In all the press coverage I have seen of Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Meghan and Harry, it has been treated as a tale of personal tragedy, a terrible racist family squabble, for the British royals — but not one mention of the larger tragedy at the heart of Heathcote Williams’s “Royal Babylon,” namely the immense damage caused by the monarchy’s greedy, rapacious treatment of peoples and nations the worldover.
Wife insisted on watching the interview, and I gave it a try, but veered from incredulity to laughter. If Team Sussex had been able to go with Plan 1 – the semi Royal branding, website, etc. this interview would never have happened. As it happens, Plan 2 will turn out to be the far more lucrative option, the martyred Showgirl and the Prince tale. Meghan had the crushed Diana tone down pat, but nuanced by her own thespianism. Oprah kept giving up her OMG face, when the production signalled that all the big reveals were pre-set. They had graphics ready to drop in with phony headlines to show the deluge of racism that MM had to contend with whilst being oppressed by the Windsor toadies. The disclaimer at the outset of not being paid for doing the interview might play with the public, but the millions of views worldwide is of a value almost beyond measurement. It would have been wonderful to have Heathcote’s observations on what – otherwise possibly nice, not especially gifted – people, will sink to for the “first disgrace” of poisonous fame.
Oprah, of course, has form with this sort of thing.
Yes, i noticed that OMG face, which looked to me rehearsed. i should also have mentioned the damage done to wildlife by the royal family’s horrifying bird slaughters on hunts in the local countryside and by animal kills on globe-girdling trophy safaris and, not least, by its plundering of nature—all of which Heathcote’s indictment describes in excoriating detail.
absolutely Jan–
those Battenburgs should have had the standard guillotine treatment a long time ago. but there they still are, headed by that old cow “her vagina so old it’s haunted. her backpassage resembling a cat-flap.” we should be eternally grateful to Heathcote for his observations.
and for those who are curious about where that notion of the haunted vagina backpassage cat flap comes from, tiz from another of Heathcote’s poems too:
http://internationaltimes.it/the-queens-reign-is-ending/