I've been a bit disconcerted at the level of unmitigated adulation that's been showered on the late queen by the media. I have nothing bad to say about Elizabeth II but I too do my job every day -- without a staff of hundreds to prepare my breakfast -- and I don't think I will be sanctified the day I keel over. It's all so serious and deeply conservative you'd think we are back in the 1950. In the 1970s Monty Python were allowed to laugh at anything on national television, I suspect that would not be possible today.
I like and admire the Queen, but I also wonder about this. How much of our admiration is the result of the British media giving the Queen essentially 100% positive coverage at all times for 70 years straight?
(Unlike politicians, who will be gone in 4 years or so anyway, media outlets are terrified of upsetting the royal family, who are permanent).
it is weird. Even bloomberg seems to have a newfound religious worship of the british monarchy
I understand that it is popular among the general public because fairytales and costumes and stuff , but i have to shake my head at how some reporters talk seriously about "peaceful transition of power", when there is no power
If this institution lacked power, would it be featured 24/7 internationally, whether we like or not? So maybe there is in fact some unspoken power involved here, even though we're told "it is ceremonial". Sometimes makes you wonder, did the British Empire really die or is it like the un-Dead Soviet Union waiting in the wings to make a comeback?
yes it is dead. this elaborate show is useful to some businesses but irrelevant to the rest of the world. Whatever 'power' comes with celebrity, it's impossible no to have a 'peaceful transition of power' when one of the parties has kicked the bucket.
> it's impossible no to have a 'peaceful transition of power' when one of the parties has kicked the bucket.
I don't think [this is] how power works, specially in a monarchy. Peaceful transition means the power base that has given fealty to Mr. X is now accepting Mr. Y. That is the 'transition'.
That's funny. No. They can put their support behind another contender than Mr. Y (and English history has it's share of examples of crisis of succession, btw). In that case different factions that actually hold power get to duke it out to see whose candidate gets to be the new monarch/overlord/cesar/president. That is typically not peaceful, certainly not at the political level (think Tower of London) and may even involve actual guns and civil wars.
As an American I find it a little weird that Biden ordered flags at half staff until the queen's funeral is over -- 11 days in total I think. I mean she is the queen, and she has been the queen since before most of us, and some of our parents, were born, but she isn't /our/ queen.
I guess it's not that unusual though to lower the flag for a few days on the death of a foreign leader. Apparently we went 3 days for Shinzo Abe. Nothing for Gorbachev, though. (Maybe it would have been worth it just to annoy Putin.) Not sure when the last time was we went 11 days or more for a non-US figure.
She's still a kind of English speaking world figurehead even if there was a spot of bother with that independence kerfuffle over in the American colonies.
I'm not so sure about your last statement: what's considered "acceptable" is always changing so you might be right, but I think there's always been people out there trying to block things so I'm not convinced this is new behaviour.
> In 1979, Monty Python's Life of Brian was considered so controversial it was given an X certificate and banned from some British cinemas.
Why in the world are you disconcerted? There is nothing surprising about the adulation at all, it's been this way for literally decades. Were all these people who are "shook" and "jarred" in a coma?
