Commentary
Some 4.1 billion people worldwide are likely to have watched either all or much of today’s state funeral for Queen Elizabeth II on television or streaming media. It’s a number nearly double the 2.5 billion people who tuned in to the obsequies for Princess Diana, Elizabeth’s immensely popular sometime daughter-in-law, killed in an auto accident in 1997 and memorialized as “the people’s princess” by the likes of Elton John and others.
Credit the vastly larger numbers of expected viewers for Elizabeth’s funeral to technology that has turned cellphones into pocket television sets instantly available. But tech can’t explain the 10-mile-long lines snaking through London in which hundreds of thousands of Britons have waited as long as 24 hours, braving chilly and sleepless nights, to file in person past her coffin as she lay in state in Westminster Hall. Some had traveled hundreds of miles from all over Britain to pay their respects to the late monarch….