Boy George

Not such a longshot after all. People goes with a royal baby cover for the second week in a row, with one of my other choices (Aniston) in a secondary headline. No sign of Huma Abedin on the cover, although there may be something about her inside the mag. It's hard to believe People would skip the chance to write about a juicy sexting scandal. In fact, hold that thought. Huma could still show up on the cover next week.

The New Issue

Tuesday night update:  One more guess for tomorrow's cover story: Huma Abedin.

I'm back to playing my old game, trying to guess what will be the cover story on the new issue of People magazine. Sometimes it's obvious, as with last week's royal baby cover, sometimes it's obvious in hindsight, like the "Cleveland Three" cover a few weeks ago, and sometimes I'm completely surprised. My guesses for the next issue, in no particular order:

• Brooks rejects Des, a Bachelorette story 
• Jennifer Aniston plays a stripper in her new movie, "We're the Millers"
• Real Housewives of NJ star Teresa Giudice is free on bond after being charged with federal fraud 
• Longshot:  another royal baby story

I'm assuming that one of these days we'll get a Kim Kardashian baby cover, but that could be this week or three months from now. People.com posts the new cover on Wednesday mornings so I'll know soon if I was right. Stay tuned.

Things I Don't Care About

Prince George's circumcision. Or not.

On the other hand, it's fun to hear grampa Prince Charles say the baby will be known as Georgie.

Love it!

Continuity

Well, here he is, and here's how People is covering it. Other than the baby's name, everything that needed to happen has happened and I'm certainly planning to move on to other things in my head, at least for a while. Even for someone who's as "into" the royals as I am, the fooforah over this baby seems just a bit excessive, and I found myself wondering, as the 10,000 photographers who camped out at the hospital got their "money shot" yesterday, was it really worth it? Sitting there for three weeks? Since every photog on the planet had the exact same picture, no one's going to get rich on it and there were times when the whole thing seemed just plain silly.

On the other hand... Continuity. The British monarchy has been around for over 1,000 years and if this baby lives as long as his great grandmother the Queen, he'll be sitting on the throne in the year 2100, which is a really daunting thought. He may not have any real impact on my life, or on the lives of most of the other people who were breathlessly waiting for the first picture of him, but he's not a Kardashian. He's part of something real.

So, welcome baby Cambridge, but for now it's on to other things. Who knows what else will catch my attention and get my blogger juices flowing. Whatever - talk to you soon!

A Visit From The "Other" Grandparents (Get Thy Royal Rump to London, Charlie)

Kate's parents, Carole and Mike Middleton, have visited their new grandson in the hospital, the only visitors so far in the 24 hours since the baby was born. The Daily Beast's Royal Watch blogger has some interesting comments about the visit. First this:
How fantastic to see Carole and Michael Middleton enter the hospital in London this afternoon to visit their new grandchild.
While Prince Charles blithely continues his tour of York in Northern England, adamant that he will stick to the Royal Family's ludicrous "no-fuss" policy which involves not visiting each other when they are in hospital, Carole and Michael show how things are done in the real world.
No wonder William calls Mike "Dad". The Middletons have faced ridiculous levels of abuse for being too posh, too rich or not posh or not rich enough, but here's the facts - a pair of very successful middle class business people are now the grandparents of the future King.
That truly is a remarkable transformation at the very top of British society.
Carole and Mike looked absolutely delighted as they made their way out of a black cab - could there be any more democratic mode of transport? - and up the steps to be greeted by medical staff.
No wonder Kate is planning to spend her first weeks of motherhood surrounded by these honest, hard-working and utterly refreshing people. 

Followed by this:  
The royals no-hospital-visit strategy because "we don't want to cause a fuss" isn't working anymore. Its absolutely ludicrous that Charles is cutting ribbons in York not visiting his heir's heir. Worse, it risks making him look like he doesn't care, when in fact he does.
Get thy royal rump to London, Charlie. The fuss is already happening. The disruption is already unimaginable. And, whisper it, Carole and Mike with their open, generous style are a bigger draw than you. 

Interesting.

