Now this is rich. Prince Charles has cleared his lengthy throat and announced to the world (or at any rate, to the BBC) that the thing he most cares about, the thing that "really worries" him, is climate change. What a fine fellow, to have such high-minded concerns. And here we thought he was nothing more than an insufferable and terminably inconsequential playboy. But why has he suddenly decided to speak out? Because, he told the BBC, "he did not want his future grandchildren to ask why he had not acted over the issue."
I know the Prince will forgive me for saying so, but aren’t there other things his grandchildren may want to ask him about? Why, they may well ask, did he do so much to undermine the institutions of family and marriage in his society, and the fundamental decencies attached to those institutions, by humiliating those children’s paternal grandmother before the world, and carrying on openly with another woman not his wife? Why, they may wonder, did he put the needs of his gonads before the needs of his wife, his children, his family, and the nation? We were just wondering, grandfather….And they may also wonder–just what gives him the right to lecture the world about anything at all?
I’m sure there is a sociologist more clever than I who has come up with a better term for the technique the Prince is employing here. I merely call it the art of "rehabilitation through moral up-trading." This is the classic strategem by which the morally stigmatized think to redeem themselves on the cheap. Instead of repenting for their sins and living a more humble and chastened life, they seek to subsume their sins under the rubric of some infinitely vaster, more idealistic, more abstract, and more impressive cause. Far from being an act of self-mortification, it is a sign of pride, merely the continuation of self-aggrandizement by other means. To say so is to say nothing about the substantive merits of the Prince’s cause. But it does say something about whether he brings credit to the cause–or whether instead the cause is meant to bring credit to him.
Wilfred McClay, playing with a two-edged sword, has used some possible moral posturing by Prince Charles as an excuse to engage in some moral posturing of his own.
“We” did not dismiss Charles as “an insufferable and terminably inconsequential playboy” if McClay is including me in “we.” If Charles were a mere playboy, he surely could have had a succession of sexual conquests far more comely than the homely mistress who so oddly haunted him for decades.
It’s ironic that they call McClay’s kind of “we” “royal.” I’m sure there is some sociologist or rhetoretician who has come up with a term for the technique McClay is employing here. All I can think is that it that it reflects reflexive anti-Royalism. My anti-Royalist wife acts roughly the same way whenever she reads that Prince Charles has sojourned at Mt. Athos again: “They won’t allow women but they’ll allow that adulterer!?”
Take a deep breath, Mr. McClay. You’ve done much better and can do better again.
Some Low-Hanging Fruit
I call it Clintonism
Some Low-Hanging Fruit
Im sure there is a sociologist more clever than I who has come up with a better term for the technique the Prince is employing here. I merely call it the art of rehabil…
Prince Charles has regularly sounded off publicly on various issues. One of his big peeves is genetically engineered food and crops. He’s also a big proponent of organic farming. But there’s not much for the poor man to do at the moment, in terms of a “royal” role. His mom is probably going to reign for quite a few years yet.
And he’s hardly the first European royal to have a mistress, come on. You can’t put the burden of “undermining the family” squarely on his shoulders. Even his Dad Prince Phillip reportedly had at least one long-term love besides his wife. It’s just that Charles happened to get caught by tabloids (with help from Diana) and then shamed for his dalliance. And Diana fooled around during their marriage too. Why does she get a pass on her behavior?
And didn’t Charles do the right and moral thing by finally marrying Camilla?
The Prince talks about architecture, too. He doesn’t like the ugly, modern stuff. (Can you tell that I agree with him? :-).
I think Roger and Adrienne’s points are fair. But Professor McClay is certainly correct in noting that this is a fairly transparent attempt to win favor from the British body politic. Diana practiced this sort of thing with far more effectiveness and less (apparent) calculation. She was a natural politician and her Prince is not.
Yes, and Diana had natural warmth, empathy, and charisma that Charles certainly lacks.
The Prince does have “conservative” views on some issues, such as on modern art and architecture, and his complaints about environmental despoiling do sometimes have a Chestertonian rather than radical environmentalist tinge. Apparently he does attend Church. I don’t think he can be dismissed as a man without any moral sense or virtues at all.
