The Nonsense of Prince George

The earlier Prince George, 2nd Duke of Cambridge

The feeding frenzy that greeted the arrival of the newest member of the royal family last week was peculiarly repellent.  I first encountered mass hysteria - excluding of course the howls of teeny-boppers at rock concerts - with the death of Princess Diana.  In the law-firm I was working in at the time, any suggestion that Diana was other than immaculate would have had you lynched by almost every member of the female staff.  Personally, I had always found her beautiful but at the same time manipulative - and, dare I say it, in some ways she contributed to her final, if undeniably tragic, departure.

I have no such ambivalence as regards the royal infant.  But the news on the easel outside Buckingham Palace, giving brief details of the birth, was enough information.  If the media had been given the chance, paparazzi would have been pointing their lenses at the Duchess's private parts during the whole process.  It was almost impossible to avoid detailed commentary - pages of newsprint and what seemed an eternity of broadcasting time.  Then, to add to it all, articles appeared in the Sunday broadsheets about how excessive the earlier coverage had been.  No better example could be found of the media feeding on themselves.

There does seem to be an increasing tide of trivia around.  Social media have not helped.  The Facebook postings of posturing wannabes have opened far too many windows on dreary lives, and the endless tweets of self-appointed role models don't help.  I've been following two eminent poets on Twitter, whose endless tweets have, I'm afraid, entirely degraded them as far as I'm concerned.  I'd like the odd uplifting comment, please, not a stream of self-conscious gibber.

I suppose that my concern, finally, is the collapse of underlying moral values that give context and dimension to social behaviour.  If you have no defined moral framework then any behaviour becomes permissible.  Put that together with a decline in education and a rise in yob culture and what do you get?  the relentless advance of the gutter press, with all its prurient fascination in the details of private life.  

God help Prince George and his parents!

Antony Mair