Camilla Long in The Sunday Times (London) today commenting on hypocrisy, "Meghanese", Sussex victimology and so on ...
All aboard the Freedom bus, cries Meghan as her friends are crushed under the wheels
Camilla Long
Sunday August 02 2020, 12.01am BST, The Sunday Times
"You will by now have hopefully recovered from Prince Harry and Meghan’s latest round of tiara-twanking and courtier-yanking. In
Finding Freedom we were treated to a devastating string of teeny tiny regal microaggressions including the humiliating non-moment the Duchess of Cambridge didn’t give the Duchess of Sussex a lift to the shops in her Range Rover. We also learnt that
Prince William had not always been one hundred per cent complimentary about La Sussex. He’d once referred to her as “this girl” in a private (he thought) conversation with the dedicated privacy crusader Prince Harry, who promptly leaked it. It was astonishingly petty stuff.
In return for this perceived
disloyalty and “snobbishness”, Harry and Meghan now appear to have unloaded ten tons of emotional violence on William and his circle. It’s funny, I thought, as I read the extracts from the 368-page blow-out: aren’t vicious public slaggings and “global bullying” something Meghan and Harry are supposed to be against? And if you thought it was bad being the couple’s relatives, you should see what it’s like being their friends.
Meghan seems to expect such blind loyalty that friends routinely feel obliged to telephone newspapers and give anonymous quotes about her “calm” and “penmanship”. In some cases, the duchess knows they’re calling. In others, she claims she doesn’t. In February 2019, for example, five friends secretly telephoned People magazine to gush about “how much Meghan loves her animals”. Meghan says she didn’t know about the interviews but I can’t help wondering who else would have come up with the phrases “she makes everywhere she goes feel like a holiday” and “she personifies elegance, grace, philanthropy”? It’s pure Meghanese.
One of the friends even cleverly thought to mention that Meghan had selflessly written a letter to her father to mend their broken relationship. This letter is now the subject of a court case the duchess is waging against The Mail on Sunday. The duchess says the paper shouldn’t have printed a private note. The paper says the letter wasn’t really private because it had already popped up in People magazine. If the Mail can prove Meghan sanctioned the letter stuff by cross-examining the five friends in open court, her privacy case collapses. A lot’s riding on these friends.
At this point, as one of Meghan’s matcha-licking buddies, I might be vaguely asking whether friendship with Meghan has been all it’s cracked up to be. Having spent the past five years secretly, or otherwise, conducting a PR campaign for her by feeding stories about her bomb-ass roast chicken, I now risk being further thrown under the bus and unveiled just so that she can have her triumphal post-court, tear-choking, street-style moment à la Amber Heard. On Wednesday, in a fresh submission to the court, the duchess said unmasking these friends would be an “unacceptable price to pay” as they were private citizens and “young mothers”. But Kate’s a young mother, and Meghan hasn’t ever defended her. Far from it: she has apparently allowed a whole book to be published tearing her down. Why wouldn’t she screw over her mother friends if it suited?
She’s already thrown away far more than mere friends: her own family, his family, even their home over here. It’s devastating to think how far this humourless couple have fallen in their pursuit of what they call “happiness”. They’ve gone from hanging out with Jay-Z and Beyoncé to trying to persuade a judge that Meghan has some kind of psychic hold over her mates (who leaks positive stories without telling the subject first?). There are the sad video messages with the usual authoritarian language: just a few days ago a comatose Prince Harry issued one from some rapper’s brocaded toilet, reminding us of “what is right”. Whoever’s words he was reading, they didn’t feel like his. The script’s now all wrong.
Harry isn’t an eco-travel crusader any more than Meghan’s an anti-bullying campaigner or a feminist. Using “young mothers” as bargaining chips in court is about as feminist as marrying your husband for status or being a princess. It is about as feminist as allowing gossipy anecdotes that spark a public catfight with your sister-in-law to go unchecked because you v Kate is the *****y story that will generate the best headlines.
Lots of women use feminism merely for self-promotion: Meghan isn’t a feminist, never was. And yet nothing will stop this couple trying to prove they are victims."
Poor dear so much pain and suffering...