It's A Boy (Good-bye To Princess Charlotte)

And I admit, I'm slightly disappointed. I had really been hoping for, and more or less expecting, a girl, for no specific reason other than I thought it would be cool. Here in the blog I've been referring to the baby as Princess Charlotte since July 4, but you know, never mind. Some random thoughts:

The birth of a boy takes the whole "changing the law to let a girl inherit the throne" issue off the table for another generation. As I understand it the law has been changed in the U.K. but not all of the Commonwealth countries have signed off on it yet. Now presumably they've got 25 years or more to work it out. I loved Tina Brown's tweet: "Now the royals can stop pretending they were fine with a girl first." Tradition dies hard!

It was 8.30 p.m. or so in London when the birth was finally announced, and before the announcement some of the reporters I follow on Twitter had started to fuss about what would happen if the baby didn't show up until tomorrow. Given that William's first act of fatherhood was expected to be a phone call to his granny The Queen and no-one else could be told first, serious reporters were actually tweeting about what time Her Madge might go to bed, how early she might get up in the morning, would the news really keep all night if the baby was born at midnight, etc. Never mind that too. It turns out he was born at 4.24 p.m., and apparently the new parents just felt like having some private bonding time as a family before letting the whole world know. Good for them!

For all the talk that Kate's mum Carole and possibly sis Pippa would be with her for the birth, that doesn't appear to have been the case. Will Kate take the little prince back to Bucklebury for a few weeks? Could be.

What will they name the baby? Everything I read says it will a traditional "royal" name and the young prince will probably have at least four names. Grampa Charles's full name is Charles Phillip Arthur George; Will's is William Arthur Phillip Louis. One CNN talking head noted the presence of "Arthur" in both Dad and Grampa's names and said that is a strong possibility for this child too, noting that "it's cool again but not celebrity weird." We'll see.

The heir and the spare? It's probably safe to assume that at some point in the future there will be another Cambridge baby and I was fascinated by this comment from a BBC reporter: At some point there may well be a younger sibling - but perhaps just the one, as the Royal Family appear to have understood the problems of producing too many young royals, all of whom require a role. The problems of producing too many young royals? Yikes. The things one must worry about when one is royal.

Finally, the math. The Queen is currently 87 years old. If William lives that long, this new baby won't get to be King until 2069, when he'll be 56 years old. Lots of interesting things to happen in the meantime, so for now, I'll simply say welcome to the baby who isn't Princess Charlotte, and of course, long live the Queen!

Something Happened

Finally! I woke up this morning to the big news that Kate has finally gone into labor and been admitted to the hospital. It's exciting but I also couldn't help but laugh. Some of the photographers have been camping outside the hospital door for *three weeks* and Will and Kate gave them the slip by entering via a side door. (Short Sorkin reference:  That was predictable.) The Daily Mail has a picture of what it says is the car they arrived in but really, who knows?

Anyway I went back and re-read the People magazine cover story about William's birth and there are some similarities. Kate is in the same hospital, and like Diana, she arrived early on a Monday morning in the summertime. William was born about 15 hours later and Prince Charles was in the room. How long will Kate's labour take? (Note that in the spirit of the day I'm using the British spelling.) No way to know but Twitter is on it and we'll all know soon.

Back To The Baby

Still no news from London and after a brief diversion to blog about the Olympics I'm back on the #greatKatewait, and I thought it would be fun to look at Kate's pregnancy through the lens of People magazine cover stories. They all look pretty much alike to me and they certainly aren't breaking any real news, but still. I'm always interested in People's view of the world. There have been four cover stories since the pregnancy was announced and of course there will be another as soon as the baby is actually born.

Other Things In My Head

This blog was never intended to be "all royal baby, all the time," and even if it was, there's nothing happening in London, so I decided it's time to post new stuff about one of my other regular blog topics, the Olympics.

The Sochi Winter Games are 201 days, or 6 1/2 months, away, per the countdown clock on the official olympic.org website. If you've never heard of Sochi and don't know where it is, let me enlighten you: it's a city in Russia. And yes, the world has changed since the last Games in Russia, or as it was known in 1980, the U.S.S.R., but not that much. Just this week a United States senator floated the idea that we should boycott the 2014 games to protest Russia's sheltering of leaker Edward Snowden. The idea didn't get much traction, happily, so the Games can proceed with just the usual amount of geopolitical posturing and politics.

