I’ve never been shy about my revulsion for the British Royal Family. As a non-loyalist Canadian I get pangs of nausea every time one of those useless blue-blooded jokes pops over here for a visit. Buckingham Palace has about the same amount of purpose as Grey Gardens did: a creaky old manor filled with creaky old people cast under a spell of creepy self righteousness, spending their days and nights increasingly terrified that the much more noble citizens outside their doors will someday figure them out. Well, sorry Loopy Liz, but we have figured you out and the game is over. Why not just take your brood and pack it up to some shack in the Highlands? You would most certainly make the world a much, much, much less contrived place to be. In his latest column for Slate, Christopher Hitchens makes no qualms about his indifference to the Windsors either. As a matter of fact, he warns Kate Middleton that her best option at this point is to grab her loving Will by his buck teeth and run like hell:
A hereditary monarch, observed Thomas Paine, is as absurd a proposition as a hereditary doctor or mathematician. But try pointing this out when everybody is seemingly moist with excitement about the cake plans and gown schemes of the constitutional absurdity’s designated mother-to-be. You don’t seem to be uttering common sense. You sound like a Scrooge. I suppose this must be the monarchical “magic” of which we hear so much: By some mystic alchemy, the breeding imperatives for a dynasty become the stuff of romance, even “fairy tale.” The usually contemptuous words fairy tale were certainly coldly accurate about the romance quotient of the last two major royal couplings, which brought the vapid disco-princesses Diana and Sarah (I decline to call her “Fergie”) within range of demolishing the entire mystique. And, even if the current match looks a lot more wholesome and genuine, its principal function is still to restore a patina of glamour that has been all but irretrievably lost.
… For Prince William at least it was decided on the day of his birth what he should do: Find a presentable wife, father a male heir (and preferably a male “spare” as well), and keep the show on the road. By yet another exercise of that notorious “magic,” it is now doubly and triply important that he does this simple thing right, because only his supposed charisma can save the country from what monarchists dread and republicans ought to hope for: King Charles III. (Monarchy, you see, is a hereditary disease that can only be cured by fresh outbreaks of itself.) An even longer life for the present queen is generally hoped for: failing that a palace maneuver that skips a generation and saves the British from a man who—like the fruit of the medlar—went rotten before he turned ripe.
… Myself, I wish her well and also wish I could whisper to her: If you really love him, honey, get him out of there, and yourself, too. Many of us don’t want or need another sacrificial lamb to water the dried bones and veins of a dessicated system. Do yourself a favor and save what you can: Leave the throne to the awful next incumbent that the hereditary principle has mandated for it.
The full article is a true must-read, and once again Hitchens peels back the veneer of this pathetic institution (you can read it in full at Slate). If there’s anything that gets my red blood boiling more than the reminder of this sickly blue cloud hovering over the Great White North, it’s when naive saps try and justify the Royals because of all the charity they get up to. In case there was any doubt in the matter, this “charitable work” is nothing more than a horse and pony show carried out by these fools to keep convincing their dwindling supporters of their value. Part of what defines charity is, “kindness and tolerance in judging others.” My friends, there’s nothing “kind” or “tolerant” about this perverted S&M blue-blooded dynamic we have found ourselves in. Let’s do the charitable thing and cut them loose once this cum shot of Royal Wedding wraps up — perhaps there’s still some time and hope for them to salvage some sort of real red-blooded purpose in each of their lives.
SEE ALSO: Royally Flushed
SEE ALSO: Growing Majority Of Canadians Want Nothing To Do With Monarchy
