Entry 1555, on 2013-07-29 at 19:51:37 (Rating 5, Politics)
The British royal family are a bit of a laugh. I mean, they cost the Brits (British people, aka Poms) a fortune and fullfil no practical purpose whatsoever, but they are certainly a source of amusement for many of us. The recent fuss surrounding the birth of some random baby to some random royal has attracted a certain amount of attention here in New Zealand because theoretically the British royal family is also ours, and the Queen is our head of state. Of course in reality, they are just a bunch on inbred retards on the other side of the world who could hardly be less relevant to real life here.
As well as being amusing the royal family is also somewhat offensive to many of us. It is offensive in the modern context for a person to be given so much (theoretical) power and wealth just because they happen to be born into a particular family. And remember that this particular family is only in power now because at some distant time in the past they killed off all of their competition.
As I said, there has been a small amount of fuss here, and there was 10 minutes of the most inane drivel at the start of TV3 news on the day the new royal baby was born. But it was worth it to see the Brits make idiots of themselves. Royalists are almost like a parody of themselves. My favourite was some pompous reporter from the Times asking: "I say, do you think you'll call him George?" It sounded just so funny. Like something out of Monty Python!
To show the frivolous nature of the royal birth I should say that about the same amount of time was spent later in that news bulletin on the impending result of X-Factor New Zealand (pure, unadulterated drivel, and only a news story because it was free advertising for the program on that same channel later). Gee, must have been a slow news day!
Actually, the coverage of the birth has been quite excruciating in places. Trying to make a news story lasting several minutes out of some random hand movement with the claim that George (or whatever his name is) was waving to the crowd was also amusing. I wonder how these reporters feel wasting their time with this worthless nonsense when there is real news elsewhere in the world.
The political reaction has been interesting too. Our conservative prime minister has said that we will drop the Queen as head of state in the future but now is not the time. He's probably right because, as embarrassing as it is to my fellow New Zealanders, the royal family does still enjoy quite a high level of support here.
And those politicians who would like to see us become a republic a bit more quickly, like Russel Norman of the Greens, have been quite gracious about the whole thing. Norman said that he wishes the family well as human beings but prefers not to attach any special significance beyond that (I have paraphrased his words here and hope that is a fair approximation).
But when National Radio interviewed some clown from the NZ Royalist Society (or some other similar organisation because I can't remember the name exactly) he accused Norman of being one of the few people who are anti-royal. In fact he claimed (admittedly facetiously) that Norman would be the only non-Royalist in the country. Well I know plenty, including myself. Like most of the others, I have nothing against the royal family as people. I just refuse to give them any special status and I certainly refuse to acknowledge the Queen as our head of state.
Most countries have a celebrity class. It might be movie stars, rock bands, or business tycoons to some people. In many cases these are fairly silly too, but at least those people have gained their celebrity status through some sort of talent or effort on their own part and not simply because of which family they were born into (yeah, OK, there is Paris Hilton, I know).
So in some ways, as silly as some people's adulation for movie stars is, at least it's better than the pathetic vicarious joy the Brits (and some loyal subjects in the old empire) get from royalty. The way they admire such a bunch of inbred, retarded parasites must be just about the most amusing spectacle ever!
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