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.
