I’m late commenting on the royal wedding due to having to recover from a drinking game I invented for the spectacle: you had to take a shot each time you see a parasite. Here’s a tip for anyone wanting to try this game next time: best play it in the emergency department of your local hospital to save time.
It isn’t that hard to understand the escapist appeal of the spectacle. It is fundamentally the same as the interest in the Kardashians and other celebrity lives, complete with fancy clothes, family drama and a preacher referencing slavery and Martin Luther King … OK, admittedly that last bit was unexpected.
Sure it cost the British taxpayer £32 million in a time of savage austerity, with 4.5 million British children living in poverty, and they physically removed homeless people from the area. But none of that is drastically different from when cities host huge sporting events like the Olympics, and at least Bruce McAvaney wasn’t commentating.
It was obscene, but not in an out of the ordinary way. The monarchy is a feudal relic, but one well-adapted to capitalism. Now capitalism has its critics, but it is a system that rewards intelligence and hard work, which is why the British head of state is determined entirely by birth.
OK, bad example. Capitalism rewards intelligence and hard work, which is why Donald Trump is a billionaire and president of the richest nation on Earth.
Look, it does have its good points. Some critics say it is nothing but a social system based on gross exploitation of people and planet, in which a tiny elite live in obscene wealth and billions suffer, but they clearly missed the awesome offer to buy one-piece bathing suits with Harry and Meghan’s faces printed on them.
Yeah that’s right, forget “but what about your smart phone” smart-arse answers to those who defend a social system that can only produce such technology in factories so terrible they put suicide nets to stop the modern day slaves from jumping. Now we finally have decisive evidence of just how socially vital capitalism truly is.
The online printing company Bags of Love is offering customers the chance to have the newly-wedded royals faces printed on anything customers want, which is exactly the sort of individual choice directing a free market that Adam Smith famously described in his 18th century treatise: An Inquiry Into How The Wealth of Nations Can be Built By Putting An Inbred Ginger's Chin Onto a One Piece Swimming Suit So It Sort of Looks A Bit Like The Wearers' Exposed Pubic Area.
According to News.com.au, the “royal creation” will set you back just under $70 plus postage, and notes: “If a swimsuit’s not your thing, there’s hundreds of themed merchandise springing up on the internet to buy. From a commemorative coin to tea towels, condoms, T-shirts and napkins, here are some of the wacky items on sale.”
Yes, that’s right, Harry and Meghan condoms! And some people criticise this system just because it is hurtling us towards an ecoholocaust with an economic set up so irrational its response to the melting of ice caused by burning fossil fuels is to rush at the chance for extra mining of fossil fuels.
Sure, maybe 62 people own 50% of the world's wealth while 25,000 children die every single day from mostly preventable causes, but take another look at those one-piece swimsuits before you rush to judgement.
Do you think these would be produced in, I don’t know, Cuba? I doubt it. Sure, the health care system in Cuba, despite being subjected to a decades-long blockade, ensures a lower infant mortality rate than the US, but what’s the point of raising children in a world where they cannot buy a swimsuit to allow Prince Harry’s chin to cover their groin?
The threat to our freedom to purchase such glorious products comes not just from the Caribbean. The leader of Her Majesty's Allegedly Loyal Opposition is Jeremy Corbyn, a self-confessed socialist. And his left-hand comrade is Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who just admitted to the BBC that his “job” is to “overthrow capitalism”.
His ridiculous justification was that he wanted to “radically challenge the system” because “only a few months ago we had a homeless person die within feet of a door at Parliament. I don’t want to live in a society like that.”
Yeah that’s right. No mention of Harry and Meghan condoms. Presumably such progress has no place in Comrade McDonnell’s socialist dystopia.
The system might be hurtling towards social and ecological catastrophe, but at least we get to watch inbred parasites flaunt their unearned privilege while wearing swimming gear with their faces splashed over it. So it has its good points.