Korona Kitsch

As I sit typing, my neighbors are out in the street banging pots and pans, cheering, whistling, blowing horns and setting off fireworks. They are waving to each other across the street and across garden fences. Some are weeping. All are bathing in an orgy of self-congratulatory virtue-signaling. 

In Britain, Thursday nights at 8PM have become a national circle jerk, a Korona Kitsch fest. It’s a mass public-display of lock-step sentimentality as we give thanks to the selfless saints who work in the National Health System.  

I am reminded of the North Koreans who must cry copious tears on demand before the tomb of their fallen great leader. Or else! Meanwhile, in Britain, at a time of supposedly unprecedented crisis, our monarch has never seemed so insignificant. For, in Britain, Corona rules not Elizabeth and kitsch is king. 

Saccharin citizens have put “Thank You” notes on garbage cans to cheer our noble trashmen. Widdle kids have attached finger-painted rainbows to those same garbage cans. And, those scamps have pasted rainbows to the front windows of their houses to lift the spirits of our indomitable postmen. (If you can find one!)  

Worse. There have been regular street sing-alongs to such kitsch favorites as You’ll Never Walk Alone, When the Saints Go Marching In and (Please shoot me!) Imagine. All sung while maintaining social-distance, of course. 

Social media is then flooded with gushing declarations about how moving the songs were followed by the usual teenage girl emojis but posted, in fact, by post-menopausal women. Actually, the Corona-mania has transformed the population of Britain into a squealing, tearful pre-pubescent girl. And, this is the men! The women… 

Long gone are the British “stiff upper lip” and motto “Keep Calm and Carry On.” British media (especially the undeservedly acclaimed BBC) has become one big broadcast moan of dependency, vulnerability and entitlement. Every radio call-in show and TV chat show is now a “can-you-top-this” contest of Corona victimhood. 

Readers of a certain age will remember the 1950s US TV show Queen for a Day in which pathetic women competed for prizes with their tales of misery. Audience applause decided if the gal who had lost a leg to cancer was more miserable than the one who had lost a husband to the bottle. (Younger readers in need of a good horrified-laugh are urged to find the show on Youtube.) So, I guess it makes sense that a country already used to being ruled by a monarch should embrace the idea of a national misery contest to decide which lucky citizen is to be crowned King or Queen Corona.  

Meanwhile, the latest UK government figures reveal that Corona kills at the negligible rate of about 0.11 as was predicted by honest epidemiologists months ago. And, it’s been confirmed that the official current UK death toll of 20,000 includes those who died with but not necessarily from Corona. “Can you say, massive exaggeration, boys and girls?”  

But, facts be damned, the wailing and gnashing of British teeth proceeds unabated. In this panic-demic the Brits are determined to run to their rooms, throw themselves on their beds and have a good old cry. 

What caused this seismic shift in the British character?  

1. Too much American culture? 
2. Too much daycare? 
3. Something in the water? 
4. Something in the food?
5. Climate change? 
6. Cultural Marxism pushed by anti-Western rootless cosmopolitans?

Answers on a postcard.

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