Did Two Billion People Watch the Royal Wedding? « Student Activism

Did Two Billion People Watch the Royal Wedding? « Student Activism

Did Two Billion People Watch the Royal Wedding?

by Angus Johnston

Last post on the royal wedding, I promise. But I gotta get this off my chest.
By now, if you’ve read or seen any media coverage of the royal wedding at all, you know that two billion people watched it. Two billion people — thirty percent of the world’s population — stayed up late (California), got up early (Brazil), skipped lunch (Turkmenistan), or rushed home from work (Palau) to watch those two crazy kids get hitched. The spectacle united the world like few other events in history ever have.
Except there’s no reason to believe it’s true, and plenty of reason to doubt it.
The “stat” has been floating around the internet for weeks, ever since it appeared in a press release from Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s culture secretary. He didn’t say how he arrived at it, and as far as I’ve been able to tell nobody’s

Progressives and the Royal Wedding

by Angus Johnston

“Can’t I just calm down and enjoy the day? On a day when friends and fellow travellers have been beaten and arrested, no, I can’t. Sorry.”

–Laurie Penny, British journalist, gives her 140-character take.

There’s been a bit of a tussle in certain corners of the American progressive blogosphere over yesterday’s royal wedding.
I totally get the argument that everyone’s entitled to a bit of mindless cheesy celeb-gawking fun every once in a while. I totally get pomp. The wedding itself isn’t to my taste, but given my own pop culture preferences, I don’t really have any esthetic grounds for looking down my nose at it.
But here’s the thing. The British royal family has a long and sordid tradition of ethnic nastiness, a tradition that