And this is the nub: for Mantel was quite right to say that female royals were ‘at the most basic . . . breeding stock, collections of organs’ — ugly words, but she is dealing with an extremely ugly upper-class mentality which, in the case of the Prince and Princess of Wales, saw a suitable young virgin selected as an ambulatory incubator while her husband, duty done, carried on playing Hide the Duchy Original Sausage with a woman he would never breed with’
Mantel has launched he most biting attack on the mysogynistic royals i can remember……’female royals are colections of organs’ to be used as ‘ambulatory incubators’…..this will be hard to shrug off……….
Ms Middleton is yet another one of our national treasures (Stuart Hall, Jimmy Savile, Max Clifford, Simon Callow) to be publicly dissected for all to see.
If I recall correctly the nearest thing to Mantel might have been Tom Litterick, Labour MP for Selly Oak. On live TV during the Silver Jubilee he described ‘Prince’ Philip as the “stallion brought in specially to sire the next generation of Windsors”. All hell broke loose in the right-wing press and on the Tory benches in Parliament after that. Bloody brilliant !!
I must admit, I was initially interested in this because Hilary Mantel lives just down the road from me and I wondered what was going on. As she would freely admit, she hasn’t got a bohemian bone in her body (which to me makes her interesting in itself) so for her to be thrown onto page 1 of The Daily Mail for ‘attacking’ Kate Middleton seemed pretty odd.
Having read the speech that the words had been taken from (which is freely and easily obtainable on the net) it revealed an awful lot about the state of things. As expected, there was a context to the comments about Middleton but they had been plucked out from the whole speech, isolated and turned into something else by The Mail. It’s what they do and it’s what’s they’ve always done, so no great surprises there.
The thing about it, however, was the explosion of feedback and commenting that the isolated words immediately set off. It seemed nobody cared to look into it themselves and instead just went along with The Mail’s take on it. The hate that poured out onto the comment sections of The Mail’s, The Telegraph’s and even The Independent’s online editions was astounding. All these people, along with columnists from these papers were flocking to the defence of Middleton and turning their guns upon Mantel, with even Cameron and Miliband joining in.
This wasn’t a defence of Middleton as a pregnant woman but of Royalty as some abstract idea. Attacking not the now Daily Mail-constructed abstract words of Mantel but attacking Mantel herself as a person. It was fucking weirdness gone mad.
It all revealed a mindset of flocking to and congregating around false, delusional, ignorant and brazen conservatism.
Think about it. The whole world is out there. It’s at our feet. Just about everything is there nowadays on the Internet at the flick of a finger. There’s no excuse to be so fucking ignorant. So why are all these people still flocking to such things as Royalty? And why are all these people still choosing to congregate around such stagnant, fossilised pools of thought as promoted by the likes of The Daily Mail and The Telegraph? Disguised by a mask of liberalism at The Guardian and Independent. Why are they so unable and unwilling to make a move into the future? Why are all these people still so full of fucking shite, proud of it, boast about it and are willing to defend it?
By accident, Mantel has revealed an awful lot. She’s revealed just how fucked up everything is. Not that this is news to most people here but she’s shone a new light on it.
The world is fucked. And those still willing to defend the way it is and to keep it that way deserve all they get. We, however, and by ‘we’ I mean all those who basically agree with Ian, deserve better.
A quick lesson from this is in the power of words and the power of colourful language. Mantel’s a writer so she’s able to come up with terms like ‘collection of organs’, ‘breeding stock’, ‘royal vagina’, and ‘ambulatory incubator’. A choice of good words can stick. They can bite and have an effect. A good example is the Sex Pistols when they swore on TV. As John Cooper Clarke pointed out, calling Bill Grundy a ‘fucking rotter’ was like something out of The Beano. But it stuck and caused a massive effect. It’s something that Ian (and Incubus too, having read his blog – ‘The rich are our misfortune’ indeed) has always been aware of and something more people should take note of it.
Thank you Hilary – speak your mind and refuse to kow-tow before these appalling royals.