CSotD: All the Bluebonnets Fled Over The Border
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I wouldn’t have brought up Harry and Meghan so prematurely the other day if I’d realized how much their decision to put their marriage ahead of parental expectations was going to explode into an international incident.
I like Steve Sack‘s take because it tells the tale so simply, like finding out that Orr paddled all the way to Sweden while everyone else on Pianosa was panicking, complaining and slowly going mad.
Granted, if you probe Signe Wilkinson‘s cartoon for additional layers, there is a strange contradiction, in that there are far more important things in the world … but her cartoon at one level criticizes our attention levels and on another joins them.
Still, it is possible in a 24-hour day to eat and sleep and yet keep up with both the situation in Iran and the story of Harry and Meghan and perhaps even watch a little football or walk the dog.
We ought to spare some pity for people who can only think about one thing at a time.
Chris Riddell’s take is a bit grotesque, but, then again, the whole thing is a bit grotesque and he’s quite right that they might have played out the whole royalty thing if it weren’t so poisoned by gossip, jealousy and the ugliness of an increasingly ugly world.
Royalty is an odd anachronism, and while I have nothing against tourism and history, I think I’d rather see Buckingham Palace staffed with re-enactors than have actual people play the roles for-real.
Though Tom Heintjes dug up and posted a comic book life of the Queen Mum, who was always an interesting person regardless of how anyone feels about royal surroundings. Some people rise above their circumstances, though it’s less a matter of “rising above them” than not letting them define you.
And, of course, she had plenty to either rise above or refuse to be defined by, in that she wasn’t supposed to be queen at all, except that her brother-in-law resigned because he preferred to embrace a divorced American, which sounds like Harry except that Wallis Simpson was hardly the most unacceptable person Edward embraced.
I don’t have anything against the royals per se, though I think they should have periodic open auditions for the various roles, but I do see a kind of divide among the Windsors, with Harry’s grandmother being one sort and her late sister Margaret being of the other, and I never had much use for Margaret.
I really can’t explain why the foolish things that fall out of Philip’s mouth seem endearing while other royals say stupid things that simply seem stupid, but they do seem to sort into one or the other category.
Perhaps we all do.
That brings us to Andrew’s recent demotion from Front Rank Royal to Why Don’t You Go Sit Quietly Over There, noted here by Morten Morland.
Andrew had nearly escaped being aligned with Jeffrey Epstein until he stupidly decided to do an interview in which he said stupid things.
Plus he divorced Fergie, who had added a bit of spark to the royals, which reminds me of that odd moment when Fergie and Diana were giggling over poking someone with an umbrella and the tabloids all flew up in rage that two young women would have a laugh together.
How in hell anyone could exist in such a goldfish bowl is beyond me.
I always, from the days of “Lady Di,” felt that Harry’s mother had been thrown into a bizarre situation an older, wiser woman would have avoided. I was glad for her when she escaped the golden cage, and I mourned her death as stupid, pointless and sad.
Which brings us to Harry and Meghan and those knotted bedsheets out the window in Steve Sack’s cartoon.
Patrick Chappatte makes a point that may well be more of an illustration than a commentary, though maybe Charles is happy with where life has put him. After all, he has been permitted to remarry for love, apparently on the condition that his wife stay where nobody will see her.
Still, however he feels about it all, he’s Charles, not Harry.
And if, as seems likely, Harry’s wife chafed under the yoke of royal celebrity, the choices were (A) both of them being miserable in a failing marriage, (B) tossing her aside, or (C) listening, and listening with both his mother’s and his father’s lives to focus the message.
Because, as the Queen points out in Morland’s cartoon, he could have been the next Prince Andrew.
He did well to take that not as an opportunity but as a warning.
Peter Schrank gives a more realistic view of their escape than Steve Sack’s because their pledge to become “financially independent” does not require them to rummage through Dumpsters for sustenance.
According to the Daily Mail — and there’s no more credible source than that — Prince Dad is threatening to cut off Harry’s support from the Duchy of Cornwall.
Which Paul Thomas of the aforementioned Daily Mail predicts may bring that ungrateful, disrespectful prodigal son home again, presumably with his tail between his legs and his unacceptable wife shipped off to Fergieland.
But this piece in Vox is more extensive on the whole thing in general and more expansive than the Daily Mail on the money issues, echoing Schrank by pointing out that, even if Charlie cuts them off, Harry still has half of the 21 million pounds his mother left her boys.
And, as noted here in our previous discussion, Meghan managed to carve out a career such that they met in the first place and not because she was waiting tables at a fish-and-chips shop near the palace.
Bob Moran points out that they won’t starve, and, you know, there are all sorts of people who grew up in families of doctors and were expected to go to medical school but decided to be carpenters instead.
It’s generally considered a case of growing up and putting your happiness first.
However those other issues sort themselves out.
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