There is a very long list of people who are hated by the right wing media in general and the Telegraph in particular. Non white people, anyone who isn’t straight, anyone who is woke (a very good thing to be, by the way) anyone who doesn’t adore the Conservative party. You can add a new category today: people who are unwell with cancer. Really, you ask? Yes, really.
The paper’s odious hack, of many odious hacks, Allison Pearson went out of her way to praise Kate Middleton, Prince William’s wife. Kate, as we know, has been unwell with a form of cancer, unable to do the day job. Last weekend, she showed up at the annual Trooping of the Colour event in a horse drawn carriage and later stood on the balcony at Buckingham Palace to wave to members of the public and to point at planes as they flew by. I didn’t witness the event, either in person or on TV, but despite my republican leanings, I thought, well, fair play girl. All my life I have known people who have suffered from cancer and I know how debilitating the cancer and the treatment can be. I cannot know how ropey she was feeling on Saturday but as with most folk in her position she may well have put on a show. Pearson said as much, but went much further. Here is what she said:
Two words: “Thank you. Thank you Princess of Wales for being an absolute trouper and attending Trooping the Colour on a cold, grey day when lesser mortals with your illness would have stayed home, tucked up in their jim-jams.
“Thank you for sacrificing the privacy that is so much needed to get you back to full health. Thank you for such a show of support for the King, who is not a well man, on his official birthday, and for giving a boost to the wider Royal family – which has sorely lacked star power since you withdrew from public life in January to have major surgery.”
Now, my arithmetic is not the best, but at a rough guess, that’s more than two words. But here’s my question: wouldn’t Pearson’s column have said enough if she’d left it after, “Thank you Princess of Wales for being an absolute trouper and attending Trooping the Colour on a cold, grey day”?
Call me a snowflake – another pet Telegraph hate, no doubt – but I found all that extremely offensive. Pearson is literally saying that Kate Middleton is a superior being to anyone else who has cancer. I would be amazed if Kate, who comes across as a very pleasant person, thinks that way. On the contrary, my feeling is that, having had lengthy cancer treatment and staying out of the public eye has only given her greater empathy to the struggles of others. In fact, she said it: “Thank you so much for your continued understanding, and to all of you who have so bravely shared your stories with me.”
So, why attempt to belittle others who are going through what Kate is going through? Why would a prominent hack refer to “lesser mortals (who) with your illness would have stayed home, tucked up in their jim-jams”? My answer is that there is no sensible answer. It’s just pure spite.
Who knows if it’s a part of the government’s attack on the sick and disabled that we have witnessed in the last 14 years? George Osborne suggested in early years of the austerity heavy Tory government of 2010, in which some opportunistic Lib Dems took jobs, that we were in a war between strivers and shirkers. Culture wars, basically, which are now deeply embedded in our national psyche. Are we seeing another even more sick version of them? It looks like it to me.
I do not want Kate Middleton to feel the need to resume her royal duties before she is better, the same with King Brian, the same with anyone else who is suffering from and being treated for a serious illness. Non royals are not “lesser mortals“, except presumably to the legions of cap-doffers who still see the actual royals as people to look up to. I look at Kate and Brian as fellow human beings who I hope make full recoveries, the same as everyone else.
Can’t we just be kind? How hard can it be? asked Pearson in one of her not particularly best-selling books? Quite.