On the whole, however, the Prince is a pig, and I find it appalling that already three commenters on this Christian blog have leapt to his defense. Marrying Camilla was not the right thing – as long as Andrew Parker Bowles is alive, the marriage of Charles and Camilla is invalid in the eyes of God. Even if Andrew were also dead, a relationship borne in adultery rarely bears other than rotten fruit. The right thing to do would have been for Charles and Camilla to separate, to begin the work of repentance that would lead to an eternal happiness in Heaven rather than a few decades of earthly pseudo-happiness.
(Not that I admire Diana either – being married to a woman as obviously disturbed as she was would have been an ordeal for any husband. But once the marriage vows are made, they must be adhered to, and the fact that Charles ran back to an old lover makes it seem to me that Diana’s problems were a pretext for Charles’s adultery rather than its true cause.)
I have to agree with Roger Bennett – whatever Prince Charles’s faults, the “here we thought he was nothing more than… an inconsequential playboy” was way over the top and discredits the rest of what Mr. McClay has to say. I do not think, and never have thought, that Prince Charles was a playboy of any sort. He has alwasy struck me as a rather ordinary garden variety adulterer / divorcee. With about half of all marriages ending in divorce, and with a great many of those ending because one party wants to marry someone else, is marital history is pathetically ordinary apart from the fact that he happens to have had the misfortune of being born into royalty. But “playboy” – not even close. As far as the public knows, he has had only one extramarital liaison. Hugh Hefner would be ashamed.
But there’s a more important question here, which is whether a prince or king who has been involved in a notorious scandal of adultery can possibly redeem himself through his other deeds. I would go out on a limb and say yes, it is possible, even if the crime in question had been so heinous as to involve having the king’s lover’s husband killed by ordering him sent to the front of a hopeless battle.
I would go out on a limb and say yes, it is possible, even if the crime in question had been so heinous as to involve having the king’s lover’s husband killed by ordering him sent to the front of a hopeless battl
Oh, and just where are you getting *that* ridiculous idea from? ;-)
On the whole, however, the Prince is a pig, and I find it appalling that already three commenters on this Christian blog have leapt to his defense.
I’m not “defending” Charles’ conduct regarding his adultery. I certainly don’t think the man is a moral paragon. He’s pretty much most unlikeable member of the British royal family anyway. I’m just saying that you can’t blame his one long-term extramarital liaison for the entire collapse of British “family values”. And in the historical context of European royalty, adultery is the norm, not the exception.
Maybe the original postere confused Princes Charles and Andrew when he made is “playboy” comment? Prince Andrew was known for playing the field quite a bit before he married Sarah Ferguson. He even dated former porn star Koo Stark at one point, much to his parents’ horror.
A completely off-topic personal peeve: a “two-edged sword” is not, as it too often employed in metaphor, a weapon which cuts both target and wielder. It is, rather, a weapon which attacks with greater versatility than if it had only one edge – more of a “double whammy” effect (whatever a “whammy” is). That the “Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword”, for instance, is an expression of its great potency.
I’ll never viscerally understand royalty; the Brits make some folks into celebrities by genetic heritage alone, which is wierd but not nearly as wierd as how we create them over here. That celebrities generally use causes to promote themselves, rather than vice versa, is a point well taken. I suppose many global warming true believers, however, will echo Saint Paul in rejoicing that, from whatever vain motive, global warming is preached.
I’ll never viscerally understand royalty; the Brits make some folks into celebrities by genetic heritage alone, which is wierd but not nearly as wierd as how we create them over here.
Good point; is it really worse than a system where you have to *eagerly want* money, fame, and power to get them? ;)
It’s my understanding that Prince Chuck was having his dalliance prior to Diana, but while Camilla was still married to her husband. Thus I don’t think Diana drove him to anything. Personally I think he is a Mama’s boy who obeyed Mama when she said, “You’re getting married and your marrying Diana.”
“Good point; is it really worse than a system where you have to *eagerly want* money, fame, and power to get them? ;)”
Chesterton on the rarity of millionaires: “You have to be clever enough to get all of that money – and you have to be dull enough to WANT it.” “American Idol” is among the most accurately titled happenings of our time; “ye shall be as gods”, still whispers the serpent, but pronouncing it “celebrities”. (Lots of sibilants, very comfortable for a serpent to pronounce.)
