Posted on 04/18/2007 8:46:28 AM PDT by dead
Poor Kate Middleton, dumped by the second in line to the British throne then displayed humiliatingly to the world as Prince William's "practice chick", the mere recipient of some of his wild oats. But judging by the astonishing Pommy snobbery unleashed in the week since the break-up of her almost five-year relationship, Middleton, 25, is well off out of it.
British newspapers are full of quotes from the supposed upper classes about how Kate was too "common" to marry William, 24.
Her mother, Carole Middleton, was "pushy, rather twee and incredibly middle-class", according to a royal source quoted by the Daily Mail.
Mrs Middleton's crimes? She says "Pleased to meet you" instead of "How do you do", "toilet" instead of "lavatory" and "pardon?" instead of "what?".
Senior courtiers at Buckingham Palace were said to be whispering that Carole, a former flight attendant who married a pilot, was really "not the thing". Therefore, nor was her daughter, despite the fact that Kate has behaved impeccably in the five years since she met William at university in Scotland and moved in with him.
Another element of Toiletgate, as it has been dubbed, is the claim that William's friends used to mock Middleton by whispering "Doors to Manual" whenever she entered a room, a dig at her mother's trolley-dolly past.
"There'd be jibes asking Kate if she was going to wheel in the trolley and when the food service would start. All pretty juvenile stuff, but these are former Eton chaps who are permanently stuck in that sort of humour."
The snobs are anonymous but there is a ring of truth to the slurs, which have a long history in Britain, as a contrived way of separating the anxious U (upper classes) from the aspirational non-U, terms immortalised by the English author Nancy Mitford in a 1956 essay.
The U might be under threat of extinction in the new classless Britain but the fact its secret code remained un-cracked by bourgeois Carole Middleton and her daughter apparently is cause for crowing celebration in the aristocracy, a sign that all is not yet lost.
"I am a firm believer in people marrying into the same class," the self-described aristocrat Kishanda Fulford wrote this week in the Daily Mail, which described her as "the wife of Francis Fulford, whose family has lived in their stately home for 800 years", and obviously has never had to buy his own furniture - another distinction between U and non-U.
"There is no confusion over what time 'dinner' is and what to call the 'loo' There are many pretty girls from the lower and middle classes who have married into the aristocracy, indeed, Duchesses past and present have bloodlines which could be considered as ordinary as Kate's - but they never ended up queen."
According to another "insider": "Carole's whole approach is very aspirational. But re-laying your front drive and trimming the wisteria around your front door isn't going to make your home, or your daughter, fit for a prince."
Ouch.
Seen from a middle-class meritocracy such as Australia, the attacks on the Middletons are bafflingly petty, especially when William, his brother, Harry, and their mates are so often seen behaving with as much class as Paris Hilton.
Last month, for instance, British tabloids ran a front-page photo of William posing for the camera while squeezing the breast of a young woman - not Kate. His pick-up line is reported to be: "Hi, I'm going to be king; d'ya fancy a pull?", which may, of course, be an urban myth.
The more we see of the Queen's descendants, the less suitable they appear to be to reign over an egalitarian country such as ours.
Of course, there is goodwill and sympathy for William in Australia, mainly because of the tragic end of his mother, Princess Diana. And it is silly for the British press to chastise him for doing what practically every other man his age does - extending his promiscuous bachelor days as long as possible.
Still, as the British TV agony aunt Denise Robertson wrote this week of the break-up: "There are undertones of 'droit du seigneur' - a maiden dishonoured and then discarded."
It is an old-fashioned concept, but Middleton's fate is a salutary lesson for young women contemplating shacking up with the love of their lives rather than holding out for a firm commitment.
In 2005 the median age at marriage for Australian men was 32 (up from 26 in 1985), and for women it was 29.7 (up from 24) and leaving a shrinking window of fertility. In the expanding period of singledom, cohabitation has become an almost mandatory stepping stone to marriage. A whopping 76 per cent of couples (69 per cent in NSW) who married in 2005 had been "living in sin", as they used to say.
But the idea of "try before you buy" gives all the advantages to men, who get the benefits of marriage with none of the responsibilities. They get sex on tap, domesticity, companionship, and probably nutritional and hygiene improvements. They can test-drive the merchandise for as long as they like.
But for women, the immovable biological fact of declining fertility means the deal is inevitably unfair. And if marriage comes at all, it often is a utilitarian choice after all the magic and mystery has been used up in a tenuous coexistence in which neither partner fully trusts the other and one foot is always out the door.
If Middleton had really wanted to marry William she never should have set up house with him. Smart girls don't give away marital perks free.
devinemiranda@hotmail.com
Pasty-faced white boy Marshall Mathers (Eminem) made a beautiful dollar emulating the gangsta crowd. You are correct, though; most wannabees sound absurd.
just tell them that when they go down south, they sound funny and when you are up north, you hear funny.
He’s not emulating anything. He grew up in gangsta culture. That’s why he’s so good at gangsta rap and Van Winkle Vanilla Ice wasn’t. Ice was a wannabe manufactured by record companies.
*snort* Somehow I KNEW we had a lot in common, speaking as the daughter of a man who grew up sharecropping in Mississippi!
Any girls who talk like that you know are underage and shouldn't be sitting in the bar. It's a dead give away of their maturity level. They usually (but not always, rich daddie's girl types live at home in their pink bedrooms and don't mature until their mid 30's)) grow out of that 'teen talk' by the time they hit 21 and turn into young women.
I feel really sorry for all of our fruit orchard owners here -- the apple and peach crops were basically destroyed by the late freeze. And I heard that the hay crop got it, too.
I hope that they will be able to bounce back. Fruit is terrible enough as it up here in SuperWally grocery land.
It's one of my pet peeves! They DO sound like fools!
For his Freshman and Soph. years, our youngest son attended the all boy's private Catholic School from which our older two sons had graduated several years before. He used to come home disgusted at the boys trying to act 'ghetto'. I guess that only caught on in the last few years, because they weren't acting that way as recently as 2000, when our #2 son graduated.
Heh, that’s a good one!
Have you read John Grisham’s “A Painted House”? It was a pretty good story of a boy growing up on his Grandparent’s farm, in Arkansas. Quite a departure from his lawyer novels, but then, so was “Skipping Christmas”, which was SO much better than the slapstick movie made from it.
On the contrary, she probably picked up the tab all the time. The 'royals' never carry pocket change. There's some sort of royal rule about that.
Such a small thing ... but you have *completely* made my day. Thanks! :)
. . . but I'll look for that one. Kinda like "Run with the Horsemen"?
And not just the bar. How about an auditorium full of PhD's and PE's? A beautiful, bright, but very young, colleague of mine presented some fantastic research to such an audience recently. But because every sentence ended with a meek little question mark, she was dismissed out of hand. It was brutal - and it had nothing to do with the merits of her work. It was all in the way she spoke.
BUMP!
Hahahaaaaaa!!!
Only if it was standing alfalfa crop, and even then if there were no blooms it would be ok. If it was already cut and drying, it would be ok. Grasses on the otherhand can take a frost without damage, although it may stunt it somewhat depending on what season it's in. ( I cut alot of hay for my horses)
I started paying attention to my speech in high school. We listened to Paul Harvey during breakfast at home and he had a wonderful essay on the abuse of the word "like." It struck a nerve and I realized I was *guilty*. Ever since I've tried to pay attention to how I say what I say. It has been a very helpful exercise.
Your Father was wise. Was your Mother also wise? Did she advise you that it's not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage?
In order not to, you have to be kind of a tighta55.
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