Curtsy and CHOGM

It didn’t take long. Within an hour of what seemed like a respectful and polite greeting by the Australian Prime Minister to a foreign head of state, media companies had spun it into an apparent breach of “protocol”. The online editions of all Australian newspapers and broadcasters were posting a story about a word that doesn’t stray often on to the tongue: curtsy. Wikipedia says a "curtsey (also spelled curtsy or courtesy) is a traditional gesture of greeting, in which a girl or woman bends her knees while bowing her head. It is the female equivalent of male bowing in Western cultures.” (photo: Debutantes practise a form of the curtsey known as a Texas dip)

If the Queen, the sovereign head of the United Kingdom and of the Commonwealth (in which capacity she is visiting the country) is upset a woman didn’t bend their knees in greeting to her, then she is getting more doddery in her dotage than she is letting on. She would have had a lot more on her mind than a knee gesture. She would have been thinking about her role as conduit between the UK and Australian Governments or discussing practical considerations about the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Perth. After all it is an important meeting of 60 leaders she and Gillard will be co-chairing. It happens every two years and brings together a strange brew of countries who all share British colonial history, law and culture with varying degrees of adherence (we Irish need to get over our historical gripes and enter this intriguing league of nations).

The theme of this year’s conference is “Building National Resilience, Building Global Resilience” which is not very sexy sounding but of great importance to most of the leaders present as it talks about transnational responses to global poverty and climate change. Yet a Google news search of the theme of the conference found just two occurrences – and one was the official press release from CHOGM.

The other was in Trinidad Express Newspapers which quoted Trinidad & Tobago Foreign Affairs and Communications Minister Dr Suruj Rambachan. Ranbachan noted the theme would mean discussion on the challenges of food security, sustainable development and natural resource management. All these themes have much greater importance than a misunderstood gesture but attracted no media attention outside the Caribbean.

Compare articles on “Building National Resilience, Building Global Resilience” to "curtsy". A quick glance again at Google News found 1,160 or so articles on Gillard’s failure to bend her knees. Britain and Australia in particular were all over it. The British Telegraph noted a contrast with the Governor General “While Mrs Bryce curtsied to the Queen, Ms Gillard, an avowed republican, opted for a handshake and shallow bow.” Presumably they don’t mean shallow in the sense of lacking depth. The Australian Telegraph was showing Gillard up by pointing out in their headline that two eight-year old were practising their curtseys ahead of an engagement with Her Majesty. Gillard meanwhile had to “explain” her behaviour: "As I greeted the Queen she extended her hand to shake hands and obviously I shook her hand and bowed my head. - That's what I felt most comfortable with".

News Ltd’s Melbourne paper Herald Sun lived up to its motto “stories start here” and read far more into it, saying Gillard’s “decision” was a “sign”. Australia, it trumpeted, was "catching up with the modern monarchy". While most are unaware the modern monarchy had left Australia behind, the Herald Sun found a TV chat show host, an etiquette expert and the deputy chair of the Victorian branch of the Australian Monarchists League who agreed Gillard had blundered by not curtsying.

In the quick way of these things, someone added "–gate" to it. Watergate was the foundation meme because it was a scandal that eventually brought down the president of the US. And adding “gate” to something is fun because the new word is instantly memorable. But the suffix has long since jumped the shark. It is also lazy journalism as it ascribes a whole set of motives to the event that may be entirely absent. To be fair, I can find no evidence any newspaper or website journalist has referred to "curtsygate", but it took off in Twitter.

The phrase was attributed to Sydney 2GB radio shock jock host Ray Hadley, which is plausible but I cannot verify if he actually said it. Whoever said it, the reaction in Twitter was typically either one of head-shaking weariness at the thought of this latest gate abomination or else the cause of sarcastic glee it was the end of democracy.

But if journalists did not gate it, they should not have left curtsy past the gatekeeper either. If they really want to talk about the significance of the Queen’s visit they need to look beyond etiquette experts and Lisa Wilkinson’s Twitter stream. The real villains here are the chiefs of staff and the news editors who select these stories and give them prominence. They not only fit the ongoing destabilisation of an unpopular Prime Minister in contrast to a hugely popular monarch, but also hyperinflate the primary news value of “conflict” (the fact that someone might be outraged by Gillard's behaviour) which editors believe most news users want to read about.

But here’s an idea. If the news editors are seeking genuine conflict - perhaps the sort of conflict that changes people's lives - then they should give their staff the link to the CHOGM paper and tell them to chase down the Trinidad foreign minister. I’m sure he has some enlightening and possibly non-complementary things to say about Australia and other first world countries. The Queen might even give them his number if they bow politely enough.

