This non-story story is getting weirder and weirder. On Thursday, the Prince of Wales’ office put out a statement denying as completely untrue an allegation that no-one in Britain or the U.S. has yet published. This might be a first. The idea that you quash a rumor that no one has yet published by publicly referring to it is not exactly a brilliant P.R. initiative. If you’re also the heir to the British throne, it guarantees putting the story on the front pages. The allegation of a witnessed “incident” between Charles and another man which the Guardian elegantly refers to as “not a boating accident” may well be completely untrue. But it is now a story, with details in the European press and even – for twenty minutes or so – in the New York Times. I can’t help but concur with the Guardian:
[Y]ou would need a heart of stone not to feel some sympathy for the House of Windsor at the end of such a week. The pay’s good, the hours are hardly onerous and the perks – free travel, lavish accommodation and hot and cold running servants – are to die for. But the near daily humiliations involved in being a Windsor at the start of the 21st century must surely be starting to outweigh the purely material benefits of the royal life.
Poor Charles. The days when monarchs got their heads chopped off are beginning to seem preferable to today’s privacy-free Internet sewer.
The Dish 