Ann Friedman and Dylan Lathrop have an amusing “Should You Care About The Royal Wedding” flowchart at GOOD. To steal the punchline, they say you shouldn’t care because there are important things in the world!
And so they are. But I think this kind of humorless worldview deserves a bit of pushback. I’m not interested in the royal wedding. In part that’s because I’m spending time on my job as a writer about American public policy. In part that’s because I’m reading a book about the economics of severe global poverty. But in part that’s because I’m following the NBA playoffs, watching Season One of Bones, listening to the new Thao & Mirah album, attempting to cultivate an interest in professional hockey, etc. I could pretend, I suppose, that it’s Esther Duflo’s book on global poverty that’s crowding out any interest in Kate Middleton, but that would be a lie. Indeed, I’ve even spent at least a few minutes being amused by this Kate-themed Tumblr.
The point is that while nobody has an obligation to be interested in any particular frivolity and everyone has an absolute right to mock and disparage other people’s frivolous interests, there’s something really off about pretending to disparage other people’s frivolous interests on the grounds that they’re frivolous. Everyone living even slightly above the subsistence level expends some time and resources on entertainment (the point is made clearly and forcefully in Duflo’s book) and that’s an integral part of human existence. You don’t need to be a nihilist to want to watch a spectacle, you just need to be a human being.
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