I’m madder than an English Breakfast tea bag steeping in hotdog water over the way Kensington Palace is handling Kate Middleton’s so-called cancer diagnosis fiasco. 

Why just a few weeks ago, after the Mother’s Day photoshop scandal, me and a few of my neighbors started sticking missing posters for Kate throughout our Moscow, Ohio, cul-de-sac. We figured if the Israelis can do it, why not us? 

Then a strange thing happened. My wife Greta rang me on my pay-by-the-minute flip phone that Kate had been found, posted a video, and told the world she had cancer. 

“Shocking,” Greta began to tear up. 

I admit even I felt a tad glassy-eyed, as I watched the video, where The Princess sat alone on a park bench. The birds may have been singing, but this was no time for celebration.  

That evening everything my wife and I saw was confirmed by the State media, aka CNN. The video was real and The Palace had verified the Princess of Wales’ tragic diagnosis.

Well, as so-called journalist Piers Morgan would say: “Case closed.”

Our suburban monarchy curiosity satisfied, the wife and I went to bed. The world was right once again. 

If the ring don’t fit you must acquit the video …. as fake

But I couldn’t sleep. The image of Kate on that park bench kept playing in my head, like a record needle stuck on an unpleasant grove. There was something off about the video. Was it the still set-like background, the outfit, which she had worn 7 years earlier, or the disappearing ring?

Where was her ‘supportive husband’ Prince William? And what was with that off-color reflective bench she fidgeted on for two and a half minutes. “No, wait,” I sat up in bed and tore my sleep apnea machine off my face. “The birds!” I screamed. “THE BIRDS!!!” 

The following day, equipped with my Lenovo Thinkpad, I polled my Moscow neighbors about what I had discovered. 

“This is no video of Kate Middleton, this is an AI generated deepfake.” I played them the evidence. I kept stopping and starting on key obvious frames, like the missing ring and the wisps of hair that defied gravity. I turned up the volume so they could hear the mechanical sounding looped bird chirps. 

My neighbors, however, didn’t share my enthusiasm and said that I should be ashamed of myself for questioning Kate’s medical condition. 

Cancer is no joke, I agree, but isn’t it funny how so many young people are coming down with major illnesses? I’m not going to tell you it’s from the COVID vaccine …. but it is from the COVID vaccine!

Of course, I found many on Elon Musk’s X who shared my suspicion. And not just bots either. At the same time, I noticed a lot of MSM debunking the theory. Where have we seen that before? Cough, cough. 

The MSM said that it was Russian and Chinese propaganda, misinformation—their catch-all word du jour. If that’s true, then how could I think of it all by myself in bed after seeing the video? 

My best friend and next door neighbor Mr. Lee said that he could no longer golf with me because of my beliefs about Kate. Especially since his grandmother had died of lung cancer more than twenty years ago after smoking her whole life.

It bothered me because Kate is not his grandmother or a friend with cancer, she’s an image embedded in a tradition. She’s not even a real celebrity, but rather a public servant paid by the people for the people. As such, the public has a right to know why she’s phoning in sick. We demand to see a doctor’s note, Missy…. 

The Deepfake Kate Video

Now I had to prove to everyone in Moscow that I was correct so I borrowed a portable digital video camera from my son’s yearbook committee club and set up a similar set as The Deepfake Kate Video on the grassy knoll in my backyard. It took me three days to write, shoot and edit the video, matching the tight production turnaround of the Palace itself. 

In the same backyard I hosted a ‘Royal Gala Screening’ of the film for my neighbors. They were reluctant to attend at first until I told them I would be roasting a ham. With my homemade version of The Deepfake Kate Video I compared it with real life. I proved that without a lapel mic it was difficult to hear me, that my background swayed with the wind, as nature does, and in my backyard there were no bird tweeting loops.

“This is how a video like Kate Middleton’s would look and sound in real life,” I told them. But they didn’t listen to a word of what I said as they munched away on the real ham that Greta had prepared for them, utterly undercutting my analogy. As they wobbled away like fattened pigs I could hear the words “conspiracy theorist” being mumbled under their breath. 

Later that night, I found Greta writing a get well card to Kensington Palace. “Maybe you are right,” she smiled, as The Deepfake Kate Video played on her cellular phone, “but what if you’re wrong.”

I watched as my wife sealed the envelope and decorated the front of it with a bunch of stamps. “Something is definitely wrong,” I said, “but in our current reality there isn’t much we can do to make it right.”

And like the Royal Family itself, even I couldn’t seem to fix it in post.