This has always been true, though some figures have been substantially successful at doing it.
We are reminded of the rule once again as Catherine, Princess of Wales, announced that she was undergoing chemotherapy after a cancer diagnosis in a two-minute video released yesterday. That announcement only came after weeks of wild speculation about Kate’s whereabouts, marriage status and health. It was, therefore, too late—too late to prevent the damage to her reputation and that of the royal family by proving that she and Prince William were capable of avoiding transparency when it suited them. The official excuse was that it had taken “time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that is appropriate for them,” as she said in the video. As explanations for deceiving the public go, a “think if the children!” strategy is as good as one is liable to find, but even it leaves a scar.
The tardy revelation became especially urgent once the princess was caught trying to sneak a photo-shopped photo by the public to stem “conspiracy theories arising from her absence from the public eye since abdominal surgery in January.” Why do the rich, famous and powerful keep doing this? You can sympathize with them as much as you want, but the truth is that it’s wrong. Moreover, thanks to the 224 hour news cycle, cell phone cameras and social media, it also virtually impossible to get away with it in the 21st Century.
Before the news media routinely cooperated with powerful public figures to deceive the public whose dedication and reliance made them important in the first place, there were myriad examples of elaborate cover-ups and, yes, conspiracies, to protect the “elites.” An earlier royal, America’s favorite British monarch King George III, was mad as the proverbial hatter with the British public none the wiser in his waning years. President Grover Cleveland secretly had part of his jaw removed on a yacht in the middle of the Potomac in a top secret cancer operation that remained largely unknown for decades. Woodrow Wilson was completely incapacitated after a stroke in his second term, and the public never found out until after Woodrow was long gone.
The press famously helped Franklin D. Roosevelt hide the full extent of his crippling paralysis, then later permitted FDR to lie to the public and run for a fourth term while his doctors (and Roosevelt) knew he was dying of congestive heart failure. In addition to protecting President Kennedy from the public’s fury had it known about his reckless adulterous affairs, the White House press also hid the supposedly young and vigorous President’s chronic health problems that required him to be shot up with so many drugs that his thinking was sometimes impaired.
More recently, of course, Joe Biden’s health and mental decline have been the objects of cover-ups and deception, and there was a genuine scandal at the Pentagon when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was AWOL for days at the end of the year, when he neglected to tell the President of his deputies that he was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. All of these, like Kate Middleton’s disappearing act, were serious and foolish breaches of trust.
The public has a right to know about the health and viability of the special figures they rely upon, and such individuals do not have a right to their privacy. Living their lives under a metaphorical microscope is the price, a substantial one, they pay for the many benefits fame and power confer on them. If Kate Middleton wasn’t willing to forfeit her privacy, she shouldn’t have married into the British royal family. It really is that simple.
The ethical value involved is trust. Trust is not as crucial with more ephemeral celebrities like models, performers, sports stars and whatever the Kardashians are: having the public’s trust in their case is nice if they can get it, but their services to the public—entertainment, diversion, distraction—usually don’t require trust. Leaders, however, including the leaders of prominent organizations, companies and movements, require trust, and once it is lost or substantially weakened, they can never be quite as effective again.
Catherine and William will discover this the hard way.
Ethics Alarms 
“It’s a Simple Rule: If You Are an Important Public Figure, Don’t Try to Hide a Health Crisis”
“…such individuals do not have a right to their privacy.”
Personally I don’t think the public has any right whatsoever to know the medical condition of Catherine, Princess of Wales, or any other public figure. In fact when this story broke my very first response when I yelled at the TV was “It’s none of your damn business, leave her and her family alone”. Stalking down public figures to find out the private details of their lives is the logical equivalent to “show me the man and I’ll find you…” something to be shocked about or something to whine, bitch and moan about.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin should have notified the President of the United States of his absence due to a medical condition (no need to divulge the details) so the President knew why Austin’s second in command going to temporarily be in charge, but to announce all the details publicly, nope he had absolutely no responsibility whatsoever to do that.
Personally, I respect the private lives of public figures and I think the invasion of their personal lives is equivalent to an invasion of my personal life. Public figures are free to share any part of their personal life that they choose whenever they choose, beyond that, it’s none of our business.