The King's Speech

I’ve just seen The Kings Speech, the second movie after The Queen interfering with my simple desire to loath the Windsors. I’ve never met any of the Royal Family but as an institution they embody everything that makes my Irish blood boil. They carry the baggage of immense history and are the symbol of British power and imperialism. The 19th century Pax Britannica that cemented British power was a fabrication brutally enforced across the world in Victoria’s name. The monarch’s picture on the currency reinforced the symbolism behind the success of British commerce. (picture of Lionel Logue in 1930: Wikipedia)

Britain declined after Victoria’s death though its delusions of grandeur were more difficult to shake off. The laws of the land ensure Victoria's descendants have exclusive access to the throne and through it the power of the Anglican Church. They provide pomp and circumstance to a wider international power in a way the royal houses of Netherlands, Belgium and Scandinavia do not (only the Rainiers in Monaco come close) and they remain an important projection of British soft power. Though crippled by inbreeding, they have successfully outsourced glamour to the likes of Diana Spencer and Kate Middleton. The elaborate fairytale production of “Will and Kate” is designed to reinvent the British royal brand for the 21st century with the help of a compliant media.

Comfortable with my curmudgeonly view of Will’s grandmother Elizabeth II as a hand-shaking cipher for the throne who has seemingly lived for centuries, I did not have high hopes for Stephen Frears’ film The Queen which came out a few years ago. But I came away with an admiration as Helen Mirren transformed the queen into a competent and complex human. Watching it, John Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance kicked in and I had much better understanding of the issues Elizabeth Windsor faced after the death of Diana.

The Veil is best exemplified by the metaphor “putting yourself in someone else’s shoes”. But sooner or later you put your own shoes on. Frears’s film was ultimately not about the Queen or Diana but about the monarchy and its ambiguous position at the heart of Government. What power Elizabeth wielded was fleeting and a result of compromises and invented traditions which left the royals hidebound. The commoner Tony Blair knew quicker than they did the impact of not having the flag at half mast when Di died. He grasped, as they didn't the media's position on Diana, no matter how hypocritical. The media were mourning “the people’s princess” they never admitted they helped kill in the streets of Paris.

No matter how appalled they were by this, the royals could not complain. They want publicity just as much as they want privacy. Balmoral Castle where the family saw out Diana’s death features also in Tom Hooper’s The Kings Speech. The current Queen’s father George VI (Colin), then Prince Albert but known to the family as Bertie turns up to Balmoral for a party given by his brother, the new monarch Edward VIII known to the family as David (Guy Pearce). The party is a clash of cultures represented by the kilt-wearing traditionalist Bertie and the party boy David who was scandalising the court with his twice-divorced girlfriend Wallis Simpson (Eve Best).

In those days, the media ignored the peccadilloes of the Royals’ personal life. David and Bertie didn’t have to deal with paparazzi with long lenses and phone hacking techniques but they did have to deal with the technology that was changing the relationship of the rulers to the ruled. Before radio, the Royals were seen but not heard. But that was changing quickly. The first US radio station was set up in 1920 and the BBC started two years later. In 1932 Bertie’s father, George V (Michael Gambon) used the BBC to reluctantly give the first Royal Christmas Message.

Like his son Bertie, George V had an elder brother who was expected to become king. But when Prince Albert died of the flu in 1892, George was suddenly second in line after his father Edward VII. George could see something similar happening to his sons and his advice to Bertie was to master radio, because communication was the key to retaining “the firm’s” power. The problem was, as George well knew, Bertie had a serious stammer. This rendered him completely unable to project the firm's power through the airwaves. His stuttering 1925 British Empire Exhibition speech was an embarrassment for the speaker and listener alike.

His father was an intimidating presence, but Bertie did have one big supporter in his wife Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (Helena Bonham Carter). Elizabeth, the Queen Mother who died aged 101 in 2002, was a practical and intelligent woman who married into the firm with great reluctance in 1923 and who most unlike the current wedding, saw the newly created BBC kep away from her wedding. Elizabeth loved her husband but saw a succession of doctors fail to find a cure for Bertie's problem.

In desparation she sought out the unconventional Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), a speech pathologist from Adelaide. Logue’s Irish roots and Australian lack of respect for traditions would help him deal with the prince on an equal footing, to the point where he was the only person outside the family to call him Bertie. As much psychologist as therapist, Logue delved deep into Bertie’s childhood psychoses to diagnose the archetypes that were causing his stammer: the cruel nanny, the missing mother, the harsh father and the taunting brother. Though not a doctor, Logue diagnosed poor co-ordination between the larynx and thoracic diaphragm and prescribed vocal exercises lasting an hour daily. The exercises gave Bertie the confidence to avoid tension-inducing muscle spasms that caused the stammer.

