when they assured, in the earliest of official announcements, Jan. 17, that the surgery was not for cancer. But it’s probable that news flash wasn’t deliberately deceptive. Parsing what the princess said in the video released on Friday, it seems quite clear that the operation was successful and only after followup tests did doctors advise the princess to undertake a course of preventative chemotherapy.
Catherine’s disclosure that she had cancer — the woman is only 42, with no history of health problems apart from difficult pregnancies requiring bed rest before all three of her babies were born — came like a thunderclap.
A lot of people, leading with the sensationalists at the British redtops,
had whipped this pony hard, indulging in gleeful theorizing and spouting increasingly unhinged rumours.
Listen, I get it. I covered the Royals for four decades, all the tours, all the scandals, the malice in the palace, the marriage meltdowns, the rise and fatal fall of Diana, the arrival and punting of Sarah, Duchess of York, the jubilees, the births, deaths and weddings, the affairs, and the monarchy in crisis, when only the stabilizing presence of the sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II, kept the whole medieval kit ’n’ caboodle from flying off the rails.
It was so easy-peasy to trash the royals. Goodness knows they provided enough ammunition, mortifying shenanigans and disgrace hiding behind every bush (with a long lensman lurking inside it).
Diana-Charles-Camilla, SarahAndrew, hapless Edward and Sophie, later the privileged and tonedeaf young generation, Harry and Meagan.
Sure, I brought the snide and the snark, more than my fair share of it. But the fact — and this really is fact — was that we in the royals press pack really did cultivate sources, secure contacts and at the very least had a solid grasp of royal history. We didn’t make stuff up (well, not much and not most of us), we understood that, for example, Diana (who frequently planted stories) manipulated the media at least as much as the media exploited her, and we certainly not drooling hatemongers.
But that was all before social media made everyone insane and before mainstream media — desperate
for clicks — jumped on the anything-goes bandwagon.
This has not been our finest hour. Hours.
From the outsized chastising of Kate for photoshopping a Mother’s Day handout of the princess with her children (which she admitted editing, with apologies) and had photo agencies in hissy fits, to the tom-tom of daily clamouring for the palace to explain Kate’s disappearance — all but demanding proof of life — to the online madness, from two-bit to silver dollar commentators.
That was a dignified Kate who got to the moral crux of the thing on Friday: Having to deal with the bombshell of cancer, taking the time to sit with that terrifying knowledge, and then determining with husband William how to tell their kids without scaring them to death.
“This of course came as a huge shock, and William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family.’’
The palace hasn’t disclosed what type of cancer Catherine has. That detail hasn’t been revealed for her father-in-law either, also cancer-diagnosed, both King and Princess undergoing what is often a debilitating course of chemo treatment.
Kate is entitled to her medical privacy. So back off, jackals.
Royals are human too, not just pinatas to be struck with blithe abandon or gutted for salacious gossip.
I expect any contrition won’t last long. Then we’ll return to mucking and mocking and repost-me.