No, of course I didn’t watch the damn thing. There have been few instances when a Kaufmann was more obvious. But Americans remain inexplicably fascinated by Great Britain’s Royals; the New York Times, which spent weeks ignoring a rape accusation by a former Joe Biden staffer against its favorite Presidential candidate during the campaign, had multiple reporters doing minute by minute updates on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview. HLN yesterday morning brought on a body language expert to analyze what the self-absorbed pair really thought, which is the point at which I turned the channel to an old episode of “Diagnosis Murder.” But at least there were plenty of detailed accounts of what was said that could be absorbed in a lot less than two hours.
Piers Morgan, a loyal Brit with a low tolerance for celebrity grandstanding, penned a vicious (but fair) take on the interview, focusing most of his contempt on the claim made by Meghan that a member of the Royal Family had asked how dark her baby would be, and the couple’s allegation that the Windsors decided to prevent her son Archie from being an official Prince because of his partial black heritage. In neither case were any names mentioned, making the statements the most unethical and dastardly accusations imaginable. They can’t be checked or confirmed, and they cast suspicion on an entire family. Writes Morgan, “[H]aving having let off the racism bomb, the Sussexes won’t say any more. I find that cowardly.”
That’s because it is cowardly.
Regarding Archie’s status, Morgan says,
Again, no name was given for the appalling racist at the Palace responsible for such a disgusting discriminatory decision. But, as Meghan and Harry both know, the only person who has final say over titles is the Queen. So, in making this astonishing unproven claim, they’re effectively branding Her Majesty, Harry’s grandmother, a racist. It’s hard to think of a more disgraceful slur to make against a woman who has devoted her whole life to the service of her country and the Commonwealth.
Exactly. It would be comforting to think that most Commonwealth citizens see this, but where royal rebels are concerned, the public usually sides with the publicity hounds. Morgan’s case against Meghan and Harry for stunning hypocrisy and dishonesty is awfully strong, though, as he points out,
Here we had the Duke and Duchess of Privacy flinging out the filthy family laundry for the delectation of tens of millions of people all over the world, whilst simultaneously bleating about press intrusion. They moaned about the terrible pain of their royal titles but were also outraged their son Archie wasn’t allowed to be a Prince.They told of their constant trauma from nasty newspaper stories, but repeatedly insisted they never read any of them.They claimed they were forced to sign gazillion-dollar deals with Netflix and Spotify because Prince Charles cut off their allowance, despite Harry inheriting millions from his late mother Princess Diana and having his entire life bankrolled by the Royal Family….In the middle of a pandemic that has already taken over 2.5 million lives, a staggeringly rich and entitled couple living in a $14 million sun-kissed California mansion wanted us all to know that THEY are the real victims around here….’I couldn’t even meet my friends for lunch!’ wailed the Duchess of Delusion, who flew to New York for a $500,000 baby shower with all her new-found celebrity pals, then flew back to London like any good eco-warrior on George Clooney’s carbon footprint guzzling private jet.…I mean, this is a woman who was photographed on the railings of Buckingham Palace as a starry-eyed teenager but now wants us to believe she knew nothing about the Royals and never once Googled her handsome Prince when they met. Given these are both obvious lies, why should we believe anything that comes out of her mouth? ‘Nobody told me how to curtsy or sing the British national anthem,’ wailed a 39-year-old woman, married to someone who can probably help with both.
Morgan saves his most pointed barbs for Harry, as he should. Read it all.
Markle is proving herself to be exactly what Ethics Alarms concluded she was more than a year ago, a Diana wannabe (as the wag who posted the compilation above noted, she’s done her research) but a better comp for Wallis Simpson, the Machiavellian American woman for whom King Edward VIII gave up the crown. I wrote in part,
Markle was a U.S. actress and C-list celebrity, and was a good bet to find the values and duties of the Royal Family a drag, man. Having wrapped Harry around her little finger, her prompting something like this was near inevitable.
