Royal Baby give-a-shit Guilt

Oh, how my cynical side went bananas this past week….

A baby?

Thousands are born every day, and yet, seemingly, the entire Western World held its breath as the birth of one particular baby neared.  A baby which will lead a remarkably charmed life, a baby while will cost a nation millions of dollars of over its life so that it might hold a ceremonial role in its government and look nice in fancy clothes.

“There are wars going on,” I thought. “A major American city has declared bankruptcy…Our government’s spying on people….the Sox are in dead last!”

And I wasn’t alone.  All over the Twitter-sphere and Facebook-sphere and other spheres were lamentations from my like-minded friends.  “For shame, for shame.” Said We. “This is silly, this is opulent.  This is the Kardashians with funny accents.”  The Kardashians are, of course, metonymy for our obsession with beautiful disasters.

It's hard to argue with the aforementioned sentiment...we really SHOULD be focused on more important things.  But perhaps, well....it's not all bad to occasionally indulge in the frivolous.  And as frivolous things go, this one isn't too bad.  It's like a whole wheat, organic oatmeal raisin cookie...it's the healthiest kind of crap.

After all, The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are, or are really good at pretending to be, pretty decent people, and unlike children born unto other celebrities, we don't have an over-under set on when the child will first enter rehab.

But moreover, perhaps we need the frivolity more than we'd like to admit. Those of who devote a fair amount of our time to the "important" news sometimes see the task of informing ourselves as one of great important, but the fact is that we aren't REALLY hurting anyone if we take time off from scouring Reuters or the BBC to enjoy our fellow human beings traversing one of life's great events.