By: Anne T. Donahue
This weekend, anybody who wasn’t paying attention to Kate Middleton’s marked absence from the spotlight (or any light) tuned in after Kensington Palace released a highly-photoshopped photo of Kate and her kids for Mothering Sunday. (Read: UK Mother’s Day.) The photo was so badly edited that it was killed by several news organizations, and sparked a buffet of conspiracy theories that I have absolutely devoured and now believe because the Royal Family has made it weird.
Weirder still was that the next day, the official Kensington Palace Twitter (X) account posted a tweet allegedly from Kate, claiming she’d been messing around with Photoshop and the result was an image that the family saw fit to publish anyway. This led to the latest image of Kate finally surfacing: a shadowy photograph of what might be the side-slash-back of her head, facing away from the camera, and sitting in the backseat of a car. Obviously, even more conspiracies and theories abounded, but one truth became perfectly clear: no matter how bad you are at your job (or at your life), you are doing better than the Kensington Palace/Royal Family communications team.
This is important information because some of us (especially me) like to be reminded that out there, somebody is always doing a worse job. And in this case, we have the representatives of one of the most famous people in the world giving us two-kids-in-a-trench coat transparency while throwing the missing princess under the bus. (I mean, hello: anybody with a smartphone and basic understanding of human anatomy is fluent enough in FaceTune to not create whatever Sunday’s post turned out to be.) When I called into the Roots Outlet and pretended to be my friend who was too afraid to quit her job back in 2002, I did a better job of whatever the Royal Family communications team is trying to do currently. Homer Simpson posing as Mr. Burns at the post office and admitting he didn’t know his own first name did a better job. We are watching historic levels of incompetence, and I love to see it. I need to know, that as the world burns down around us, most of us can’t fail as spectacularly as Buckingham and Kensington Palaces are failing now.
For the record, if Kate wants her privacy, then that’s her business and she doesn’t owe us a detailed look into her life. But perhaps more importantly, what the hell? If she really does want her privacy, then it’s up to Kensington Palace to protect it, and reader let me be honest: this isn’t it. “No updates” re: her abdominal surgery should mean just that – no updates. And if and when the public gets jittery, do what the rest of us would do if we were off work due to illness/surgery/whatever: you post a screencap of Netflix, a bedside table of beverages, and whatever pet happens to be sleeping on you. It says, “I’m here! I’m alive still!” but also, “As you can see, I am bedridden and thus extremely brave.”
Everything we’re witnessing right now has the hallmarks of being busted at a party by your boss after you’ve called in sick. All of it is giving the vibe I had when I saw my manager at the movie theatre when I bailed on work because I’d sprained my ankle and “couldn’t move.” This reads as desperate and strange, and it’s desperate and strange because Kate’s communications team won’t shut the shit up. Silence is free! Nobody needed an updated Mother’s Day photo – toss an old photo of Kate and her mom up there, and everything would’ve been right as rain.
I hope Kate Middleton’s okay. I don’t know her, she’s a stranger to me, but it would truly suck to think she’s in a situation that is dire or dangerous or profoundly upsetting. I like to think she’s basically just fucked off; that she grew tired of William’s complete lack of personality and moved on to a better gig, which, in my opinion would automatically be better than being part of the Royal Family. Alternately, I like to think that she’s realized she doesn’t owe us anything and on principle, will not post a photo of herself because she, like all of us, has taken delight in watching these people panic. Maybe she’s even reading this right now. (Hi Kate! Everyone’s rooting for you!) And if she’s not, I bet the communications team is. Which brings me to the point of this essay altogether: even if you got fired today, you still didn’t do as bad a job as the Palace is doing now.
Want more on Kate? Read Where Is Kate Middleton: A Timeline Of Royal Drama. Need a little more Anne? Read more from Anne T. Donahue right here!
