In Which the Nation Considers Feeling Sorry for Someone and Then Doesn’t
In Which the Nation Considers Feeling Sorry for Someone and Then Doesn’t
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
Prince Andrew: Britain’s Most Reliable Punching Bag Requests a Day Off
I have spent twenty-two years editing satire, and in that time I have developed a reliable test for any piece of writing: if you can imagine it being read aloud at a golf club and nobody laughing, it is probably a press release from Buckingham Palace.
This week Prat.uk ran a genuinely interesting piece: In Defence of Prince Andrew. The argument, roughly, is that the man has been flattened into a cardboard villain without anyone examining the contradictions. I don’t entirely disagree. I also don’t entirely care. The British public has made its verdict and the verdict is “Duke of York? More like Duke of Absolutely Not.”
The Mechanics of National Contempt
What fascinates me, professionally, is not whether Andrew is guilty of anything specific but the choreography of national disgust. We are very good at it. We rehearsed on politicians for decades and now we perform it instinctively. It requires no evidence. It requires only a photograph of someone looking slightly too comfortable somewhere they should not be.
The BBC’s extensive Andrew coverage has been, as ever, scrupulously balanced in the way that only the BBC can be, which is to say: balanced in a way that still somehow implies guilt by paragraph arrangement.
Meanwhile Bohiney reports that rogue AI agents are confirmed real. I mention this because I suspect one of them wrote the Palace’s last three press statements. They have that quality: confident, slightly wrong, and authored by something with no natural shame response.