Meghan and Harry: The Real Story
Rate it:
83%
Flag icon
New Money, on the other hand, finds what it regards as the prissiness and restraint of Old Money constraining, tiresome, and boring. It is also seriously disconcerted by the sudden way Old Money often lapses into unrestrained political incorrectness, riding roughshod over New Money’s treasured politically correct attitudes. Inevitably the values of these two worlds collide, and there is no doubt that they did with someone as dogmatically woke and politically correct as Meghan.
83%
Flag icon
Over the centuries, it has learnt that possession might be nine tenths of the law but retention requires self-sacrifice.
83%
Flag icon
New Money is therefore both more demanding and less hardy than Old. What Old Money accepts unflinchingly, New Money regards as a personal assault on its right to be comfortable at all times.
84%
Flag icon
New Money is materialistic in a way that no other class in society is. It uses not only itself, but others, to get what it wants. It is ruthless in a way Old Money seldom is.
84%
Flag icon
To all intents and purposes, prior to her marriage to Harry, Meghan would have been categorised as a No Money person.
84%
Flag icon
she was dependent upon men for a roof over her head and the wherewithal to have a half-way decent existence.
84%
Flag icon
she had acquired the followers she did with The Tig, where she was able to present herself as an arbiter of style, taste, and discernment, and be accepted as such by her two million followers.
84%
Flag icon
In Britain, however, where ‘classiness’ is something else entirely, Meghan’s heightened appreciation of all things material or superior affected the way people reacted to her. They recoiled from her overt materialism and a demeanour which she might have thought was classy but which they regarded as pretentious.
84%
Flag icon
the way it did the critics of Elephants Without Borders, whose dismissal of her performance had one common thread: insincerity.
84%
Flag icon
Britons like ordinary people making the grade to greatness as long as they don’t get all lah-di-dah and forget their roots.
84%
Flag icon
The worst possible message Meghan could have delivered to the British working class was that she was ashamed of those roots, yet this has been the precise message her cold-shouldering of her family conveyed.
84%
Flag icon
Nevertheless, by projecting such a ‘classy’ exterior and allying it to a consciously woke, left-wing, politically-correct activistic stance which made clear that she disapproved of much of what Harry’s friends and their world stood for, she alienated people who wanted to like her but sensed that she did not regard them as worthy of engagement with her.
85%
Flag icon
Because of the concerns as to how she would fit into his world, none of his friends or relations wanted him to marry her.
85%
Flag icon
Several of them, such as his brother William, his good friend Tom Inskip, his grandfather Prince Philip and his grandmother the Queen, tried to counsel caution. In each case, Harry resented the concern,
85%
Flag icon
Her detractors claim that no one who is sincere makes such a show of being extravagantly loving and self-abnegating the way she does.
85%
Flag icon
Rather more controversial is the opinion of a psychologist to whom I spoke. While her admirers consider her an extremely sensitive person whose every thought and feeling are governed by a sweet-nature and a good heart, he concluded that descriptions of her correlate with sociopathic as well as narcissistic tendencies.
85%
Flag icon
than the public realises. In his opinion, Meghan’s interview with Tom Bradby was a dead giveaway not only of her hunger for sympathy but also of another sociopathic trait, namely lack of insight into how inappropriate her requirement of having her needs fulfilled, even in disproportionate circumstances, can be.
85%
Flag icon
Maybe ITV was responsible for how self-obsessed and self-pitying she seemed as she complained about her great pain, in not receiving the emotional support and attention she required while adjusting to her new life of even greater privilege and opportunity than her old life, which had not been exactly underprivileged either.
85%
Flag icon
But her complaints seemed weirdly disproportionate to this psychologist, made as they were while she and Bradby were surrounded by South African women with genuinely significant daily struggles for life, liberty, health, food and safety. These women and these issues were meant to be the true focus of the programme. Yet, so complete was Meghan’s self-belief, so pronounced her need to obtain the support of viewers by gaining their sympathy for the hardships she was enduring in her difficult life, that she did not stop to question whether a royal duchess, happily married to a man who adores her, ...more
86%
Flag icon
Harry acquitted himself with equal emotional fervour during the interview. While his admirers may have been filled with sympathy when he confessed how every time he sees a flash bulb he is catapulted back to his mother’s death, those who take a more measured view of the responsibilities and privileges of a prince had cause to question whether he too had started to wallow in rather too much hyper-emotionalistic self-pity when a healthy dose of gratitude f...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
86%
Flag icon
He too came across as someone who wants sympathy intermingled with admiration, all of which is offset by a notable lack of insight as to how blessed he truly
86%
Flag icon
A journalist, who asks a question that pushes the boundaries of an interview into terrain it has no business occupying, cannot be fairly criticised, nor can his producers and editors when they come to compile the programme, if a couple as experienced in PR as Harry and Meghan decide to compare their own anguish with the Golgotha of others.
86%
Flag icon
only an unconscionable egotist, and a rapacious one at that, could state on television, in the middle of a South African wilderness surrounded by some of the poorest people whose everyday life is an uncertain struggle for survival, that the purpose of life is not survival but thriving.
