Meghan Markle Posts Beach Photos, American Morning Television Rediscovers the Monarchy It Fought a War to Escape
Tabloid economists report the strongest quarter for royal content since the last wedding nobody in Ohio could quite explain watching
NEW YORK — Meghan Markle posted a carousel of summer holiday photographs to Instagram last week, and American morning television responded the way it responds to all major world events: by clearing forty-five minutes and inviting three people who have never been to England to discuss England.
The post, captioned simply “Summer Holiday,” included a black-and-white photo of Markle and Prince Harry on a dinner date, along with a handful of beach and travel snapshots from a European getaway, and a few rare glimpses of the couple’s two children enjoying what everyone involved described, with some suspicion, as an ordinary vacation.
Producers had panels assembled before the coffee finished brewing.
Morning Television Rediscovers a Monarchy It Fought a War to Escape
Within the hour, all three major networks had devoted airtime to a nation of 340 million people who do not have a king, discussing in serious tones whether a nation of 68 million people who do have one was doing an adequate job with theirs.
“We don’t have a monarchy,” said royal contributor Chip Halloran, seated in front of a studio backdrop of Windsor Castle purchased from a stock-photo service. “We have something better. We have opinions about someone else’s monarchy, and no responsibility for the outcome.”
A chyron beneath him read BREAKING: FAMILY GOES ON VACATION.
Tabloid Economy Reports Best Quarter Since the Last Wedding
Newsstand executives confirmed that a single beach photograph, containing no scandal, no confrontation and no visible wrongdoing of any kind, had generated enough advertising revenue to fund an entire fiscal quarter.
“Nothing happened, and nothing happening is our best-performing category,” said a magazine executive who requested anonymity because their bonus depends on nothing continuing to happen. “If she’d worn a hat, we’d have run a special issue.”
Self-Appointed Royal Experts Multiply Across Basic Cable
Cable news filled its remaining airtime with commentators whose credentials ranged from “wrote a college paper on Henry VIII” to “once had a layover at Heathrow.”
“I stood behind a man in line at a Cracker Barrel whose aunt once cleaned for someone who’d met the Queen,” said one panelist, introduced on screen as a Royal Family Analyst. “I have been building toward this moment my entire career.”
Analysts spent several minutes examining the sand for symbolism before conceding it was, in fact, sand.
Social Media Splits Into Two Countries That Already Fought This War Once
Online reaction divided cleanly along lines not seen since 1776. One faction insisted the photographs proved Markle was, at last, thriving. A second insisted they proved she was thriving suspiciously. A third pointed out that everyone involved was simply on a beach.
“It is the same syllogism every time,” said Professor Alan Nafzger, a political philosopher and dairy farmer who has now been quoted in roughly one hundred percent of this week’s news coverage on two different continents. “A photograph appears. A nation projects its entire emotional condition onto it. The photograph, for its part, remains a photograph.”
By evening, the vacation had ended the way most vacations do: the family flew home, the children went back to being children, and the beach went back to holding nothing but sand and the faint outline of where several television crews had stood at a respectful distance with extremely powerful lenses.
American television, meanwhile, had discovered three more royal experts, sold out of a commemorative magazine cover, and briefly forgotten that its own country does not, in fact, have a monarchy to be governed by.
It plans to remember this again the next time someone posts a photo of a beach.
12 Humorous Observations Behind the Story
- America fought an entire revolution to avoid a monarchy and now maintains a twenty-four-hour news apparatus dedicated to covering one it doesn’t have.
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America doesn’t have a monarchy. Its media can’t stop covering one. A photograph containing a beach, two adults and an ordinary vacation was treated by cable news as though it contained a peace treaty.
- Royal expertise in American media requires no credential beyond having once been within three time zones of London.
- The tabloid industry’s most reliable business model remains “absolutely nothing happened, but beautifully.”
- A stock-photo Windsor Castle backdrop earned one studio more money in a single segment than the actual Windsor Castle earns from ticket sales in a week.
- Sand, upon close analysis, continues to be sand.
- The country that turned the telephoto lens into a growth industry remains shocked, every time, that it worked.
- Two hundred and fifty years after independence, Americans still cannot resist a monarchy, provided someone else has to fund its security detail.
- Cable panels can locate constitutional significance in a beach towel faster than Congress can locate a quorum.
- The children on the beach appeared to be doing the one thing nobody on television could bring themselves to do: enjoying an ordinary day without narrating it.
- A single Instagram caption reading “Summer Holiday” generated more bipartisan American consensus than any bill introduced this year.
- Royal correspondents on both sides of the Atlantic agree on exactly one thing: neither will be the first to admit the story is over.
Satirical Disclaimer
This story is satire — a work of satirical journalism inspired by an actual Instagram post and the actual media coverage that followed it. Consider it satirical news rather than a factual account: the named commentators, panels, studio backdrops and Cracker Barrel encounters are invented for comic purposes. This article is entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world’s oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