Logue more or less solved the public speaking problem by 1927, well before the time the film would suggest. Nevertheless he was retained throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The death of George V and subsequent abdication crisis of Edward VIII in 1936 brought Bertie to the throne as George VI. Logue helped him rehearse his acceptance speech and was also instrumental in the monarch’s triumphal speech on the declaration of war in 1939 and his even more influential Christmas Message that year. George mastered the communication and became an effective figurehead of an embattled community that needed real morale-boosting against the threat of Hitler.

The film gets its point over with some brilliantly cinematic tricks and the interaction between Rush, Firth and Bonham Carter is compelling. Once again I was forced to care about the king’s speech because Bertie was a living breathing person with lots of human faults. Yet I don’t think either of these films are turning me into an Australian monarchist. I was happy to take out Australian citizenship in 1994 after Keating removed the oath of allegiance to the crown. The idea the British queen or king should be head of the Australian state is an embarrassing anomaly.

Leaving Australia out of it, the royals biggest problem is to make themselves relevant outside of the redtop circus they have made a Faustian pact with. William Windsor’s great-grandfather was able to overcome this – and his own personal demons – by being the personification of leadership to a large imagined community in the time of great crisis. What, other than the supposedly mad one Charles, are the royals doing to contribute to solving today's crises?

Thai King in hospital

The headline in this morning’s English language Bangkok Post was “Foreigners join long queues of wellwishers”. The wellwisher queues are at the Siriraj hospital because the Thai King is currently there recovering from spinal surgery he had last Thursday. He is now walking with the aid of a walking stick and doctors are satisfied with the speed of his recovery. The king fell and fractured a rib on June 24 while walking around the palace grounds but officials have not said if the operation was related to that accident. The king has suffered from spinal problems since 1995, which doctors said were caused by old age. The condition was diagnosed in 2003 as lumbar spinal stenosis, and the king has been receiving physical therapy as treatment since last year.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej is the ninth king of the Chakri dynasty which has ruled Thailand since 1782. The 78 year old King is a constitutional monarch. The last absolute monarch was King Prajadhipok (known as Rama VII to non Thais) who ruled from 1925 until his abdication in 1935. However in 1932 a bloodless coup took place. It was orchestrated by the so-called People's Party (Khana Ratsadorn) who took control of the royal palace in Bangkok and arrested key officials while the king was at his summer retreat in Hua Hin. The People's Party demanded that Prajadhipok agree to become a constitutional monarch and grant Thai people a democratic constitution. The King agreed and the first "permanent" constitution was granted on December 10, 1932. King Ananda (Rama VIII) replaced him in 1935.

The two dominant figures in Thai politics during the 1930s were Luang Pibulsonggram (later known as Field Marshal Pibul) and Dr Pridi Panomyong. There were both educated in France but held very different opinions on how to run the country. Pibul favoured dictatorship whereas Dr Pridi paved the way for democratic change. By the end of the 1930s Pibul was PM and Dr Pridi was foreign minister. After the fall of France in 1940 to Nazi Germany, there were border skirmishes which resulted in the return of areas of Laos and Cambodia to Thailand. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbour in December 1941, they demanded free passage through Thailand to attack British territories in Burma and India. Pibul was powerless to resist and issued a declafration of war against Britian and the US in January 1942. Dr Pridi organised a resistance movement which eventually saw him regain power at Pibul’s expense. This enabled Thailand to avoid being seen as a Japanese collaborator at the end of the war.

King Ananda, meanwhile had reigned since 1935 as a boy of 10. But on June 9, 1946, Ananda was found shot dead in his room at the Grand Palace during an official state visit from the Swiss government. In October 1946, a Commission of Inquiry reported that the King's death could not have been accidental but that neither suicide nor murder was satisfactorily proved. This mysterious death brought his younger brother to the throne. King Bhumibol Adulyadej was pronounced Rama IX (crowned in 1950) and he reigns to this day.

Dr Pridi was accused of complicity in the death of Ananda and was forced into exile by Pibul. He attempted two comebacks in 1949 and 1951 but both ended in failure. Pibul remained in power until 1957 until he too was overthrown by Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat in 1957. In November 1971, Prime Minister Thanom executed a coup against his own government, thereby ending the three-year experiment with what had passed for parliamentary democracy. In October 1973, Thai students staged massive demonstrations that overthrew the military government and sent its leaders into exile. After an interregnum of three years, the rightists returned to power in 1976 in a violent coup.

The king is a constitutional monarch similar to the British royals but he is deeply revered. His role as mediator in the crises of the 1970s and 1992 won him great respect. His death, whenever it happens, will be the source of great mourning across the country.