Didn’t Austin fail to notify his second in command as well?
Michael R. asked, “Didn’t Austin fail to notify his second in command as well?”
Honestly, I never heard that particular piece of information.
In Austin’s case; there is a very clear chain of command that must be in place and if someone completely steps out of that chain without proper notification and/or permission it can create problems which in the military itself would likely come at a high cost, meaning that the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) would likely come into play. There can’t be double standards for those at the top, whether their politically nominated or not, or morale will likely suffer.
To maintain the proper chain of command, everyone in Austin’s immediate circle of responsibility should have been notified, both subordinates and superiors, that he was going to be out of the office for a few days and the second in command was going to temporarily be in charge. Furthermore; after he returned to the office there should have been a brief after action report (meeting) conducted to identify any loopholes or bottlenecks that crept up so they could be prevented in the future.
Austin’s 2nd in command was on vacation in the Caribbean and wasn’t fully briefed that Austin was going to be AWOL. The 2nd in command saw no reason to cut her vacation short and step into the breach. Austin should’ve been fired or at least asked to resign.
This lead me to ponder if Joe Biden has ever fired anyone, ever. I put the question to Quora and got replies asking if I preferred Trump’s musical chairs, why do I care. The best reply was that Biden has been alive for 80 years and has obviously had occasion to fire contractors & landscapers.
The question remains unanswered, so I presume his tolerance for incompetence is undergirded by an unwillingness to terminate an employee.
I don’t think it was Joe directly, but this ridiculous DEI hire was fired for stealing women’s luggage from airport carousels.
Surely members of the royal family are the worst possible examples for you to have to defend. They are literally human flags. They are completely supported by the public and the nation—they have no private life, and their only job is to behave in a manner that pleases and honors the public. Apart from that, you can argue that they have some right to hide key parts of their lives from the public, but as a practical matter they can’t. because they can’t, attempting to do so is both destructive and stupid.
Jack wrote, “…as a practical matter they can’t.”
Isn’t that because the unethical paparazzi “journalists” are physically invading all aspects of their lives and selling what they find with absolutely no regard for their personal privacy? Without the unethical actions of the paparazzi scum, we likely wouldn’t be talking about this because no one would know about it. Paparazzi are human scum and I’m not too proud to say that I’d like to pound them into a bloody pulp for their intentional invasion of privacy.
Jack wrote, “…because they can’t, attempting to do so is both destructive and stupid.”
Here is where we part ways on this one.
It’s only destructive and stupid because the paparazzi are vultures hovering around them so they can unethically invade their privacy to obtain every scathing detail of their life to sell to the highest bidder?
Isn’t that statement a bit similar to rationalization 1A Ethics Surrender, or “We can’t stop it.”?
I have mixed feelings about this whole situation. The main function of the royal family is to show up at State occasions and preside. They are a nonpartisan group of leaders of the state to whom everyone can give their allegiance. They live quite lavishly at taxpayer expense. If they cannot perform this function, for whatever reason, the question becomes why is the British public supporting them? We also know what the answer is: partly they are a unifying influence, and partly they are an institution that brings billions in tourist money into the country every year.
I did not think too highly of Kate initially, because all she seemed to do was stand there and wear Diana’s ring. however, I did develop some respect for her as she got involved in various service projects that the Royal family does. I also have respect for her as a mom who is trying to do the right thing by her children in a difficult environment that will never be normal. The fact of the matter is that Kate has never been arrogant or mean or nasty to the public, even gracefully handling a nasty comment thrown at her by someone in Ireland about how it was not her country.
Whatever else you might think, she does not deserve to suffer from cancer. Nobody does. I’ve remarked a few times here on how cancer has touched my family and I am sure that a lot of other people here have had personal or family encounters with this dreadful disease. If you have, you know how it affects not just the sufferer, but the family and you also know that the treatment is often as bad as the illness itself. Kate didn’t do anything that made her deserve to be weak all the time, nauseous, or to suffer with the painful mouth sores that often come with cancer treatment.
