News Comment (11/30)
Comments(1) | My news feed this week has been dominated by the engagement of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle since it crosses over into entertainment news AND regular news. This is newsworthy because the royals attract a lot of attention and the fact that he is marrying a (and this quote comes from a different story than the one I am linking) “mixed race, American divorcee.”
This is not the norm for the royal family. “Important” royals are known to marry “commoners” (i.e. Princess Diana, Kate Middleton) but not usually Americans. Because of the oddity of the engagement, the high-profile position of Prince Harry, and the celebrity status of Markle makes this important to a wider audience that even that of the last royal engagement.
This news has been reported by all kinds of news outlets with them all taking different spins on the story. Many just reported that it happened like the Daily News article I linked to. The Washington Post took to reporting on the last time a British royal married an American divorcee.
My personal favorite was the Buzzfeed post that compiled all of the tweets about the engagement where my favorite quote of this story came from which was “Prince Harry is marrying a mixed race, American divorcee and you know that is just Diana’s way of giving the finger to the queen.” I really like when news sites show some reaction from the public in their pieces. Buzzed takes that to the extreme sometimes making that their entire story but when done well I really enjoy hearing snarky comments from Twitter, Facebook, etc.
I knew she was “mixed race,” but the divorcee thing is news to me. I realize that Harry is the “spare,” and that what he does is not critical to the aristocracy. But this is still pretty cool.
A good example of prominence, and maybe oddity.