A Royal Visit

Hon. James Moore plans out the Duke and Duchess' summer vacation:

James Moore is emerging as the minister most likely to show the young royals a good time. As Heritage Minister, it’s his job to play host to Prince William and his wife, Catherine, when they come to Canada in a couple of weeks.

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He’s young but experienced: This will be the third time Mr. Moore has played host to a royal couple – Prince Charles and Camilla in 2009 and Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip last year.

However, it’s different this time. Not only, he says, because of the “age part” but what he calls the “Hollywood-ization of them.” He’s referring to the intense publicity and interest surrounding William and Catherine, fuelled by their recent wedding.

You can get rid of a monarchy, you cannot ever get rid of the reason for monarchy. Part of that reason, somewhat lamentably to traditionalists, is the glossy-magazine aspect. There is a great swath of the people, even in the most advanced nations, that seek to live vicariously through the tabloid media. This is nothing new, though the nature of modern media has made the process far more rapacious. The peasants gossiping about their monarch's personal affairs was not then a vast and profitable industry.

It is one of the beneficial features of monarchy, especially one so well established and conservative as ours, is that it can direct this rather prurient interest toward, generally, more worthy objects. In the American Republic the fascination with the rich and famous tends to settle on Hollywood celebrities, among the most vapid creatures ever to draw breadth upon creation. There is not in that soulless place a stern matriarch calling her progeny, with varying degrees of success, back upon the path of relative decency. Hollywood: Nothings seeking to be exalted above the nil in a vast nowhere.

The great dig against the monarchy is that its operatives, if we may call the Royal Family that, have not earned their position. True. They have at the very least been taught how to behave like civilized human beings in public. A behavioural trait that is frequently missing among the "earned" elite of the modern media. Breeding isn't everything. Neither is a specious understanding of merit.