86%
Flag icon
boundless greed and boundless entitlement, and is so shameless about self-aggrandisement as to flagrantly, almost boastfully, denounce the ability of some of the poorest people on earth, whose struggle is elemental, to know what the true purpose of life
86%
Flag icon
There might also have been more to Meghan’s tremulous confession of the hardships she had faced than meets the eye. She had studied Diana Wales closely. Her stated ambition is not only to emulate her, but to outstrip her. Just as how Diana used the books that I and Andrew Morton wrote, the press through friendly journalists such as Richard Kay, and her television interview with Martin Bashir, to manoeuvre herself from one point to another, so too might Meghan have been laying the ground for her departure from the confines of the royal way of life by establishing grounds for the public ...more
86%
Flag icon
Meghan disliked the royal way of life. She disliked its constraints, its sacrifices, its drudgery, its discipline, its lack of financial reward.
86%
Flag icon
No Mayors of Surbiton for her, thank you very much, when she could be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even a million or more, to make appearances for the same length of time on the other side of the Atlantic.
87%
Flag icon
Instagram proved useful, as the couple proclaimed their desire for privacy on the one hand while on the other hand embarking upon a series of posts that increased their profile.
88%
Flag icon
To one canny observer, ‘it was a neatly packaged bundle, somewhat illogical but very emotional, all adding up to: Gimme the money in exchange for my class.’
88%
Flag icon
‘I’m literally disgusted that Harry is now dragging up Diana’s death to earn money. I really didn’t think he would stoop that low. This is disgusting on a whole different level. Shameful. Their titles must be stripped completely.’
89%
Flag icon
ostensibly on behalf of charity but again with the couple benefiting financially once the fig leaf of humanitarianism is cast aside and both sides get down to the real business of exploiting each other financially.
89%
Flag icon
To ensure that they retained the liberty to wheel and deal as they saw fit, Meghan and Harry closed down their royal office in England. This meant that the limited policing to which they were subject disappeared. They gathered their Buckingham Palace staff together and gave all fifteen members of them notice at the same time. ‘This came as a bolt out of
89%
Flag icon
the blue,’
89%
Flag icon
Royal positions used to be for life, and while they have become merely long lasting, they are not expected to be transient appointments. Yet that is what all the Sussex jobs turned out to be.
90%
Flag icon
Hope Cooke,
90%
Flag icon
There have even been rumours that Bill Gates might run for president in 2024 or even 2028.
90%
Flag icon
A far more certain route to great fame and fortune rests in the safety of mutually advantageous relationships with billionaire sponsors and major companies whose budgets allow for the luxury of vanity projects passing themselves off as humanitarian activities.
91%
Flag icon
It is ironic that a couple who are so demonstrably in love can have generated so much speculation as to how long their union will last.
91%
Flag icon
in Britain it was seen as the pretentious and irresponsible score settling of a spoilt and over-indulged couple who didn’t care how much damage they caused to the institution which had given them their prestige as long as they were able to present themselves in a flattering light to their target audience.
91%
Flag icon
By this time, the British press had come to the conclusion that Harry and Meghan were arch hypocrites who thought that the rules applied to everyone but themselves. They had been getting flack throughout much of the previous year for not living by the rules they preached, but which they nevertheless advocated everyone else abide by.
92%
Flag icon
All of this will be done while she and Harry espouse humanitarian causes in rhetoric that will appeal to those of their political bias. Critics will be dismissed as racists, anti-feminists, and everything else that can be thrown at them by her team as well as by her and Harry’s supporters.
92%
Flag icon
He’s not overly bright and the fact is, Diana messed him up from the word go by spoiling him rotten.
93%
Flag icon
says much about her. She understood the need for a good excuse. Like Diana Wales, who understood that she would lose supporters and her privileges if she admitted that she wanted her freedom, so blamed Charles for the collapse of her marriage when in fact she was more to blame than he was,
93%
Flag icon
At the palace there was genuine shock that Meghan would ‘stoop to using mental health as the cover for what is essentially greed and self-indulgence,’ as one courtier said. ‘Only spoilt brats think that their mental health is affected if they don’t get everything they want in life.
93%
Flag icon
Mature people cope with frustration and frustration is something that everyone has to cope with. You only have good mental health if you can cope with it positively.
93%
Flag icon
Meghan want ever-increasing fame; they simply want it on their terms. They want the Hollywood version, not the British, royal one. They do not want to do what the other royals do, which is get out of their beds at six thirty in the morning to get dressed so that they are ready for an 8am helicopter ride to the Midlands of England, where they will meet a group of workers, cut a ribbon or two, meet groups of school children before unveiling a plaque prior to having lunch with the Mayor and local worthies, after which they will continue with a series of unglamorous meetings and interactions for ...more
94%
Flag icon
I was being rung up by an impeccable source and informed that the palace had started making plans for his eventual return. Alone.
94%
Flag icon
Quite how he will cope, in the long run, with a wife who regards external constraints as provocations to be conquered or avoided, remains to be seen. Could Meghan be making the same mistake Diana had made? A wife who rules the roost too fully and demands too consistently that her husband give up everything that he holds dear, to keep her happy, might push even the most obliging of husbands into concluding that the sacrifices aren’t worth keeping the marriage intact.
94%
Flag icon
Mrs Ragland is a pleasant and dignified woman but she has very little experience of the world at large, much less of the royal world. As for her daughter, she is the most spoilt, demanding so-and-so I have ever had the displeasure to encounter,’
94%
Flag icon
This is not a view shared by Meghan’s admirers. They do not regard the way she has influenced Harry to detach from his friends, family and royal heritage as anything but liberating him from a way of life that was preventing him from focusing on what really matters.