I grinned as I bought a copy of The Independent today. Instead of the usual front page layout, they had lots of boxes containing headlines and straplines to various major news stories, topped by the headline “HERE IS THE NEWS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED”.
Down in the bottom right corner, in a tiny little box, the line “And in other news… Charles to wed (page 6)”. Okay, so it’s a pretty smug little joke for educated middle class people, but a small article on page 6 is pretty much what the story warrants. A divorcee minor celebrity is marrying another divorcee from a similar social circle. Big deal.
Other papers clearly don’t share the Independent’s values… even my normal read, The Guardian, seemed to have more big photos and frothing coverage than I’d have liked. No match for the Daily Mail, with its *21 pages* of coverage, though. And as just about every branch of the media is at great pains to remind us, the country is divided on the issue… we all feel so strongly one way or another. Er, no… I really couldn’t give a toss.
The Daily Mirror points out that “if it were up to Mirror readers, Charles and Camilla would not be getting married”. Indeed, and that’s why, thanks to universal suffrage, people other than Mirror readers are thankfully still capable of deciding the future of the country…