Whichever side of the fence you fall on regarding Lara Spencer’s comments about Prince George and his life, at least you get to voice an opinion, which is more than he is allowed.
Everyone is outraged about Lara’s take on the subject of George. It comes after she said in a segment on Good Morning America, “The future king of England will be putting down the Play-Doh to take on religious studies, computer programming, poetry and ballet among other things.
She then added, while laughing, “Prince William says George absolutely loves ballet, I have news for you Prince William — we’ll see how long that lasts!”
My argument is that Lara wasn’t incorrect to question the sanity of taking a six-year old’s Play-Doh from his fingers and expecting him to program a computer.
She wasn’t incorrect to question the silliness of assuming a being who’s been on the earth for all of six years can comprehend the profundities of the world’s religious leaders.
Lara wasn’t incorrect to question the reasoning behind taking away a boy’s toys and giving him a machine to master. Play is how kids learn and play isn’t about mastery — it’s about imagination, learning how to get along with others, and learning from mistakes.
But she was incorrect about one thing. She didn’t question why in the 21st century the little prince doesn’t get a vote on what matters most — his future.
Today most people view arranged marriage as archaic, taking the choice of a life’s partner away from someone cruel. Most see slavery, the enforced serving of another, as an outrage. And yet what is George’s life about if not being enslaved to an archaic system in which his marriage to the throne is predetermined?
He was born a prince with the expectation he will die a king. From the womb to the tomb his journey has been programmed in advance. His life coded by someone else. Maybe it is apt that he trade the sensory pleasures of recess and naptime for the cold calculations of computer programming.
Unless things drastically change in the very near future, he won’t be able to even begin to imagine what it means to carve out an identity or shape a destiny.
His life has been mapped out in the yellowed blueprints of his blue-blooded ancestors. And because of that he’ll never know the deep fulfillment that comes from conjuring up one’s own life from dreamy hopes and desperate desires, of fighting for the right to build and live that life, and then reveling in the consummation of all he’s worked for.
His lifespan has been programmed with the precision of a super computer. His opinion doesn’t matter. And that’s the biggest incorrectness of all where Prince George is concerned, not whether or not a talking head thinks he should perform pirouettes.
It’s a shame he’ll never know what he could have been with the one chance he’s been given — maybe the next Baryshnikov.