Boycott Boston News Coverage of the British Royal Wedding

The eyes of a growing number of Bostonians are doubtless locked on the growing media frenzy surrounding the wedding of William Mountbatten-Windsor and Catherine Middleton. The wedding of a young couple does not normally occasion such excitement in the local press - especially the wedding of a couple in another country. But this is a royal wedding. And not just any royal wedding. A British royal wedding. The wedding of the son of the late Diana Frances Spencer - better known as Diana, Princess of Wales, just as her son is better known as Prince William of Wales. As a human being to other human beings, I cannot but wish them well and hope their marriage goes a lot better than William’s parents' did. But as an American, I have a real problem with both the idea of royalty and the fact of American networks - and local Boston affiliates - lining up to offer soup-to-nuts coverage of the proceedings. Why? Because unlike corporate news execs, I remember my junior high civics class. A class I used to chafe at having to take, but now feel warm and fuzzy towards - to the extent that I happily join some fellow progressives and many conservatives in decrying the elimination of civics classes from school curricula around the country. I mean, come on. This is a democracy, folks. The opposite of a monarchy. And this democratic nation was founded on the belief that no people are more “noble” than any other people. That we are all equal under the law. That we all get a say - admittedly a diminishing say - in how our (extremely flawed and increasingly unstable) government runs its affairs. So why exactly are we supposed to be so excited about a wedding that is meant to perpetuate the useless appendage of the British state that is the House of Windsor and all of the “nobility” that surrounds it? Shouldn’t we join with British republicans and laborites that have long called for the abolition of the monarchy? Shouldn’t we back the seizure of its huge assets and its many vast properties by the British government; so that they can be used by the people of the UK - who, in fairness, made such wealth possible to begin with and continue to pay about $200 million a year for the furtherance of the monarchy?

Also, I must ask: is not Boston the cradle of the American Revolution? Aren’t Bostonians supposed to know pretty much better than anyone else why the Revolution was fought and which side Americans are supposed to come down on in any discussion of monarchy versus republic?

In a time of growing political and economic turmoil - caused in no small part by billionaires like the Windsor family - the last thing we should be celebrating is this execrable extension of feudal rule into the 21st century. I understand that people like to see all the pageantry and like to relive childhood fantasies of being princes and princesses and whatever, but frankly, I find the whole thing unseemly and think that people should do their part to punish American news organizations (yeah, I’m lookin’ at you WBZ-TV Channel 4, WCVB-TV Channel 5, and WHDH-TV Channel 7) that shove this spectacle in our faces by boycotting all coverage of the royal wedding beyond appropriately brief wire service mentions of the event (“And finally today there was a royal wedding in the UK. Up next, weather.”). We’ll see how fast they are to cover future royal anything if their ratings drop like a rock this time around.

Not that I think a community news weekly like Open Media Boston has the power to cause that big of a reaction (though that would be nice), but I'd like to think that many locals will instinctively do the right thing and say “this royal wedding business has nothing to do with us, we’re Americans” and just watch anything else than that on the 29th.

Here’s hoping that Bostonians stay away from royal wedding coverage in droves. And that any media outlets that cover that unfortunate event really take it on the chin with a greatly diminished audience that day.

Coming up next week ... more Stupid State House Tricks!

Jason Pramas is Editor/Publisher of Open Media Boston