Boda Real is Real Bull

Let's be clear about this: I am an American. And if there's one thing that is clearly positive about my heritage as an American, it is that my country was founded as a republic, divorced from the curse of royalty. Places with kings, queens, princes, princesses, czars, sultans, emperors,... however you may designate them, are plagued with essentially worthless people who inherit shameless amounts of wealth and have completely unmerited power to influence events in their countries. It is true that in today's world, most royalty is chiefly ceremonial and symbolic. But a lot of the reason for this change has been bloody revolts and wars against autocratic royal despots in the past. And to think that people are getting all excited and teary-eyed about a prince marrying his girlfriend in England? Unbelievable!

What makes things even worse are two buried news stories occurring at the same general time as this ludicrous event. Three hundred people, i.e. American people, have violently perished at the hands of an historic storm system that unleashed hundreds of tornadoes on heavily populated areas, chiefly in northern Alabama. And another historic event, the final launch of the space shuttle Endeavor, with its very important cargo for studying the basic nature of the universe, was slated for Friday (but postponed for at least two days due to last-minute technical problems). But no, let's push these stories to the background, dress our journalists and announcers in ridiculous costumes, and fly them overseas for non-stop coverage of this non-event!

What I think is also funny (or sad, depending on how you look at it) is how even much more engrossed in the British "boda real" my Spanish-language television station Univision has been, apparently in response to its viewing audience. This floors me, especially considering that for most of the Latin American countries, their struggle for independence from hegemonistic European royalty was even more traumatic than was the Americans' struggle against the British during the Revolutionary War.

But I suppose that part of this fascination with today's wedding stems from our childhood memories of so many stories revolving around royalty. So instead of being realistic about how parasitic on society the REAL royalty is, we impose our fantasy visions on these basically common, ordinary people and elevate them to an undeserving status.