I like the countdown clock, by the way, and check it periodically, which is how I know that the 2016 Summer Games, which are not being held in Chicago, are 1111 days away, followed by the Pyeongchang Winter Games in 2018, or 1664 days from now. Before any of that happens, however, the site of the 2020 Summer Games will be announced on September 7, and the cities in contention are Istanbul, Tokyo and Madrid. Japan's had the games three times before, 1964 (summer,) 1972 and 1998 (winter); Spain's had them once, in 1992 (summer.) Tokyo and Madrid were also finalists for the 2016 games. Will either country repeat in 2020 or will the IOC selection committee go with Istanbul? We'll know in 7 weeks.

Word Of The Day

Dystopia. I've seen this word several times recently and I realized I didn't really know what it means. From dictionary.com:  "a society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease and overcrowding." To see the word in use check out this story at the Daily Beast, titled America's Dystopian New Normal.

Great, Great, Great

A little genealogy on Saturday morning. Have you been wondering what Princess Charlotte's relationship to Queen Victoria will be? Neither have I, really, but for some reason I started thinking about it this morning, with nothing else going on in London, so here goes:

Prince William     Father
Prince Charles     Grandfather
Queen Elizabeth   Great Grandmother
King George VI     Great, Great Grandfather
King George V      Great, Great, Great Grandfather
King Edward VII    Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather
Queen Victoria     Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandmother

So who cares, right? Just passing the time during the great Kate wait.

Last Time Around

Nothing has changed on the #GreatKateWait, and I'm passing the time thinking about, or more specifically, trying to remember, how I heard the news that Prince William had been born, 31 years ago, which is also an exercise in "how things have changed" in terms of how we get information and news. Truth is, I don't remember exactly how I heard. In 1982, I lived in an apartment and went to work in an office every day. The prince was born at about 9.00 the night of Monday, June 21, which is early afternoon in Portland, Oregon where I lived. I don't remember if I had a computer on my desk in those days, but if I did, it would have been just a "dumb terminal" connected to a mainframe. There was no internet, no websites, no live-streaming Lindo Wing baby cam. Smart phones weren't around yet either so I couldn't check my Twitter feed every 15 minutes, which is pretty much what I'm doing now.

So how did we get information back in the olden days? I may have heard the news on the radio as I drove home from work, or on the evening news on television. It's even possible I didn't find out until the next morning, watching the Today show or Good Morning, America as I got ready for work. (How prehistoric does that sound? These days I fully expect to learn about this royal baby, pretty much instantaneously, on Twitter.) There was also a funny little document known as the morning newspaper, although even in those days I didn't subscribe to one. I do remember that a few days later I left work at lunchtime and drove to a grocery store to buy the new issue of People magazine, pictured above. It'll all be different when Princess Charlotte arrives and if you'll excuse me, I have to go check my Twitter feed. Stay tuned...

Did Will And Kate Punk The Press?

Princess Charlotte's not here yet on Thursday morning and frankly the whole royal baby watch thing is beginning to feel a little silly. Somehow July 13 got into the atmosphere as the due date, apparently based on a "tip" to a newspaper, but ha, ha, ha, I think that was just a big fake-out. Now reporters are "remembering" an article from the Sunday Telegraph at the end of May, quoting Kate's mother that the baby will be (astrologically) a Leo, which means a birth no earlier than July 23, five days from now. (Note this blog's reference to said report in a post on Sunday.)

Not only that, but with Kate believed to be waiting it out at her parents' home 55 or so miles from London, there's talk that if necessary, she could give birth at the local hospital there, rather than at the posh Lindo Wing of St. Mary's in London, which I think would actually be hilarious. Talk about punking the press - all those reporters have been staring at the door of the Lindo Wing since July 2, and Kate gives birth in Bucklebury. For now, nothing to do but keep on waiting. The baby really does have to be born eventually.

Waity Katie Baby-Cam

Okay, this is cool.  A British website is live-streaming the front door of the Lindo Wing at St. Marys, the hospital in London where Kate will give birth.  She'll probably sneak in via a side door, but the palace has promised that Princess Charlotte and her parents will depart via this door, for the whole world to see.

