THE NAKED CITY – with Coffin Ed, Jay Katz and Miss Death
GIVING THE CHOP TO THE ROYALS
We don’t need to tell you that official betrothal of Prince William and Kate Middleton, fuelled more by the obsession with celebrity rather than devotion to the monarch, has unleashed a behemoth of media saturation. The day the engagement was announced Kim Jong IL could have mounted full scale nuclear war on South Korea and still only been second item up on the six o’clock news.
Scariest of all is the realisation that the wedding itself is still many months away and as such we are about to be pounded unmercilessly with the Royal soap opera through every avenue of the media. All very well if you still hold some affection for the monarchy but what about the millions of Australians for whom the British Royal Family has no relevance whatsoever – the masses of post war migrants from Europe and Asia for whom even a quasi allegiance to the Queen is a totally alien concept.
Furthermore what about those Republicans and solid egalitarian folk for whom the British monarchy is a loathsome and parasitic anachronism, defined only by their obscene accumulation of wealth and total lack of any intellect – not to mention an unhealthy interest in the uniforms of the Third Reich.
Try telling that to the tabloids and commercial TV for whom any reportage of arguably the world’s most dysfunctional family is an instant ratings bonanza. That William and Kate possess the celebrity good looks that the rest of the aristocratically inbred Royals instantly bely only adds fuel to the madness about to fill our screens and devour page after page of newsprint.
It’s wishful thinking indeed but perhaps, in the true spirit of democracy, now’s the time for some regulatory body to step in and insure that at least some sections of the media remain Royalty Free or carry a health warning similar to that displayed on cigarette packets i.e. ‘Reading Anything About The Royal Wedding Is Likely To Cause Long Term Brain Damage.’
The SMH and the Tele could be forced to restrict all their Royal news to a wraparound supplement that could be immediately ripped and discarded as a militant show of disdain by all committed Republicans – perhaps rolled into a big paper ball and pelted at those sycophants lapping up the pages of wedding dress suggestions on the peak hour train ride.
At least one of the new digital channels could be devoted to twenty four hour programming totally devoid of any mention of the British Royal family or any of their unseemly associations like adultery, Corgis, collusion with M15 and dressing up in Nazi uniforms. Instead the dedicated channel could run historical documentaries on the French Revolution or the American War of Independence.
The motto of the new Royalty free media could be Ignorance Is Bliss and surely a world without the incessant and inescapable coverage of the tiresome British aristocracy would be a new kind of bliss – unless you’re a collector of tea towels and souvenir wedding cups!