Note the hypertext link in the upper right-hand corner.
The Guardian today is providing readers online with a “Not a Royalist?” button, which they can click and get less coverage of the royal baby that’s on the way as we speak.
Which is really kind of irritating. I mean, what a time to bring politics into the thing. Oh, the Duchess is having a baby, so let’s grouse about how we hate the monarchy… Like labor isn’t enough of a hassle as things are.
There a certain sort of Brit who suffers from a kind of Jacobin insecurity, who feels compelled to signal to the world at every opportunity that While you may think everyone in what you imagine to be Jolly Old England is all gaga over this baby, and gets misty-eyed about the royals in general, I, for one, am not one of those sheep. I am a forward-thinking modern. Apparently, some editor at The Guardian is that sort of Brit. Michael Palin used to do a pretty good job of sending up that type of pretentious twit.
It bugs me because… hey, we know The Guardian’s political leanings, but it’s still a newspaper, and a good one. And saying to readers, we’ll give you news according to your personal political prejudices kind of undermines what remains of the idea of the newspaper as something that embodies the idea that there is such a thing as news that is news regardless what you think of it.
A newspaper should stand for Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s dictum that “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
It’s the political nature of this that bugs me. Left and right in this country, and probably in that one, can already wrap themselves in a cocoon that contains only facts that fits their own prejudices, and that is why we’re so polarized today. It’s a very destructive thing. Newspapers, to the extent that we still have them, should be islands on which we can stipulate that certain things are news whether we want to hear about them or not. They should be touchstones of reality, a place where we can check in once a day and agree on a few basic points before spending the rest of the 24 hours arguing.
Now when you get beyond politics, I’ll admit that there’s a certain appeal to this idea. For instance, it would be great to be able to hit a button that would immediately reduce football coverage to a reasonable level (at least when it isn’t football season), or do the same with celebrity gossip.
To me, not being one of Her Majesty’s subjects, celebrity gossip is the category into which royal babies fit. At least, at the level of coverage we’ve seen. The birth of the first child of the first child of the prince of Wales actually is news, of the “take note of” variety. We just don’t have to go on and on about it.
But that’s a matter of taste, not politics.
I don’t know how many takers there are for the “republican” option among The Guardian‘s readers today. Even if you click on the “not a royalist” button, when you scroll down you see that the top story is “Royal baby: Kate admitted to hospital for birth – live coverage.”
And I don’t think that means people are necessarily “royalists.” They’re just interested. It’s not a political statement. Unless you’re just really, really pretentious.
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No comments yet? I guess none of y’all are “royalists,” then…
We just don’t have to go on and on about it.
Well, I suppose it’s kind of inside baseball. But for me, it spoke to something essential about newspapers and the role they have played in our culture in my lifetime.
I would like a “no celebrity gossip” button. I’m tired of celebrity gossip being treated like news. Of course, Kate having a baby is different…I always like babies, and this baby may be the queen/king someday. So I have a passing interest.
That’s about what I think too, Pat…
And it seemed like sort of first to me. I can’t think when I’ve seen a major newspaper offer a link to click on if you don’t like a certain kind of news…
They had a boy.
So I guess all that trouble they went to to change the rules so that a firstborn daughter would inherit the throne even if she had younger brothers is all kind of moot.
Boy after boy, generation after generation. Henry VIII would have been quite envious of the House of Windsor…
It;s a boy! (see you couldn’t escape it)
You’d think that, with this family, having another boy wouldn’t be that big a deal.
Now in MY family, after eight girls in a row, the birth of my grandson last year was real “man bites dog” stuff…
OK, here’s something I wish I HAD escaped…
Speaking of media firsts…
Only minutes ago, at the very top of the CNN main page, above the “IT’S A BOY!” headline, there was a “Breaking News” item that said, in large type, “Kensington Palace source: Prince William remained at Catherine’s side throughout her labor, and the baby was born vaginally.”
Apparently, someone at CNN decided that the world really wasn’t ready for that word in a news banner, and it came down. But just in case you think I’m making this up, here’s a screenshot.
Sometimes people just get a little carried away…
“and the baby was born vaginally”
I hear it was conceived the same way.
Any minute, I expect a bulletin to the effect that “Sources close to the Crown report that his Highness has soiled his first nappy.”
TMI!