newspapers are finally questioning the legitimacy of the British Monarchy, but thanks only to the efforts of the much reviled tabloids that exposed scandals like Camillagate and late-night telephone tapes. No, Lady Di was probably not the first princess to suffer from an eating dissorder, nor was Charles the first prince to talk dirty to someone other than his wife, but we have finally spawned -- through sheer force of our commercial will -- a set of media channels up to (or down to) the task of mining for these gems.
The instantaneous quality of today's media provides us with relatively uncensored, direct feed from the front, wherever that may be. More significantly, its speed and distribution allow for participatory, culture-wide events to unfold in the present tense. History becomes now.
