Journalist Ian Dunt in the Independent four days ago articulated better than I could how I feel about it all overall.
”Isle of Wight MP Bob Seely said he’d introduce a private members bill to remove their royal status. Private members bills never go anywhere, of course. Without government support, they die on their arse, being debated in an empty Chamber on a Friday while MPs are in their constituency dealing with casework. But actual demonstrable change is never the purpose of culture war conflagrations. The purpose is to enhance the career of participants by virtuoso performances of empty moral outrage.
There’s quite a motley collection of cynics and dimwits up against the couple, and behind it all an unmistakable whiff of class condescension, hatred of youth, anti-American snobbery and outright racism. So the tendency on some parts of the liberal left has been to close ranks and treat them like heroes of social justice.
That is equally absurd, because what they are saying does not make the slightest bit of sense. It simply can’t be taken seriously, no matter how sympathetic you might try to be towards them. Meghan claims she “thought it was a joke” when told she would have to curtsy to the Queen. She then goes on to generically mock the whole procedure. “Pleasure to meet you, your majesty… was that okay?”
Is it really that surprising to learn that you have to curtsy the Queen? Exactly what kind of situation did she think she was entering into when she decided to marry a prince? A merry two-up-two-down in Wiltshire where they went out for a slap-up meal on Sundays?
Later she suggests that the fact she was a “hugger” was “jarring for a lot of Brits”. But it isn’t though, is it? Brits hug all the time. It’s probably just really not the done thing for the royal family, given that they mostly look as if they’ve been trained into never experiencing human emotions.
The clue really is in the name. This is probably the strangest family on the face of the earth. Entry gives you money beyond all rational calculation and fame beyond any conceivable limit. And it also brings with it a near-total rejection of the self and an invitation for the most obscene press intrusion into your life.
That’s a shit deal. I wouldn’t take it. But it is a deal which is really very obvious from the start. To pretend otherwise is extremely disingenuous and a bar on being able to take any of their other utterances seriously.
It’s all really very tiresome. It’s not hateful or obscene. There is no sensible basis to despise them. But it is profoundly boring.
It would be absurd to hope that this series might be the end of it. There’s too much of an industry around their little mini culture war battle now, both for the couple themselves and those who oppose them. But by God it should be. There’s nothing else to be extracted from this sad little story. Let them enjoy their sun-kissed life in California. Leave the Royal Family to their consensual form of withered emotional suffocation. Just let the whole thing die.”