The template for the period following Queen Elizabeth II’s passing has been assiduously sketched by Sam Knight in this fabulous 2017 piece in The Guardian — a piece that poignantly flashes forward to the absurdity and solemnity of the current moment.
Still, it is surreal to see it actually playing out — the blanket coverage of the queen’s passing and every detail since shrinks in comparison everything since the World Trade Center attacks (the fact 9/11’s 21st anniversary barely rated a mention when it fell this weekend is illustrative).
If you receive news update emails from the likes of The New Daily or The Age, you will know the queen’s coffin arriving in Edinburgh was the biggest news they had to carry this morning — and one suspects that every stop of her journey will get the same treatment until she is finally laid to rest on September 19. But this is far from the most absurd part of the coverage.
The ABC is forcing poor Michael Rowland to hang around outside Buckingham Palace in front of the camera, updating us on the goings-on at midnight (short version: not a lot, forcing him to interview a different ABC reporter in Scotland). US public broadcaster NPR has run a story about what will happen to the queen’s dogs. Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson are apparently getting two corgis but “it is still unclear who will look over Elizabeth’s two other dogs — a cocker spaniel named Lissy and a dachshund corgi hybrid named Candy. Some royal experts previously speculated that the dogs may be separated and given to various family members.”
But probably the most truly bonkers bit of clickbait so far is The Herald Sun printing the following piece about a royal fan “reportedly” spotting “the outline of the late monarch in a random cloud formation, just moments after the queen’s death”.
The hedging of the “reportedly” is entirely necessary, by the way; no amount of pareidolia can turn that cloud into a human head.
Of course, this coverage is as wide as the ocean and as deep as a puddle. It is curious, especially in Australia, that among the endless stories of fond personal reminiscences there is so little room for any even complicated feelings, so little about the dispossession and stolen wealth on which a monarchy cannot help but be built. So when Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi says she “cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples”, it gets attention on account of One Nation’s Pauline Hanson’s response that Faruqi ought to “piss off back to Pakistan”. In the current climate, it is Faruqi’s comments that are described as a slur.
my favourite reaction to this whole distraction was this post:
“What?! So the Queen is now going to be a King?!!! This WOKEness has really gone too far!”
also – I stand with Mehreen Faruqi
And I stand with Professor Jenny Hocking.
The palace letters revealed what Her Maj and close family really stood for – the maintenance of wealth and privilege, unchallenged by colonial upstarts like Gough Whitlam.
the new monarch identifies as a tampon! Why is Sky News not incandescent about this?!
And how much is it going to cost to change all the postboxes etc. from ‘ER to ‘IM?
The old cast iron red ones emblazoned with ERII were removed throughout NI during the Troubles, even on the ‘mainland’ in certain areas.
They could not be searched (except by Post Office personnel) and made perfect shrapnel with a relative small amount of Semtex.
The great Australian ‘cultural cringe’ on display once again – when will the Media stop the sickening ‘fawning’ and ‘toadying’ that we have forced to endure since Saturday?
It is truly horrifying that the ABC has become like a US cable network TV station which do that thing of covering one or two news items from every conceivable angle while ignoring other news in the world, and any skerrick of critical analysis. When I was there for work in 2004 it was (one of) J-Lo’s weddings, and the war in Iraq.
Pauline Hanson is no doubt grateful for the opportunity to appear ‘relevant’ once more, just months after narrowly avoiding the political wilderness. I wish she would “piss off” back to Ipswich.
Yeah, if Ipswich wants to put someone forward, let’s have Evil Eddie.
Its back to the 1950’s with the main stream media