that said, she has as much right as anyone else to handle her illness her way, at least up to a point. Obviously, now that she has revealed it, she is getting a flood of messages, mostly of support, but some nasty ones too. Maybe, like many of us she does not like feeling pitied or having people think of her as weak. I know I wouldn’t. There are only so many thoughts and prayers type messages you can read before you’ve had enough. I don’t think that’s what she was concerned about, though. The fact of the matter is that the British royal family is also roundly disliked by some people who make no bones about it. Most of the messages I have read directed at Kate are unequivocal messages of support and love, but those aren’t the messages she probably wanted to keep this quiet about. I’ve also read a fair amount of hateful messages toward her wishing that she suffer and die. Some come from people of former colonies or nations of the Commonwealth who wanted the British out or want them out now, and who don’t want to bow to a white woman. Probably almost half come from Irish bitter enders, who, despite the fact that Ireland has been independent for over a hundred years and the troubles have been over for 26 years, still hate the British with every fiber of their beings and if they get a chance to spew hate that the British royal family they take it. A lot are from people who are simply losers and haven’t really achieved much, but now they get a chance to hurl hate at someone on a pedestal or shoot out someone else’s Marquee lights.
it is one thing to explain to young children that their mother is not well, but she will get better, although it might take some time. It’s quite another to explain to children not yet in their teens why their mother is coming in for so much hate from so many people. It’s got to be hard for George and Charlotte to know that there are those out there that wish their mummy dead. I don’t fault Kate at all if she wanted to spare her children that. That said, she had to know that this would probably come out eventually. Saying that she simply had planned abdominal surgery when it was going to mean she was going to have to drop out of sight for months open the door to as many questions as it closed. I’m guessing the fact that the king himself is undergoing cancer treatment at this point probably also factored into the decision. The fact is though, this is not the time of the Kennedys, and the press is not 100% on the Royal family’s side. This is not when the press and everyone else would try to conceal the fact that the King was carrying on an affair with an American socialite. This is also not the time when Princess Diana could demand that the press leave her and her children alone and expect that at least some of them would. It was a tactical blunder of the first water to try to use an obviously photoshopped picture of the family to hopefully shut everyone up. Too many people could notice and did notice.
Is this as bad as Grover Cleveland having a chunk of his upper jaw cut out due to cancer and telling the public that he had two bad teeth extracted? No. Is this as bad as JFK hiding his myriad of medical problems that required him to be shot up with drugs just to function? Probably not. Is this as bad as Woodrow Wilson hiding the fact that he was totally disabled from a stroke and in fact his wife and his closest advisors were running the country? Absolutely not. Is it as bad as the fact that the press is trying to hide the fact that Biden is just not there mentally? No. However, it’s bad enough. It’s bad enough because it comes at a time when the royal family is already deep in problems, between the king himself being ill, some lingering unpopularity towards the queen because she was the other woman, and of course the lingering effects of Megxit. Kate has my sympathies, but this could have been handled much better.
I come down somewhere between the Steves. I agree with Steve W that the world should not have unlimited access to the Royal family. Perhaps I think that way because I don’t follow them and see them as vestigial figureheads of a once great empire. I don’t necessarily agree that the public has a right to know simply because they derive their income from taxpayers. How many of our public figures live lavishly? Am I entitled to see the medical records of the Speaker of the House or even some Cabinet official? Of course not. Why should it matter if taxpayers pay to support them? Do we demand to know the medical issues of sports stars as consumers of the products others hawk because we support them? My point is, if the answer is yes we can withhold buying from the private sector with the same impact as the Crown’s subjects have in voting to end the monarchy. With enough sentiment in your favor you will get your pound of flesh. Without others feeling as you do nothing will change because public sentiment does not agree with you.
I believe that the “think of the children” excuse is substantially different from someone who uses it to advance a narrative but wouldn’t do jack squat for someone else’s child if it interfered with what they were doing. A mother who thinks of her children puts them first over everything including her own image.
As I said, I don’t follow the royal family but when that taped statement played on TV it captured my attention and I felt her pain. In my case, a gained of bit of respect for her as human being. Where I part company with Steve in NJ is that I just don’t know how she could have done a better job dealing with this crisis and to chastise her for her decisions is unnecessary.
Leave it to the inimitable Babylon Bee to put things in…um…perspective:
Meghan Markle Announces Netflix Show About How Hard It’s Been Dealing With Kate Middleton’s Cancer Diagnosis
PWS