When will they ever learn?...

I'm not so much thinking as snorting the past few days at the posturing coming out of Buckingham Palace and Anglesey about the publishing of photos of the Duchess of Cambridge, sunbathing topless on a private terrace on a private property in the south of France on a private vacation with her husband.

First off--yes, they are entitled to their privacy, and a married couple should have the chance to enjoy each others' company in whatever state of dress or undress suits their mood and the occasion. And the south of France is a great place for getting loads of sun on as much exposed skin as you can stand or dare.

And yes, paparazzi are bottom-feeders. So too are the publishers of magazines that would print such photos. But the publishers and photographers would have no purpose without the purchasers. Popular culture in one of its more sensational forms in the making. And nobody courts popularity any more assiduously than the House of Windsor.

After all, surely after all the outrage over Diana, or even Sarah, the Duchess of York, and even recently of Harry in Vegas, the Cambridges might have been a bit more circumspect, found a somewhat less exposed platform from which to soak up a few rays? They have to know by now that there will be a loaded camera in the hands of a canny cameraperson pretty well anywhere they go. And that it does not take much of an opportunity (even in the middle of something like 640 acres) for a long lens to see things it's not supposed to be seeing?

So now, once again, it's "shoot the messenger" time for the House of Windsor. The message was, "You took too much for granted." Now try this message: "You guys need to smarten up."

But, no, they'd rather come out wildly indignant after the fact at the yellow press, than adjust to the unpleasant reality that they cannot be photogenic celebrities only when it suits them and their charities. And they cannot expect that the photographers, all of them, will play nice the rest of the time. It's the non-op photos that pay the bills, Windsors and Cambridges. Learn that lesson and quit with the pouting when your own carelessness gets exposed.

Or, Cambridges, just tell the publishers to take a flying leap. Explain that you are married, young, and attractive to each other, and intend to act on that set of facts, as couples are entitled to do. Just do it in what is truly private, and not in what you incorrectly suppose to be private enough.

Post Scriptum 18 Sept.:

I hear by the news this morning that the Cambridges have been granted an injunction against Closer, which must hand over the digital originals of the photos and start paying fines if it does not. I guess other injunctions will be forthcoming against other publications in Italy and Ireland that have also published some or many of the photos. So maybe the House of Windsor and its offspring have not yet learned not to get careless and not to get caught, but they have learned that they can fight back--something it was apparently unwilling or unable to do a generation ago. I still wish they would just say "publish and be damned." But that is unrealistic on my part.