Why some coverage of the Queen's death was ableist

Hello everyone,

Seeing as there is literally one news story at the moment (and for inexplicable reasons it’s not people freezing to death this winter) I thought I would do what all good journalists do and find an angle.

So. Let’s talk about the coverage of the Queen’s short illness before her death. Because I’m afraid to say that for a few hours on Thursday afternoon the broadcasters and everyone on Twitter went full ableist.

What I found most weirdly uncomfortable was the multiple assertions that it wasn’t a surprise the queen was dying because she’d been “suffering” from mobility issues.

There’s just so much to unpack in this statement that it’s hard to know where to start but let’s go in order from most obviously egregious to most subtly icky.