Tuesday, September 18, 2012

WAYT: Clothes on, mouth shut



Right now, it’s a tie for “Most Media Ignorant” between Mitt Romney and Kate Middleton. 

Yesterday, Mitt Romney was secretly recorded saying some rather unflattering things about the American public.  Last week, nearly all of Kate Middleton’s physical form was revealed in the tabloids. 

What are those two thinking? 

In our world today, did either of them really expect any level of privacy?  All the Republicans have done since Sarah Palin is complain about the “gotcha” media.  Did Mitt forget that there is never an “off” moment?  And did Kate learn nothing from the princes and princesses who came before her?  She really shouldn’t think that there’s any safe place to take off all her clothes.  If I were her, I’d worry about my own bedroom.

I certainly feel that Kate should be able to take a vacation and escape from the ever-present paparazzi.  But she can’t.  And I certainly feel that Mitt Romney should be able to confide with his people about his true feelings about the American electorate.  But there’s always some margin of risk, and they both know that. 

For these individuals, the revelations of these unguarded moments are ill-timed and unwelcome.  Kate is the new People’s Princess.  Mostly everyone loves her and is charmed by her low-maintenance and unassuming persona.  Mitt is trying to be our next president, so he wants everyone to like him and be charmed by his persona, whatever that may be. 

There definitely isn’t enough outrage over what Mitt said.  His comments are insulting.  But I have to say, I really don’t follow his logic.  If, according to him, nearly 1 in 2 Americans expect a hand-out and are so lazy and uninterested in life as we know it, does he really believe that those people vote?  We all have the right to vote, but of course not everyone does.  So Mitt, I find your statements to be false.  And rude.  The disenfranchised (whether by unemployment, injury, disability or yes, laziness) don’t expect to change their lives at the ballot box; they start at their local non-profit organizations or government offices.  If you don’t like that (who does?), give me a solution, not a dismissive one-liner.

There should be outrage over what happened to Kate, and I really think the media (who aren’t publishing the nude photos) is getting the tone about right.  Maybe you could see her nudity from the street – with a super-zoom camera lens – but that doesn’t mean you put it in a magazine like it’s a Playboy spread.  I guarantee that if Kate had seen that photographer, she would have been horribly mortified and had the person arrested immediately.  Now she’s had her entire body exposed to the world.  For any woman who isn’t an exhibitionist, and Kate certainly appears to prefer modesty, there is nothing worse than something like this.  I don’t blame her for pressing charges.  I find this to be a criminal invasion also.

(Maybe it’s seems hypocritical of me to approve of the media coverage of Prince Harry’s nudity but not Kate’s.  The difference here is that Harry was getting naked for a whole room full of people.  Kate was with her husband, in a private, secluded place.  Surely she intended for no one BUT William to see her.  I live for celebrity gossip and I didn’t even know she was on vacation.)

Even for me, who is basically no one in the grand scheme of the universe, little more than a tiny speck on the planet Earth, I expect no reasonable amount of privacy.  Facebook tracks my every move, my employer can read all of my emails even if I delete them or never send them, and my cell phone is constantly broadcasting my location.  No one, least of all those in the spotlight, should be surprised that everything they do is newsworthy, and blows up exponentially whenever it falls outside the lines. 

We live in a guarded time – one that makes us insular and ignorant.  It restricts us, and it’s making our society ugly.  Some of us stalk out princesses in order to show their goods to the entire world without their knowledge or permission.  Some of us set up presidential candidates to make unflattering, blanket statements about huge segments of our population on camera, and then share them anonymously with every news organization under the sun with the goal of discrediting the target.  That doesn’t make what Mitt said entirely wrong, or what Kate did entirely right.  But it should force us to look at ourselves through a magnified lens too. 

What are we thinking, that this is what we have become?  I, for one, am embarrassed for all of us.