Kate's 'disappearance' and revisionist narratives
Stubborn #whereskate conspiracists still can't admit they simply got things wrong
This is a rant.
I’ve spent a week listening to people explain why they or people they know plunged feet first down online rabbit holes of Kate conspiracy theories, revelling in the most fanciful and improbable of tales about why she hadn’t appeared in public since Christmas Day.
I’ve heard lots of disingenuous excuses — blaming friends, social media, the royal family, its communications staff, society as a whole — but remarkably little candid self-reflection.
The reckoning came after Kate revealed her cancer diagnosis on March 22. Posts were quietly deleted, excuses were uttered, including one by late night host Stephen Colbert, who stated: “There’s a standard that I try to hold myself to, and it is that I do not make light of someone else’s tragedy.” Yet, earlier in March, while she was recovering from serious abdominal surgery, he did mock her “seeming disappearance.”
Why take responsibility and issue an apology when you can spin, deflect, and shove the blame on others for why you mocked a woman recovering from surgery? Revisionist narratives are all the rage these days.
Colbert is not alone in massaging his past actions (revelling in heaping scorn and derision on a public figure) to fit the new reality (Kate is undergoing chemo). A long, increasingly defensive thread that exemplifies how many felt after learning the news was published by a health reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer who’d made fun of a headline about Kate just a day before her cancer announcement. On March 23, Abraham Gutman wrote that “scolding” wasn’t warranted as there was “SOMETHING VERY BAD GOING ON” with Kate and that the royals “TRY TO HIDE IT WITH BIZARRE LIES.” The main parts of the long thread are below:
The words “disappearance,” “vanish,” and “lies” have been tossed around so often that they have the accepted narrative to explain Kate’s absence from the public. Except she didn’t disappear or vanish, and the palace didn’t lie about that. We’ve all known what she’s been doing these past months — recovering from abdominal surgery. We know this BECAUSE THE PALACE TOLD THE WORLD ON JANUARY 17.
The third sentence in that January 17 press release from Kensington Palace states: “Based on the current medical advice, she is unlikely to return to public duties until after Easter.” A calendar shows that Easter is March 31, 2024.
So there was NO expectation that anyone would see her before then. Or that the palace would offer updates unless there was “significant new information to share.” Period.
It took about a month for increasingly large numbers of people on social media to have completely obliterated any memory of that statement from their minds. Instead of thinking, “Oh right, she’s not out in public because she’s recovering from abdominal surgery,” conspiracy theorists got to work speculating why she’d “disappeared.” To get an idea of the litany of conspiracy theories, search the hashtag #whereskate. (A complete timeline was constructed and repeatedly updated by Ellie Hall for Neiman Lab.)
And all that occurred before Kate and William released that photo of Kate and their kids on March 10 for Mother’s Day in the U.K. Let’s be clear: uploading an edited photo to the media was a stupid mistake. As I wrote, it deserved to be killed by news photo agencies because of that digital manipulation. No question.
Kate apologized for it the next day. Aside from that apology from Kate, their communications staff at Kensington Palace was notably mute as millions used that error to let their imaginations run wild. The floodgates opened and a torrent of increasingly deranged conspiracy theories flooded the world and #whereskate went viral. And millions willingly plunged into those fetid cesspools.
Celebrities got into the act. On Instagram, Kim Kardashian posted images of her next to a Tesla Cybertruck with the message, “On my way to go find Kate” to her 364 million followers. Singer Sheryl Crow posted a video before going on a TV show, asking “But where's Kate Middleton?" and then claiming, “I'm meeting Kate Middleton for lunch.” (As of today, Kardashian’s post is still up, while Crow’s has been deleted).
Now we know why palace communications was silent. Behind the scenes, the royal couple, their very young children, and their staff were dealing with not only the results of post-operative tests that showed the presence of cancer but also that she’d started preventive chemotherapy in late February. That is roughly when the first round of conspiracy theories began and around two weeks before the release of the Mother’s Day photo.
For those who don’t blame conspiracy theorists for their own delight in such bizarre claims, they often join the large club that blamed palace comms for the entire mess. An example of the pile-on can be seen in Martha Cecilia Ovadia’s post on X/Twitter a mere 40 minutes after Kate’s video update was released:
I don’t want to comment on #KateMiddleton’s condition but as a comms/PR person - the pivot to “this is the public’s shame” and “the problem was the conspiracy theories” and not the most unreal PR disaster I’ve ever witnessed from an unreliable/dangerous institution is the point.
Really?!? Given all the facts we now know, what exactly was palace comms supposed to do differently?
They have principals — William and Kate — who want to protect their young kids at all costs. By mid February, just before Kate started her cancer treatment, their comms staff had to have known that a return to public duties “after Easter” was out of the question. They also knew that they’d have to issue an update on her medical condition at some point. But when?
AGAIN, THINK OF THE KIDS! You wouldn’t want your young children in the middle of a Category 5 media/online hurricane if you could possibly avoid it, especially a storm focused on the news that their mum has cancer. Nor would William and Kate.
A glance at a calendar shows that the earliest logical date for releasing the needed update is Friday, March 22. That’s when George, Charlotte, and Louis leave school for the three-week Easter break, meaning the revelation about their mother’s cancer treatment would have faded from a devastating publicity hurricane to the pitter patter of rain by the time they returned to school.
What could any palace comms staff have said or done differently that would have calmed the raging post-photo conspiracy storm? They couldn’t lie and say Kate is well, given that she’s weeks into her cancer treatment. They couldn’t be completely open and issue an update about Kate’s changed medical situation as that would expose the Wales children to the full fury of world attention while they were still in school. So, they hunkered down and waited until March 22.
The 2:20-minute video message from the Princess of Wales was recorded by the BBC on Wednesday. She candidly talks about what happened since that January update, and asks for privacy.
It took roughly a month from her surgery in January to the first tranche of rumours and conspiracy theories to start swirling on social media in February. That means we’ll likely see similar posts by late April. I hope I’m wrong. I doubt it.
SCHEDULING FYI: I had a post ready to publish last week. I will send it. Promise.