And it was wrong. It you accept the role of a princess, then you do what is expected of a princess. You become part of an institution, and your obligation is to strengthen the institution, not to set out to wreck it. Brendon O’Neill, editor of the British commentary site Spiked!, accurately (and acidly) writes of the Harry and Meghan rebellion,
“What it fundamentally reveals is the incompatibility of the modern culture of narcissism with the values of duty, loyalty and self-negation traditionally associated with royal life. To someone like Meghan, who sprang from celebville, who sees herself as the embodiment of right-on goodness, and who loves nothing more than advertising her eco-virtue and performing her PC credentials, life in the British monarchy was never going to be a good fit… [W]here the woke value the self over everything else, senior royals are meant, ostensibly at least, to be selfless, to submerge the self into the crown. It looks like this is a deal-breaker for the younger, more celebrity-oriented royals, especially newcomer Meghan but also Harry, too. Their unprecedented ‘stepping back’, and the fury this has allegedly caused in the Palace, suggests the cult of the self that Meghan and other showily virtuous celebs embody and promote, does not work within an institution whose ideal is the Queen: opinion-free, emotions hidden, dutiful, unquestioning and in it for the long haul…. Duty is anathema to a new generation whose chief goal is often self-realisation. Any notion of collapsing the self into something bigger than oneself, something more historic or something collective, is alien to many in the selfie-taking, values-performing generation….They sound more like Kendall Jenner talking about her adverts with Pepsi than individuals who are meant to devote themselves for life to royal duty and the preservation of the crown….Harry and Meghan haven’t been driven out by racism or prejudice or hatred. Rather, they’re ducking out of their own accord so that they can go even more global, more woke, more famously, internationally, irritatingly PC. They’re going to become even more insufferable. And here’s the thing: they will trade on their still existing royal titles to do so. So Meghan spent a couple of years in the royal family and now is pretty much leaving it while holding on to the duchess / princess thing in order to give her naff feminism and eco-posturing and celeb shoulder-rubbing more oomph?”
The adventures of Harry and Meghan from here on promise to be entertaining at least, especially if they end up doing Disney commercials to pay for their jets to climate change conferences.
In a word, “Yecchh.”
Ethics Alarms 
The only reason I even know Markle is part black is because she yaps on about how racist people are to her about it incessantly. Looking at her, I would have assumed she was white. Poor, pitiful…Duchess? Seriously? She literally married a rich, handsome prince, and somehow she is a victim. I’m so sick of listening to rich, famous, extraordinarily privileged people whine about how oppressed they are. There are people in inner cities who are oppressed by horrible policies that probably stem from racism, but I don’t think that applies to duchesses. She is just another rich, privileged, whiny liberal who likes pretending to be injured for media attention, and she hurts the cause of people who actually ought to be listened to.
I thought we fought the Revolution to get rid of this worship of the monarchy crap.
Reminds me of a political cartoon caricaturizing the “Washington Crosses the Delaware” painting, except the men are watching the Will and Kate wedding while Washington sighs.
Anglophilia is a strange but deeply entrenched malady in U.S. culture, CJ. It was at its height during Diana’s messed up lifetime.
Get a load of this NY theater critic’s take on “The Sussexes”: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9340235/MICHAEL-RIEDEL-Britons-think-Harry-Meghan-brats-Americans-adore-them.html
(Anyone who uses the word “adore” is suspect to the point of conviction in my view.)
Americans are fascinated by what they don’t have (or what we could have had if things hadn’t gone our way during the Revolution). I have a little sympathy for Harry who’s apparently still traumatized over his mother’s untimely death that he fell for this publicity hound. But only a little sympathy.
Meghan must have known something of what she was getting into. I find it hard to believe that no one sat her down and drilled into her exactly what was expected of her when she latched onto Harry. I would hope the Royals and their endless protocol-enforcers would have made sure they didn’t have another unprepared commoner on their hands. And even if they bungled this, has the decades-long media love affair with Diana not emphasized repeatedly the lack of privacy, the rigid expectations and the overall lack of support she received? Did Meghan think it would be different with her?
For Heaven’s sake, woman, Google “God Save the Queen”. The lyrics aren’t hard and the tune is a familiar one to you. Or it should be, anyway.
Frankly, it brought to mind the scene from the last episode of the Third Season of “The Crown” where the Queen tells off Prince Charles for whining about the problems in his marriage. (Courtesy Spoiler Alert)
Too bad neither the Queen nor Prince Charles handled this problem sooner.
