Amy and I finally got around to watching Helen Mirren’s Oscar-winning performance last night in The Queen, which documents the U.K. Royal family’s initially stultified response to the death of Princess Diana in 1997.
About an hour later, I e-mailed Ben Chapman, and said this is a good study in risk communication, we can use it in the classes we teach.
Today, the 81-year-old Queen Elizabeth II once again proved herself adaptable — at least more nimble than most American food producers, especially spinach growers — and launched her own special Royal Channel on YouTube.
The Associated Press reports that the queen will use the popular video-sharing website to send out her 50th annual televised Christmas message, which she first delivered live to the nation and its colonies on Dec. 25, 1957.
I was born in 1962 in the colony of Canada, and it was a Christmas tradition when I was young to watch the Queen’s broadcast on Christmas Day at my very English grandparents’ house, and then cuddle up with my grandmother over a heat register behind the couch and watch the Toronto Maple Leafs — the same Leafs who last won hockey’s Stanley Cup in 1967.
Buckingham Palace said in a statement today,
"The queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people. The Christmas message was podcast last year."
On Tuesday, Queen Elizabeth II’s annual Christmas speech can once again be downloaded as a podcast from www.royal.gov.uk. It also is being made available on television in high definition for the first time.
American baseball pitcher Roger Clemens has also continued his campaign to refute allegations that he used performance-enhancing drugs on Sunday as he released a video and agreed to an interview that will air on “60 Minutes."