Gramsci, We Hardly Knew Ye!!

Prince Charles apparently pictures himself as a lonely dissident. The story's headline in the New York Times, from all appearances, was not intended to be ironic:

"Charles sued The Mail, claiming it had violated his privacy and was guilty of copyright infringement. He also hopes to prevent the paper from publishing seven similar reports he wrote after other trips, which were apparently leaked to it by a disgruntled former palace employee.

But the case is becoming less about copyright law and more about Charles's role in British politics. According to testimony by Mark Bolland, the prince's deputy private secretary from 1996 to 2002, the prince sees himself not as an aristocratic man of privilege, but rather as a "dissident working against the prevailing political consensus."

Charles, he wrote in a statement that is part of the newspaper's defense, had a habit of plying people — members of Parliament, cabinet ministers, influential acquaintances — with letters outlining his unsolicited "views of political matters and individual politicians at home and abroad and on international issues." (Sarah Lyall, "The Dissident Prince: Public, Prickly and Very Political," The New York Times, February 23, 2006).