I’m sorry that Kate Middleton has cancer. I hope it isn’t fatal. She seems like a nice person to me, and I don’t fault her for marrying into a monarchy, even if I think every thing the Windsors own should be melted down to pay for national infrastructure, social services and restitution. I do not like kings and queens. At all. But, like Kate,  I’m an American and the British can take their sweet time doing a King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette job on their royal family. That’s for them to decide.

What I definitely didn’t do is engage in speculation about where Kate has been since she had abdominal surgery in January. That’s in part because I do not care about the royal family, and in part because I seldom read articles by people who do care. But even after I realized her absence had spawned a million conspiracy theories, I still had no comment. Why?

Partly it’s because I’ve grown physically ill as a result of watching people wallow in misinformation. But it’s also because the official explanation was that she’d had surgery and would be back after Easter. That was a good enough explanation for me. Why should I care if it is isn’t true? If she were dead, they’d tell us.

Anyway, she came out on Friday as told the world that she has cancer and had been primarily concerned with talking to her young children and reassuring them. Now the Washington Post reports that people feel super guilty about all the nasty insinuations they made about her and her husband and their marriage, etc.

And then of course there’s the other side that’s not apologetic at all and blames the royals’ media relations outfits for incompetence. And that’s fair enough, but I still think spending your life cracking jokes at monarchs is only a solid gig if it’s in the sincere effort to dethrone them. Most of these people might as well be drooling over the stars at the Oscars.

Anyway, I hope she gets better.