Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that people don't have enough to do between Christmas and New Year, but need something to blog and Twitter about. Or it could be due to the slight rise in republicanism in the Netherlands of late. Whatever the cause, the Internet is crawling with criticism of Queen Beatrix's Christmas message.

"The Queen doesn't know what she's talking about," and "she's just denying that society has changed," are just two of the many responses to the speech from Internet experts and media watchers. In her annual Christmas address, the Dutch monarch warned about the dangers of the Internet. According to the queen, even though social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter appear to bring people closer together, people remain "at a distance, safely ensconced behind their screens". Briefly summarised, people are spending more and more time with vague Internet friends and less time with their neighbours.

Private life
Internet columnist Arjan Dasselaar writes, "In constitutional terms, Beatrix may well be my queen; one who believes it is her right to make sweeping statements about the depth and value of other people's private lives, however, she is behaving like an absolute monarch and is making pronouncements on this discourse in a way that is completely unworthy of a head of state".

Dozens of columnists and Internet experts have made similar statements about the Christmas message. They point out that the new social networking rage actually leads to more contact and that more contact via Internet does not necessarily mean that people have less face-to-face contact.

Golden cage
"It's old news that the queen is computer illiterate. She's living in a golden cage of her own making," says one of the many posts on a computer magazine's website. The writer calls on Beatrix to abdicate and "make way for a modern monarch," although the writer refrains from making any recommendations. Perhaps he means Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, who demonstrated his ability with modern media earlier this year when he kept a blog of his visit to Antarctica.

Twittering PM
It can hardly have escaped the queen that around 9 million of her subjects connect with each other via the social networking site Hyves. That number includes Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, who is a fanatical social networker. Interestingly enough, under the constitution, responsibility for the Queen's Christmas speech falls to the prime minister's office. He has to be given the opportunity to read the speech before broadcast. What was he thinking of? He's projecting a modern up-to-date image while allowing the queen to damage her own image with her Luddite comments. Are they playing good cop/bad cop, whereby one authority figure tries to be sympathetic and the other one tells the cold, hard truth? Highly unlikely.

Solidarity
No, Beatrix is, with the prime minister's approval, trying to warn about the lack of solidarity in today's society. It is a well-used theme that has reappeared in several Christmas messages, including those of 2004, 2007 and 2008. This year was different however, as she blamed the lack of solidarity - rightly or wrongly - on something else.

The prime minister has also let it be known that there should be boundaries regarding the use of new media. Earlier this year, he reprimanded Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen for Twittering during the weekly ministerial meeting. There's a time and a place for everything.
 

(RNW translation: jc)