Poor celebrities – damned if they do, damned if they don’t. So long as he’s already damned, why should we give him grief for trying to do some good?
Prince Charles’ grandchildren may ask him why, as defender of the Faith, he didn’t have a word to say against the islamization of England. Assuming, of course, that they will care…
Prince Charles is a poo-poo-head. Thank God that I am not like him, but am a Touchstone reader, a member of the highest class of human being on the planet.
Joe Long is certainly right about “two-edged sword.” I wish I had found a better figure of speech. Suggestions are welcome.
But I can at least partially defend myself by noting that I said Mr. McClay was “playing with” that sword, not wielding it. The image is of absent-mindedness that might, indeed, wound the idler.
Along with Matthias, I hope for the Prince to find redemption – spiritual, not social. But he’s likelier to find redemption on those Mt. Athos trips, writing his own version of Psalm 51, than in any kind of social or environmental activism.
James’ comments are wise. I think of the brutal honesty of King Claudius in Hamlet, trying to pray, and failing, because he knows that if he really repented of his sin he would have to give up the ill-gotten gains from the sin:
Can one be pardoned and retain th’ offense?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offense’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law. But ’tis not so above;
There is no shuffling; there the offense lies
In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults
To give in evidence.
I’m quoting from memory, so please nobody give me grief if I’ve skipped a line. Maybe someday on those trips to Mt. Athos the monks will persuade him to do what I know seems unimaginable now, but what Catholic priests used to urge people in similar situations to do: to live with the “wife” or “husband” as brother and sister.
I think Prof. McClay’s point was that people who have done a great deal, by their rather tawdry sins, to hurt a couple of important institutions as much as they could, should have the decency, the sense of shame, to keep quiet.
First, thanks to all of you for your lively comments, which have been food for thought. (And I’ve been working on my breathing, Roger.) I tried to post something yesterday, but it was somehow lost, and now Tony’s comment says, so beautifully, precisely what I would have said, but said it so much better.
So let me add that I thought James Kabala, supplemented by Philippa’s first sentence, made a wonderfully telling point. When Matthias asks “whether a prince or king who has been involved in a notorious scandal of adultery can possibly redeem himself through his other deeds,” clearly the answer is No. But if you subtract the last four words of that quote, and convert the verb to passive voice (since no one can redeem himself) the answer is a ringing Yes.
That, my friends, is the Gospel. But it makes all the difference in the world which way one phrases that. And that’s precisely what I was trying to get at. If you perform every good deed except the one thing needful–the one confession, reconciliation, coming-clean, call it what you will–then it will avail nothing. That is Claudius’s dilemma.
I might add that I’m not anti-royal at all. But in our day and age, there’s only one justification for the continued existence of the royal family. No, it’s not that of keeping gossip columnists fully employed. Its job consists in setting a kind of foundational tone and aspect, as a normative symbol of the historical coherence and continuity of English/British civilization. Hence, the argument about past mistresses is irrelevant. The monarchy is a different institution now, and different things are required of it. Queen Elizabeth II has been quite good in that role, by the way, and I will mourn her passing.
I’ve long felt that the post-1950s crusaders against “racism”, “sexism”, pollution, “climate change”, etc. while participating in the “Sexual Revolution”, i.e. the hippies and their spiritual descendents today – pop stars and Hollywood celebrities – were trying to atone for their libertinism by means of creating a substitute virtue in their egalitarianism and environmentalism. Mr. McClay is spot on; HRH Prince Charles is simply another manifestation of this…
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‘Touchstone’ throws the first stone
‘Touchstone’ is an excellent magazine and Mere Comments, its weblog, is a daily stop on my daily digital whirl, so I was surprised to read one of the worst ad hominems I’ve ever come across on its pages. As a loyal subject of the Crown, I must respond.
Trackbacks don’t seem to be working, so this is the URL: http://albertusminimus.typepad.com/albertus_minimus/2005/10/touchstone_maga_1.html
‘Touchstone’ throws the first stone
‘Touchstone’ is an excellent magazine and Mere Comments, its weblog, is a daily stop on my daily digital whirl, so I was surprised to read one of the worst ad hominems I’ve ever come across on its pages. As a loyal subject of the Crown, I must respond.