Win-win

Useless against almost all the world's problems, I can at least solve one problem right away, and save my betters from its needless distraction.

The solution is elegant in its simplicity: Turn the British royal family into the second coming of the Kardashians.

Everyone wins!

You probably know the royal family's recent foibles. Even those who involuntarily avoid paying any attention (me! me!) can't escape them.

But just in case you've better resolve than I, old chap: Prince Harry, son of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, was caught in photographs last month cavorting in the nude, with friends in similar dishabille. Then last week Kate Middleton (Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, wife of Prince William, the other son) was photographed topless from inside a French villa as she and Prince William vacationed.

While photos of Harry blazed the Internet, Kate Middleton's pics made a relatively slow parade from one European publication to another, each announcing in turn it would publish the pictures, each lavishing its day's worth of media hyperventilation.

Buckingham Palace was upset with Harry, the über bad boy of entitlement, engaging in just the latest of his embarrassing run for the royals. But the family was outraged — outraged, I tell you! — at the Kate Middleton pics, and this week won an injunction from a French publication to keep the photos from spreading.

As if that could really happen.

The monarchy is looking at this all wrong, and missing a monumental opportunity. It should be monetizing this folderol, guided by one unassailable business principle: What would the Kardashians do?

The Kardashians would get its own television show and multimedia production company, licensing its every image and utterance, is what!

The parallels are plenty and uncanny: Two families of no particular value, born of money and variations of power, thriving on faded glory (some talent among the two, but not as much as you'd think, given the opportunities each enjoys). Two families who master the ineffable, ephemeral, damnably puzzling quality of getting other people to give a damn about them.

Other than allowing cameras in every corner of every castle and carriage, and pricking centuries of pretense and puffery, the monarchy need not do anything different.

Indeed, the royals would be free to be themselves. Harry could cavort unbridled and unclothed like the frat boy god he'd like to be. William and Kate could frolic. Prince Charles could continue to plot murder most foul, Prince Philip could insult anew some former far reach of the British Empire. Publicists would market each and every step and misstep. And the Queen could address hate mail to Helen Mirren on camera, and continue to not be amused by it all, using the royal we.

The beauty of it: Whether in triumph or tragedy or comedy, the lords and ladies of the realm would make money. Consumers would declare their disgust and ask for more, in high definition. Products would spin off the shelves. Royal offspring and connected relatives would spin off their own shows. The royals would earn their own keep and get off the public dole. They could live in their many and varied hovels debt- and guilt-free!

Best yet, I would know what channel, day and time their fab show will be on — and avoid it once and for all.

We are amused.

Who cares?

Mood level: Pinkish red with gray pallor …

Tomorrow is the wedding of Kate Middleton (a commoner! A waif! Plucked from her desultory station to a place of Honor and Endless Attention!) to His Royal Highness Prince William Arthur Philip Louis of Wales, Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter Master of Arts, but I don't have to tell you that. "News" coverage has super-saturated the planet so that even if you ran screaming for cover (you can probably hear my wails under this washpail) you still could not avoid this occasion. It's fused to your DNA.

It's why I know there's a months-long fuss over the wedding gown, though I don't know who the designer is. It's why I know there are Will-and-Kate action figures and cake toppers (because who doesn't want to commemorate their own weddings by getting hitched the same day as those two?) It's why I know some of the most miscellaneous tidbits about these two, even though I have become ninja-swift at changing TV channels at the uttered opening consonant of their names.

What I don't know is: Why do we care? What possible interest could this be to anybody but the allegedly happy couple and immediate family? Why do we pay attention, and why do they want us to pay them attention?

I sorta understand why Brits would be interested, but many adamantly are not (good for them!), because they have good reason to feel the British royal family has no purpose except symbolic anymore, and British subjects pay for the upkeep of these symbols, which have the nasty habit of eating and living in impossibly lavish palaces and castles, simply by right of birth. One could not aspire to be them, unless one modeled a see-through dress for one of those to-the-manor-born, and inspired His Princedom to propose. (See! It's in my genes to know this, even though I didn't read it anywhere!)

If a loose contingent of Members of Parliament went over and said, "Right, out you go! We need your lodgings for a museum or housing. It doesn't really matter, what, but we're losing money off it as it is, so pack your things. I'm sure you'll find some friends who can board you." The citizens of the United Kingdom would miss the family for about a week, after which they'd realize the money saved would come in handy in these hard times. The last time the royal family seemed important was as comfort during World War II, but even then it was symbol (a more potent symbol, to be sure) not substance.

Why all the strange behavior required of commoners in the presence of the Queen and her Consort? Even the prime minister, the democratic leader of Great Britain, the one guiding real decisions on behalf of British citizens, must defer to royalty, which has no real influence on anything, and is at the top of the heap solely on suspect godly connections centuries ago. Enough!

I love that Friday is an official holiday, and many Brits figured out that with the Easter holiday, they could swing a 10-day holiday for the cost of three days off, and millions have hightailed it out of the country to be away from the wedding.

But why do Americans persist in their interest? Shouldn't wholesale shunning be a perk of our patriot forerunners having won independence from Great Britain? Yet we are chained to the crown again by our own slavish devotion, hanging on every tittle and jot. The guest list! The shoe size! 

The Today Show is parked in London for the week; probably the other morning talk shows too, but I daren't look. Without the wedding and assorted viral YouTube videos of babies laughing at snot bubbles, Fido, and unemployed dads, what would the Today Show have to talk about? What happens when the wedding is over?

But you know what, the wedding will never be over! After the wedding comes the day-by-day scrutiny of the couple's every move, with special devotion to any sign that it will procreate or collapse. We will never be able to stop hearing about them, succeed for fail, and by extension Prince Charles and Diana and whats-her-name, Camilla, forever and ever.

God help all who will rise at 1 a.m. Friday to watch door-to-door coverage. Why do I know that? Aaaahhh! DNA be damned!