14 Years Ago

It was 14 years ago tonight that John Kennedy, his wife and her sister died in a plane crash and recently I found myself thinking about him and wondering how his life would have turned out if he had lived. He'd be 52 now, turning 53 in November, older than President Obama. Would he have run for office? Gotten a divorce? Had kids? No way to know for sure, of course. I actually doubt he would have run for President, as some have suggested but you never know. I don't mean to imply that his death was any more tragic than anyone else's, just because he was rich, famous and good-looking, but it's still sad to think about. If nothing else, it's a reminder that life is short and you never know what might happen.

Telling Truth To Stupid

A few weeks ago, Angelina Jolie announced that she had had a preventative double mastectomy, based on test results indicating that she was at high risk for breast cancer. Some of the resulting press coverage expressed concern that her announcement could lead to an increase in unnecessary surgeries, as women might rush out to have the same procedure even though the specific genetic indicator is actually extremely rare. At the time I was thinking, Really? Do people really take medical advice from or make health decisions based on what a celebrity says/does? To be clear, Jolie wasn't actually giving medical advice, at least not about treatment, but still. Would any woman really have her breasts removed because Angelina Jolie did?

I'm thinking about that today as I read some of the reactions to Jenny McCarthy's selection as the new co-host on ABC's The View. McCarthy strongly advocates that parents not vaccinate their children because she claims vaccines cause autism. She's entitled to think whatever she wants, of course, but because she's famous, at least in a C-list kind of way, she has a microphone. She's written some books and appeared on Oprah and I think she has (or had) a blog or website. Serious people, including James Poniewozik at Time magazine, Michael Specter at the New Yorker and Alex Pareene at Salon are criticizing ABC for hiring McCarthy, saying that she could cause the deaths of real children whose parents don't vaccinate because Jenny McCarthy tells them not to. Once again I'm saying, Really?

Sounds to me, as Aaron Sorkin says in The Newsroom, that it's time for someone to tell truth to stupid. I'm not talking about McCarthy. She sounds like an idiot but that's not my point. I'm talking about the parents. Taking medical advice from Jenny McCarthy? That's the real stupid.

Erupted Like Mushrooms

Is something, anything, about to happen in London? I'm linking to this fun article from the Sun-Times' Michael Sneed, saying that apparently Prince William has cancelled his engagements for the next three days. Royalty watchers are holding their breath...

Hint: A New Royal Baby Is Imminent

Update:  This New York Times article is actually interesting, with fun details about how information will flow once the baby is born.

The reporters hanging out across the street from the royal hospital are probably bored out of their minds and scrambling for anything even remotely newsworthy to write about. Still, I had to laugh when I saw this story from The Daily Mail. Apparently Camilla has given the "strongest hint yet that a new royal baby is imminent." Really? The strongest hint? Is there anyone on the planet who doesn't already know that the birth is imminent?

C'mon Princess Charlotte. Be born already and put an end to this agony of waiting and silly news stories.

I Was Distracted By A Bumblebee and Your Garbage Can Is On Fire

In this world it seems that you're either an Aaron Sorkin fan, or not. There are no doubt people who have never heard of him and never watched any of his stuff, but those who have generally aren't neutral. Sorkin fans think he's brilliant, creative, entertaining, instructional and funny. Sorkin haters think he's self-important and self-referential, didactic, misogynistic and self-righteously liberal. Me? All of the above. And, yes I'm a fan.

As two Sorkin mash-up videos show, he's also very repetitive. He's also very repetitive. Just for fun:

Really? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Really? Yeah.
This isn't happening
To say nothing of the fact
Don't be ridiculous, everybody likes me.
I'm not other people, I'm not that guy.
That was predictable.
It's entirely up to you.
This will get worse before it gets better.
I really am quite something.
Just sign the damn thing!
You bet.

I was going to talk about season 2 of The Newsroom, which starts tonight, but I've already moved on to other things in my head. You know, Belgium.

Granny Di?

I saw an interesting clip on Good Morning, America this morning, about Princess Diana and what she would be like as a grandmother. It's mostly the usual stuff - Diana was so famous, so beautiful, very caring and compassionate, blah, blah, blah, but when they got to the end, the reporter voiced something that I've thought about a lot but never heard spoken aloud before: Diana may have been a great grandmother, but she probably would have been the mother-in-law from hell. Really.  

