Baby arrival - royal commands and media expectations

A 'royal baby' has, apparently, arrived.

So announce the BBC, head media midwife, delivering the news that 'really matters'.

And with it, chief royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell's truly excruciating 'welcome to baby Cambridge':

"As baby Cambridge's life progresses, he will need to do what his father, grandfather and great-grandmother have all attempted to do - that is to earn respect by the manner in which they have set about their respective roles. Unsurprisingly, perhaps the best template to follow would be that of his great grandmother, who has brought both commitment and a sense of humility to her role as monarch."

All told, a long day of sycophantic labour for the ever-cringing Witchell, with, it seems, grovellingly much more to come.
 
The BBC is now awash with headline stories of 'world celebrations', creating the dutiful impression of mass humanity revelling in some joyous, extended party. 

It's 'leading journalism', for sure, but in a sense far removed from the qualitative kind the BBC so earnestly proclaims.    

Not knowing them personally, it seems only customary to wish this couple's infant, like any other innocent entrant to our deeply-troubled planet, good health and happiness.

What we do know is that this particular child won't want for much in the way of financial security and life chances.

It's already massively-privileged parents, having received another million pound wad of austerity-reserved public money to dolly up their substantial mansion, will never have to worry like poor mums over finding enough baby food or fretting about bothersome things like a bedroom tax.

From bespoke labour room to palatial nursery, material existence for them will be anxiety free.

Conveying the 'need' for a royal delivery to match all other exclusive benefits, the BBC wrote:

"When you are giving birth to a would-be monarch, it's to be expected that you would command the best care on offer."

Yes, of course, such commands, for the royals and the BBC, must surely be expected. 

Perhaps we were also expected, even commanded, to approve the lavish facilities at the Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital:

"The £5,000-a-night wing also offers a "comprehensive wine list should you wish to enjoy a glass of champagne and toast your baby's arrival".

 And just in case of unexpected problems:

"The wing has the benefit of being based in an NHS hospital if further complications arise, including its facilities for premature babies, and access to top-notch hospital specialists."

Again, how very expectant of the royal gynaecologists to command that 'backing', the same parasitic ways in which the public purse is servicing private consultants and privatised healthcare.

Amid all the multiple, gushing detail, silence from the BBC on the shameless scale of such extravagance. Nor the remotest balancing view on how the royals have come to command such ostentation and expected media attention.     

Sometimes you have to admire the brilliant audacity of the whole deception. How does the monarchy and establishment at large manage to get away with such a staggering and sustained con trick?

In large and crucial part because of a commanding media which plays such a compliant role in the great deceit.

Much of the illusion turns on this neat media-promoted inversion of royal identity: 'look, we really are modern and 'people-aware', but we still expect, even command, you to be feudal and hypnotised, archaic and deferential, subjects rather than citizens, in order to see and approve our 'modernist' personification.

Pretty clever, eh? And, of course, buying into royalism, even in a passive sense, serves the linked corporate imperative of keeping us all docile and obedient consumers.

Beyond the media-induced gaze, the pampered nursery and palatial trappings, the encouraged identification with our celebrity-branded young trending royals, a deep vein of healthy scepticism and indifference may still prevail.

Yet, the daily consecration of titbit monarchy all across the media - including the lucrative 'clickbait' of the supposedly 'leftist-republican' Guardian - plays a vital part in the ongoing subjugation of an already tobered populace.

It's still saying: 'know your place'; 'understand our authority'; 'never forget our divine right to rule and order'.

It's a set of messages, the vital realm of political-cultural propaganda, that prostrating serfs like Witchell and a system-protecting BBC seem all too ingratiatingly ready and eager to uphold.

Oh for a sane republic of honest, caring and just humanity in which to raise our children.