There I was all set to report on the doings around the Royal Baby, when an item about Anthony Weiner popped up as the head column in the International pages of the distinguished left-wing newspaper, The Guardian: “Weiner Admits he continued online affairs after downfall,” and months before declaring his candidacy. Wow. Again? And again, the wife stands by him in public: “Anthony’s made some horrible mistakes [but] I love him, I forgive him, and I believe in him.” Really? What can a girl do? At least not appear by his side. And voters?
To me the issue is not so much the sexual idiocy (ew…) as the continued acting out of what Freud nicely called “His Majesty the Ego” in the essay “On The Poet and Daydreaming.” His Majesty the Ego thinks to himself: “Nothing can happen to me!” It’s not for nothing that Freud chose royal imagery to convey the ego’s power of presumption and invulnerability. That presumption is what drives me crazy and makes me think that anyone who thinks that way should not serve in public office. That a smart lovely woman wants to stay married to him is saddening, but truly not my business. But the good thing about the Weiner Report is that it gave me the link to the Royal Baby business, and not only that to the Jews (see my last post!) in England.
I was looking for a photo that would not be one of the ones prominently circulated in the States, but that captured the spirit of the event, and I thought that this one did the job. “Born to Rule” the caption on the little boy’s tee shirt says―and the stenciled crown is materialized above in the crown sitting on the boy’s head. Because of the new law―whose application is moot on this occasion―girls from now forward can inherit as well as boys–and given the popularity of Kate, I don’t think there would have been a national sigh of disappointment if a princess had been born instead of a prince. The key thing was the continuation of the Dynasty, that only 20% of the population is said to object to. In other words, the problem for them is the very idea of Born to Rule. Should anyone be born to rule? Headline in The Guardian offered a plot that does not require verbs: “A birth, a boy, a prince, a king.” The Royal Narrative.
And now my secret link. The day before the baby was born, a piece appeared in The Evening Standard (in which a little (or at least lesser) known royal fact appeared: that traditionally the royal boys were circumcised by a London rabbi (the tradition dates back to George I–Diana’s boys were the exception). Will Royal Baby be circumcised? The topic has not yet been widely discussed. (Though there was a side bar about what some referred to as the matter of whether Kate was “too posh to push,” a euphemism for the likelihood of vaginal (vs. caesarean) birth (vaginal, a word eschewed in all the journalistic reports), referred to instead as “natural.”
The problem with Anthony Weiner is that his very own majesty the ego thinks he is born to rule (circumcised, no doubt), thinks he can do anything he wants and that nothing will happen to him. His destiny will protect him, as will his devoted wife, believers as they are in the staying power of the redemption narrative. It would only be justice if Weiner’s arrant egoism led him to be defeated not only by a woman, but a gay woman who will not be impressed by his penis.
I can’t wait.