Harry claims neither of his grandparents were the ones who questioned the possible skin tone of Harry and Meghan’s child. That surprises me. I would have bet money on Prince “Foot in Mouth” Philip.
Yes, I can see Philip doing so as he roars around one of their estates in his Range Rover, randomly running over dogs and foxes and … commoners, shouting all the while, a la Kevin Klien.
I really intended to watch the interview. I did. It’s true. But, I got distracted by Jimmy Kimmel and his rapier wit on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and totally forgot about it. Then, when I had the chance to watch a repeat performance of said chat, I got waylaid by a snoring dog at my side, who needed lots of ear rubs. Then, there was that pesky thing called a check book that needed reconciling, so I had to do that. Oh, and the fact that I loathe everything about Oprah Winfrey and her overstated self-importance, save and except her bank accounts (imagine reconciling them!). Add to that the fact that my wife has even less interest in listening the self-absorbed preenings of a narcissistic mediocre actress trading on her racial privilege who seems to have preyed on Harry’s second-tier status insecurities, and the interview has been shuffled to the back of the “Yeah, I’ll get to it Later” file of cyber-history.
I did read Piece Morgan’s scathing rebuke, though. Say what you will about him but he knows how to fillet a fish. Metaphorically, speaking, that is.
jvb
I don’t think that Americans are fascinated by the British royals. The audience for the show seems to have been about 17 million, or about one person out of every 19 people in the US. That’s a very big television audience nowadays, but that’s only because television audiences have been ground to dust. Three times as many people watched Granny Clampett fist fight a Giant Jack Rabbit, back when the country had half its current population.
But, 17 million people had nothing better to do than watch that? I mean, Jimmy kimmel was on the other channel, and, WOW! he is talented!
jvb
I think you’re whistling in the wind, Lo. Looks at the ratings of all the Princess Di documentaries. Or the fascination with “The Crown.” By any sensible standards, the US would pay no more attention to outcast royals than it does to the Saudi Royals.
Mark Steyn had an interesting note today about the snubbing of poor Archie not being a Prince. He has to make do with his title of Earl as the son of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Titles aren’t dolled out like candy. There is law for it. Apparently it was last extended in 2012, long before MM, to enable only the great grandsons of the member in line (i.e. the children of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge) to be Prince/Princess. Why would a strong, independent American need to have such a title for child/children?
There’s one other factor that I’ve yet to see addressed regarding Megs: The significant differences between US and English culture. I mention this because when I was stationed in London several decades ago, during the check-in process for new staff members we sat through a presentation that discussed the high level of culture shock that was experienced by US service members – a level that was on par with the culture shock experienced in “real” foreign countries like Germany or Japan. Apparently, this was due to the misperception that “they talk like us, so they must act like us”.
So, when a Brit didn’t act like the American expected, this was frequently interpreted by the Yank as an intentional snub. Similarly, actions by Americans that didn’t conform to English sensibilities could lead to misinterpretations or worse. The presentation did a good job of explaining the sorts of cultural differences that could lead to such situations and how to deal with them.
My sense is that Megs never received (or, if she did, listened to) any “you’re marrying into a different culture” advice of this sort and joined The Firm singing “I gotta be me! If the Royals want the privilege of having me in their family, they damn well better accept me the way that I am, because I’m certainly not going to change for them.”
In a related story, but not about Megs, one of the most eye-opening examples of such cultural differences that I experienced during that time was when several of us Yanks went to watch “A Fish Called Wanda” in the cinema. We thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but noticed that we were laughing in all of the ‘wrong’ places. While the host nationals were laughing at stereotypical Americans Jamie-Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline, we Yanks found the ever-pretentious John Cleese side-splittingly funny. Strangely, everybody in the audience still seemed to enjoy the movie.
Good work, daughter of the revolution, in implementing ‘Order 1776’.
Oprah did not distinguish herself either. Setting up the interview, paying the couple to participate and selling it on the airway for her own enrichment was disgusting, but not surprising. I watched some of it and quit with a feeling of discomfort for myself and the parties on the screen. The purpose, I suppose, was just Oprah’s idea of how to further mess with the proletariat’s cultural decline. Her orchestration of the whole series of events was not curative of anything.