The reporter doesn't phrase it like that of course, but the implication is there. Diana would probably resent or be jealous of the attention Kate gets from the press and the public and I agree with that. Even more importantly Diana would almost certainly resent (and perhaps try to sabotage) anyone who was closer to William than she was. Remember, once the divorce was final, it was Diana's position as "mother of the future King" that made her important to the royal family. Without that she would have been just another Fergie. It's uncomfortable to say, or even think, but I suspect Kate's life as a royal is a little bit smoother without Diana around. 

The Great Kate Wait

It's Sunday morning and still no sign of the royal baby. William's playing polo, Kate's hanging out with her parents and the bored reporters and photographers camped out at the entrance to the hospital are desperate for something to do. England's also apparently having a bit of what passes for a heat wave over there, with temperatures in the high 80s. With air conditioning much less common than we're used to here in the colonies, Kate's probably pretty uncomfortable and wishing the baby would just be born already. The Daily Beast's Royalist page has started a royal baby live blog, which I'll be checking periodically until something happens. For what it's worth, Kate's mum, Carole, has reportedly said the baby will be a Leo (meaning astrological sign, not given name), so we could have a week or more to wait.    

I find that I'm much more interested in the impending birth than I am in this morning's big news story, which is the verdict in the Zimmerman trial. Does that make me a bad person? CNN is still in "all Zimmerman, all the time" mode, even calling new Mon-Friday morning anchor Chris Cuomo in on Sunday to lead the coverage, which strikes me as overkill. I'm simply going to link to two of the articles that I found most helpful:
Ta-Nehisi Coates, at The Atlantic, and Adam Cohen, at time.com.

Prince George? Princess Charlotte?

It's a week since my last post and the royal baby still hasn't made his or her appearance. (No sign of Kim K's baby either, but we'll talk about that in a separate blog post.) For now I'm thinking about royalty and all the hoopla surrounding Will and Kate's first child.

Just to make sure no-one misses the first picture of the baby, photographers started camping out at the door of the royal hospital as far back as July 2. At first I thought that was just stupid - in my cynical way I was thinking "Is the first picture really that important?" We all  know what Will and Kate look like, and all we'll see of the baby is a blanket wrap and perhaps a tiny bit of a smushed up newborn face. Then I saw a link to video of Charles and Diana leaving the same hospital with William 31 years ago and after watching it I decided that yes, it is charming, and revealing, to actually see the big "leaving the hospital" moment.  

In the video, Diana, who was a couple weeks shy of turning 21, looks young, vulnerable and slightly uncomfortable, not least because it's only 24 hours or so after the delivery. She's wearing one of her Catherine Walker maternity dresses and since she's not pregnant anymore it looks big and baggy, really unflattering. By contrast Charles looks stuffy and buttoned-up. The couple doesn't appear to be all that affectionate with each other, although that perception is surely influenced by knowing how things turned out. Charles gently hands the baby to Diana, they wave a little then get into the backseat of their car and drive off.

Presumably everything will be different this time. Kate is 10 years older than Diana was when William was born and she has a husband who clearly adores her. She also has the support of her sane, and still married, parents, to the extent that it's rumored she may spend her first few weeks postpartum at their home in Bucklebury instead of the palace. For all the "doors to manual" put-downs of the not-aristocratic Middletons, it seems to me that Kate's family is one of the best things she's got going for her. Even though Diana came from one of the most aristocratic close-to-royalty families in the country, which supposedly made her the perfect bride for Charles, looking back it sure doesn't seem as if they did much to help her when things started to fall apart. It's been 21 years since Charles and Diana separated and 16 years since she died, and it's hard to remember how ugly things got when the two of them decided they really hated each other. I feel comfortable saying things will work out much better this time around.

So when will the baby arrive? No way to know, but Twitter lit up with rumors of royal labor today, although so far it appears to be just speculation. No need to worry; all those photographers camped out at the Lindo Wing will start tweeting like mad as soon as the Duchess shows up. We'll know soon.  

