Angel School

As you may or may not be aware, Norway's Princess Märtha Louise has opened an "angel school". She claims that she can help people learn to be sensitive enough to the presence of angels by using her psychic powers. Not surprisingly, Yahoo's Odd News section thought the story was funny enough to put on their homepage about a week ago.

Of course, when I read about this in the Norwegian newspapers, I didn't quite get it. I thought "Engleskole" was surely a metaphor for something and couldn't possibly be taken literally. It was only after the local press, the foreign press, the layman and the academic started to criticize her in earnest did I realize that this was for real. (The Swedish foreign press mocking Märtha Louise is especially ironic. Their King Carl XVI Gustaf is one of the last of the surviving wingnuts from the hay day of inbred-monarchies. He's harmless, though he keeps the PR secretaries in whirl trying to tone down his antics.)

A great headline regarding the princess' antics was "Finally! Märtha Louise Will Turn Norway into a Republic!" The author was referring to the debate on whether or not Norway should do away with the monarchy all together. The media has tackled every angle of this absurdity and they have very nearly done with a straight face. I started laughing every time I saw a commentator's lips twitching when announcing the lead up to yet another "Engleskole" segment.

Märtha Louise has been a real trooper, speaking out in the press on behalf of her school. One of her lines of defense is that she "doesn't understand how we can teach our children not to mock one another when the adults behave as they do." Which, of course, left me in breathless hysterics.