Misanthrope's Corner - examining why US media gave little coverage to massacre of Nepal's royal family - Brief Article - Column

National Review, July 9, 2001 by Florence King

Hearing that Nepal's Crown Prince Dipendra had murdered his father the king, his mother the queen, his brother the prince, his aunts the princesses, and assorted other royalty at the dinner table, the spirit of Lizzie Borden was heard to say one word.

"Damn."

Lizzie wasn't the only departed member of the sanguine elite to express envious dismay. Catherine de Medici, who thought she had thrown the dinner party to end all dinner parties on that famous St. Bartholomew's Day, showed the first blush ever known to stain her cheeks and muttered, "Now I'm no better than Martha Stewart." Crown Prince Rudolf could have kicked himself over his measly little murder-suicide-one of each-out in the sticks at Mayerling. "If only I had stayed in Vienna," he sighed, "I coulda had a V-8!" Even Roman Empress Livia felt outclassed. "It took me years to do mine piecemeal," she reflected, "but Dipendra rubbed out a whole royal family all at once."

If the ill wind of Katmandu blew anybody any good it was yours truly, because it jogged me out of my recent funk and reawakened my interest in current events. I even went so far as to buy a new TV with a nine- inch screen that fits on my desk so I could watch the news and take notes at the same time like a big-shot columnist. Not many people can say they were saved by Prince Dipendra, but I've always done things differently.

Katmandu was my idea of a story and I was ready to roll, but nobody else was. It was reported, yes, but it wasn't covered as we have come to understand coverage-no "CNN Breaking News," no "Fox Alert," no tortuous analysis, no dizzying zoom lens making a whooshing sound as it comes in on the words "The Lessons of Katmandu." Granted, there was a lot of other news to cover that week, but I still got the distinct impression that the media were doing all they could to avoid saying any more about Dipendra's bloodbath than was absolutely necessary. Why?

A news director would claim the story had no American angle, and in one sense this is true. Most Americans probably could not locate Nepal on a map, and if they ever heard of it they probably thought it was the generic name for a prescription tranquilizer. Nonetheless, the Lesson of Katmandu is so apropos that it belongs in "News You Can Use." Every aspect of the story topples some comfortable American assumption, rubs some American nerve, or complicates the usually blissful American subconscious.

The classic American touch was supplied by Prince Dipendra himself: camouflage combat fatigues, which he changed into before he began shooting. After three decades of feminism, Alpha males with Omega grievances have made the G.I. Joe look the outfit of choice at gun shows, stock-car races, and wherever testosterone simmers. We are told incessantly that we are the "only remaining superpower" and that "the world looks to America," but being the arbiters of dress-to-kill is hegemony gone wrong. Who else could make a Buddhist shop at Army Surplus?

In its first official explanation of the royal slaughter, the Nepalese government described it as an "accident." Their bland insistence that a gun had suddenly gone off by itself and killed nine people threw the liberal media into a panic. They had to downplay it because it sounded as if Bill Clinton had gone to Nepal to help them spin.

The media also were afraid of the story because it harbored unintended consequences for the triumph of multiculturalism. As the ever more farcical details emerged, Americans might be tempted to slap their thighs as of old and chortle, "Those excitable foreigners!" Nobody has said this for years, but given today's tension levels, one chortle, taken at the flood, could lead God knows where.

A Monty Python-style regicide in the mountain fastness of a storybook land is bound to be problematic unless it is better timed than this one was. These things should happen in a world that regards dissension as a natural condition, such as the 14th century when there were two popes, or the heady days of pre-nationalism when countries consisted of clots of warring duchies, each given to coining its own money. But Dipendra struck while the iron was cold, his fury muffled between the spongy bookends of a soon-to-be-unified Europe fading into undifferentiated single-currency "harmonization," and an America full of people so terrified of not getting along with each other that an unspoken but concerted effort is afoot to turn everybody into a moderate.

Of course the media downplayed Dipendra. Calling attention to his crisis-management style would jeopardize our carefully constructed fantasies of cooperation, mangle the anti-competitiveness agenda of the "everybody wins" crowd, and spike the already-scheduled 814,675 articles, books, and prime-time specials on ending bullying.

Conservatives were just as eager to join the Dipendra blackout. In the first place, it was no time to remind Americans that we have a Nepal of our own, a storybook land in a mountain fastness called Vermont where madness reigns with unchallenged absolutism. Moreover, the White House wanted no talk of Dipendra's camouflage fatigues while Dubya was doing his green-on-green environment number. Whenever he planted himself in leafy national parks in his green jacket you couldn't make out anything except his face and hands, and that was too apt a metaphor for an incredible shrinking president for his handlers to deal with.