Dumbed Down and Sexed Up

Did you know that People magazine has an online archive? They do and it's one of my favorite places, fascinating and mesmerizing. You can click from issue to issue, cover to cover, and get a fun reminder of what was going on in pop culture at any particular time since 1974. For example, in the summer of 1989, People cover stories included Hugh Hefner's wedding (7/17), the death of Lawrence Olivier (7/24), the murder of Rebecca Schaeffer (7/31) and Clint Eastwood's break-up with Sondra Locke (8/7.)  Fall of 2003? Cover stories included the Laci Peterson murder case (9/8), Brooke Shields' first baby (9/15), Best and Worst Dressed celebrities, featuring Jennifer Aniston (9/22) and the death of Johnny Cash (9/29). Why am I blogging about the People archive, other than because it's kind of cool?  My thought process went like this:  (And yes, it really started with Kim Kardashian.)

First thought:  I was wondering how and when the K's would offer up the first pictures of newly arrived North West. I assume they're strategizing how best to monetize the pictures - a People cover package? An E! network special? What would be most lucrative?

Next thought:  They better not tarry too long, because the royal baby is due any day now and presumably Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte, or whatever the baby ends up being called, will knock Miss West off the front pages of the tabloids.

Then came this:  Although in some respects the royal baby is more "important" than the Kardashian child, when you really boil it down neither of them has anything to do with my life at all.

And that led to this:  Given that they're really not that important, when did celebrity babies become such a big deal? All the hoopla over baby "bumps", baby joy, body after baby, etc. sometimes makes it seem as though there's nothing more important in the world than which celebrity is pregnant, when are they due and when will the first pictures be published. Thinking about when all this started is what led me to the People archive.

This next part is going to make me sound like I have too much time on my hands, but it is a long holiday week-end and I do have some time on my hands. I decided to compare two full years worth of People cover stories - one recent (2011) and one 38 years ago (1975). No surprise, things have definitely changed.

2011 first. I made a list of all the cover stories, January through December, then categorized them. In 2011, the three biggest categories are Reality TV (the Bachelor/Bachelorette, the Kardashians, Kate Gosselin), Royalty (Will and Kate) and True Crime (Caylee Anthony, Amanda Knox, Baby Lisa.) There are also 3 "baby" covers, 2 weddings, not including Will and Kate, and 3 celebrity deaths (Elizabeth Taylor, Amy Winehouse and Steve Jobs.) There are no cover stories about Sports/Athletes, and only 1 that is political (the shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.)

Compare that to the cover stories in 1975. There was no Reality TV, no True Crime and only 1 Royalty story (and not the British royals this time, Lady Diana hasn't shown up yet. The cover story is about Princess Grace of Monaco.) The biggest category is Movie Stars, with stories about everyone from Marlon Brando to Paul Newman to Robert Redford to Gene Hackman. In 2011, the only true "movie star" story is about Sandra Bullock. (There are 2 Brangelina covers, and although Brad and Angie are indeed movie stars, both stories, "Big Happy Family" and "Growing Up Jolie-Pitt," are focused on kids and family life.)

Back in 1975, Television is next, followed by Rock Music (Elvis, Paul McCartney, Roger Daltry, Mick Jagger and Elton John.) There's a cover story about the Reverend Billy Graham and 3 covers devoted to sports stars (Chris Evert/Billie Jean King, Jimmy Connors, Mohammad Ali.) The biggest surprise is that there are five covers about political subjects: First Lady Betty Ford, Happy Rockefeller (wife of the VP), Nancy Kissinger (wife of Henry), the judge in the Watergate case, and David & Julie Eisenhower.

So what does it all mean? The title of this post, Dumbed Down and Sexed Up, pretty much sums it up. People magazine was never the New Yorker, as I used to say, but they used to at least try for some substance some of the time. To put it another way, the stories were mostly about the celebrities' work, not who they're married to or getting divorced from, not how they look in a bikini, and not when their baby is due. These days it's mostly weddings, babies, divorces, crime stories and people who are famous for being on (Reality) television. There's probably more blogging to come on this topic, so for now I'll simply say Happy 4th of July, and does anyone want to place bets on when Princess Charlotte will arrive?