Privilege writ with large “P”—Princess Diana’s grand family digs.

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n this segment of CBS Sunday (March 15, 2015) the show gives the audience a tour of the late Princess Diana’s ancestral home, currently inhabited by her brother, Charles Spencer.

The show naturally does not even come close to raising the “inopportune” question of why this outrageous degree of institutionalized inequality has been allowed to fester in Britain, supposedly a democracy. The property—which is only part of the Spencer clan’s patrimony— is also an eloquent testimony to the enormous power of unchallenged privilege to accumulate wealth and social advantage over the centuries, a phenomenon seen in all nations that allow deep class divisions to exist without remedial action. The video is quaintly titled, “Charles Spencer, Di’s brother, is minding his manor”, subtly reinforcing the notion that such an order is eternal. While Charles seems quite a decent and likable chap, it would have been interesting to hear his thoughts on Britain’s class divide, a subject for which he is eminently qualified as a historian. It’s quite obvious that the top echelons of CBS, all multimillionaires, not to mention the owners, literally latter-day industrial barons with billions of dollars in accumulated wealth, not only approve of this level of inequality, they would love to join the nobility’s exalted ranks. Below the video and text of how CBS described the segment.

Published on Mar 15, 2015