The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited New York City for the first time this week. What was the point of their trip, a vacation? To this observer, it didn’t deserve the type of mania that was generated.
William and Kate’s first trip to the city illustrated several things about how it has changed and the differences between American and British society. It showed that Brooklyn is, in effect, its own city, that it has become an internationally recognized destination — the royal couple never would have crossed the famous bridge 20 years ago — and that meritocracy and democracy are alive and well in the U.S.
Across the pond, maybe not.
The hoopla over their trip, while understandable as a novelty, gets completely lost after about five seconds. When it comes down to it, Prince William and Kate Middleton are nothing more than more famous people who never did anything to get there. Their money, power and influence was bestowed upon them.
Not to attack them personally — by all accounts, they are decent, caring people as William, on a brief solo side trip to Washington, D.C., spoke to the World Bank about stopping illegal wildlife trade and both visited the 9/11 Memorial — but William and Kate are just the British versions of the way in which celebrities like Kim Kardashian can make headlines without ever really doing anything meaningful or relevant.
Reports had the royals “creating a buzz” in New York as people waited on the street in the cold to catch a glimpse of their tinted-window limousine.
William and Kate took in the sights of the city, sat courtside at a Brooklyn Nets game and chatted with Beyonce and Jay-Z — but created traffic jams across downtown Brooklyn before they got to the Barclays Center and didn’t even show until the third quarter.
Seeing Jay-Z and Beyonce sit courtside shows we value hard work. The same cannot be taken from seeing the Duke and Duchess there.
American celebrities are , for the most part, people who found a talent and a way to use that skill to make money from it; royalty are simply born into it.
Now, Kate Middleton was not born a royal — she was plucked from obscurity to become a princess. Isn’t that nice?
No, actually not, because it speaks to something troubling in Western culture: The storybook myth that we are all just one chance encounter away from living on Easy Street.
It’s the same myth that lures people, mostly poor folks, to buy lottery tickets and gamble their limited earnings.
As an American who believes in democracy and meritocracy, I find the obsession over the British royal family annoying, and while I hope they had a good time in New York, I don’t understand why it’s a big deal they came to visit.
Why does British society support a royal family, anyway? It’s a vestige of an undemocratic, colonial system. The royal family lives on the taxes of hard working people of the United Kingdom. Bey and Jay-Z are self-made — princes or dukes and duchesses are not.
The royals are not and live off society while providing nothing but waves and attending conferences.
Bey and Jay got to sit courtside because of their personal and commercial success, which they worked to achieve. Kate and the Duke are just lucky.
British society values meritocracy as well, but what’s with some of the vestiges of the big, bad British Empire remaining?
The House of Lords, the upper chamber of the legislature, and the royal family are outdated insults to the people who make that country run. Clinging to the past and old titles is also an affront to all the poor, struggling countries that are still suffering from the history of colonial exploitation.
American girls play with princesses, then they grow up and enter the real world.
Apparently, the plucked-from-the-street-into-royalty myth is still alive and well in the United Kingdom.
Noah Zuss is a reporter for TheBlot Magazine.
One Comment
Leave a Reply