Frankly, the way the British media are hailing Meghan and Harry’s return this week, not just William but even Charles can be forgiven for feeling rather like the good son in “The Parable of the Prodigal Son”.
But, even though it’s Sunday, I suspect some of you may not appreciate (or even get) that Biblical reference – for perfectly understandable reasons…
So, put another way, the media hype is eerily reminiscent of the hype that occasioned Charles and Diana’s first overseas royal tour, which was of Australia in 1983.
The Meghan show
But, just as Diana did back then, Meghan seems bound to steal the show.
For starters, it is she, not he, who will be the “keynote speaker” at their first engagement, a charity youth event in Manchester on Monday. But the highlight of their week will surely be her feature appearance at the star-studded launch party for Edward Enninful’s truly provocative memoir.
This is why, whether he’s presiding at an event for the Invictus Games or playing royal without portfolio at the WellChild awards, everything Harry does will be overshadowed by whatever Meghan does, says…or wears.
Except that, for Meghan, overshadowing Harry is hardly the point of this visit. Rather it’s to upstage the royals on their own turf. This, to show the British people the life she could have breathed into the moribund monarchy – if only those racist royals hadn’t force her and Harry’s Megxit.
And the opportunistic British media are salivating to chase her shiny balls to serve her royal vendetta even more than the American media have been to chase Trump’s to serve his dystopian agenda…
Accordingly, all members of The Firm will be relegated to below the fold or to the back pages this week. Hell, even the queen will be lucky if she gets above it on Tuesday when she swears in the new prime minister.
But bear with me, because here comes the best part about this game of throne afoot…
The not-so-veiled threat
We all suspected she wears the pants in their marriage. But the way Harry allowed Meghan to preview this “royal visit” erased all doubt. Because she compounded the uneasy spectre of Harry’s memoir by effectively hanging a damoclean sword over The House of Windsor.
Incidentally, his tell-all is due to drop later this fall. Except it has all the suspense of watching white paint dry. After all, unless Harry fesses up about Major James Hewitt being his daddy, nobody will be interested in embellished stories about his carousing, spendthrift, and idle youth, especially given the unvarnished way British tabloids chronicled it all in real time.
Anyway, apropos of compounding things, I’m not even referring to Meghan’s Archetypes podcast. And is anyone surprised that episodes (actually listened to) are falling down the charts like lead balloons? Frankly, listening to her trying to channel Princess Diana for any more than a minute makes my skin crawl. Her cringeworthy affectations make clear why she was only ever a B-list actress…
No, I’m referring to the plainly contrived fluff Meghan shared as part of that feature for The Cut in the Aug. 29 edition of New York magazine, which went viral. And yes, Harry’s congenitally narcissistic wife could think of no better way to mark the 25th anniversary of his famous mother’s death than to beguile for a profile all about herself.
She teased, for example, that now that she has reclaimed her passport and freedom from the British royal family, she is liberated to rejoin Instagram. Oh boy! Even worse, she lamented that she never knew what it was like to be treated like a black woman until she started dating a white prince.
Evidently she wasn’t satisfied just offending blacks in Africa by comparing her wedding to Mandela’s release from prison. She had to offend blacks … everywhere by sharing how she blissfully passed through life as a white woman – until British royals began treating her the way white people treat the rest of us. This is just one of the many reasons I suspect Meghan is more racist than the queen, Charles, Camilla, William or Kate. So think projection whenever she hurls claims of racism.
For what it’s worth, though, I’d bet my life savings that no black person has ever thought of or treated Meghan as anything other than black. And she knows this. Indeed, I think this is why she told that infamous fairytale about all of Africa rejoicing when she (who they all see as a black woman) married a (white) prince.
The looming cut
But this feature in The Cut, reported by Allison P. Davis, is composed of 6,490 words, 79 paragraphs, 5 Vogue-style photos of Meghan (by herself), spread over 17 pages. More to the point, paragraphs 76 and 77 read as follows:
We ended the visit in her sitting room, where there’s a massive grand piano Tyler Perry gifted her as a housewarming present. ‘Write the soundtrack for your life,’ he told them.
‘It’s interesting, I’ve never had to sign anything that restricts me from talking,’ she reveals, as she ushers me toward the door. ‘I can talk about my whole experience and make a choice not to.’ Why doesn’t she talk? ‘Still healing, she responds.
Now do you see what I mean by a damoclean sword…? Because this is Meghan warning the royals that, if the mere spectre of Harry’s memoir has them all shaking in their wellies, just wait till she feels “healthy” enough to start dropping her bombshell revelations. And darling Kate, if this mean girl made you cry over the hem of a little girl’s bridesmaids dress, prepare to bawl your eyes out…
Now mind you, Meghan probably intends to do nothing more than channel another B-list actor, Ronald Reagan. After all, her podcast is already replete with Reaganesque yarns about palace intrigue. And, lest we forget, having snagged her prince, no less a person than her official biographer, Omid Scooby-Doo Scobie, is on record declaring her abiding ambition to become president of the United States.
But fear not, Meghan has about as much chance of thriving among US politicians as a black seal pup does of surviving among white sharks. After all, she is so thin-skinned, Meghan nearly had a nervous breakdown on her own podcast just because Mariah Carey called her a diva.
So enjoy the show this week – as Meghan and Harry force British royals to keep a stiff upper lip in the face of their most implosive family feud, arguably, since Mary, Queen of Scots plotted to dethrone Elizabeth I…