I’m no Mary fan, but she dresses a lot better than Meghan and carries herself professionally. She rubs me the wrong away (I find her arrogant and cold), but I have to admit that she looks and acts like a princess and future queen. I cannot even picture Mary wearing a friend’s “royal collection” oversize jacket (”be the ROYAL you can BE”), or showing up somewhere with ginger-chocolate-chip-and-banana bread.
Meghan is a frustrated lifestyle blogger who found a lonely prince and decided that this was her ticket to a life full of published cookbooks, merching, and domestic goddess profiles. She’s trying to use the brf’s platform to create a royal version Goop or something like that. It’s bizarre.
“The double agent for the patriarchy is basically just a woman who perhaps unknowingly is still putting the patriarchal narrative out into the world. Is still benefitting off, profiting off and selling a patriarchal narrative to other women. But it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You know, just because you look like a woman, we trust you and we think you’re on our side, but you are selling us something that really doesn’t make us feel good. You’re selling us an ideal, a body shape, a problem with our wrinkles, a problem with ageing, a problem with gravity, a problem with any kind of body fat. You’re selling us self-consciousness. The same poison that made you clearly develop some sort of body dysmorphia or facial dysmorphia, you are now pouring back into the world. You’re like recycling hatred. I find that really dangerous and I think it’s unacceptable and I don’t care if you’re a woman. I think constructive criticism is needed for anyone to ever evolve. For our gender to evolve we need some sort of constructive criticism. As long as we do it in a somewhat careful way. (…) So many of the worst things in the world have happened motivated by greed. And I just don’t think that’s an acceptable excuse anymore. How much money do you need? Really how much money do you need? How much money do any of these huge influencers who are worth millions or billions sometimes… why are they still promoting appetite-suppressant lollipops to young girls? And it’s not a fight against obesity. They have young, already slim girls, in their adverts for Flat Tummy company, this company that are absolutely everywhere, and they’re even being advertised in some of the most mainstream magazines, women’s magazines, and they have a billboard in Times Square. The money is built on the blood and tears of young women who believe in them, who follow them, who look up to them like the big sister they never had. It’s so upsetting and it feels like such a betrayal against women.”
This is a more eloquent version of the kind of thing I meant when I said yesterday that a choice isn’t feminist automatically because it’s made freely by a woman.
“The trips were so secret she took only a small camera crew with her, all the better to make a tiny film"
“And while it would be wrong to think the caring Duchess is using the people of Grenfell to burnish her own caring credentials, isn’t there something a tiny bit self-serving at the heart of this endeavour?”
Jan Moir calls out Meghan. Scroll down for the blurb. I think all UK journalists are so onto her. It’s a matter of walking the fine line between hanging onto their jobs and being able to say what they really think.
Thanks for sending this in! I think everyone knows what this was really about.
BTW, I hadn’t noticed that gorgeous pink coat. The community kitchen ladies were serious styling during this event.
The kind of fantasy Meghan is spinning is fine in Hollywood, but once you are in the political sphere or in the royal family, it becomes propaganda. It’s as real as Trump’s supposed riches and blue collar sympathies and just as seductive. Rhiannon is correct to be wary of it.
But the UK press is in a bind because they’ve been letting the royal propaganda skate so far. Now, sure, they did it because the royals were relatively discreet about it. They visit the Grenfell victims and do fundraisers, but their pictures aren’t in the front and the interactions are a ritualized posy offering and maybe a quick hug.
“The double agent for the patriarchy is basically just a woman who perhaps unknowingly is still putting the patriarchal narrative out into the world. Is still benefitting off, profiting off and selling a patriarchal narrative to other women. But it’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You know, just because you look like a woman, we trust you and we think you’re on our side, but you are selling us something that really doesn’t make us feel good. You’re selling us an ideal, a body shape, a problem with our wrinkles, a problem with ageing, a problem with gravity, a problem with any kind of body fat. You’re selling us self-consciousness. The same poison that made you clearly develop some sort of body dysmorphia or facial dysmorphia, you are now pouring back into the world. You’re like recycling hatred. I find that really dangerous and I think it’s unacceptable and I don’t care if you’re a woman. I think constructive criticism is needed for anyone to ever evolve. For our gender to evolve we need some sort of constructive criticism. As long as we do it in a somewhat careful way. (…) So many of the worst things in the world have happened motivated by greed. And I just don’t think that’s an acceptable excuse anymore. How much money do you need? Really how much money do you need? How much money do any of these huge influencers who are worth millions or billions sometimes… why are they still promoting appetite-suppressant lollipops to young girls? And it’s not a fight against obesity. They have young, already slim girls, in their adverts for Flat Tummy company, this company that are absolutely everywhere, and they’re even being advertised in some of the most mainstream magazines, women’s magazines, and they have a billboard in Times Square. The money is built on the blood and tears of young women who believe in them, who follow them, who look up to them like the big sister they never had. It’s so upsetting and it feels like such a betrayal against women.”
You claim, on the opinion pages of the “failing” New York Times no less, that senior officials working for the president of the United States “are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
“I would know,” you add dramatically. “I am one of them.”
Sorry, what was the point of this particular piece? And what is it that you want from the rest of us? A thank-you card? A round of applause? The nation’s undying gratitude?
Screw. You.
There is no redemption; no exoneration for you or your colleagues inside this shit-show of an administration. You think an op-ed in the paper of record is going to cut it? Gimme a break. You cannot write an article admitting to the president’s “anti-democratic” impulses while also saying you want his administration “to succeed.” You cannot publish a 965-word piece excoriating Donald Trump’s “worst inclinations” while omitting any and all references to his racism, bigotry, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and white nationalism.
You did find space, however, to heap praise on yourself and your fellow officials. “Unsung heroes.” “Adults in the room.” “Quiet resistance.” “Steady state.”
The reality is that you and your fellow officials are enablers of Trump; you are his protectors and defenders. You say it yourself. Why were there only “whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment,” which provides for the cabinet to remove the president from office if he is unable to do the job? Why not invoke it and let Mike Pence take over? (Are you, by the way, Mike Pence?)
If as you claim — and we all agree! — that the president you serve “continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic” with “misguided impulses,” then how can you advocate for anything other than his swift removal from office?
Your defense is that “no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.” Seriously? You don’t agree with former Secretary of State John Kerry that we’re already in the midst of “a genuine constitutional crisis,” given your own op-ed outlining his “erratic behavior” and “reckless decisions” and Bob Woodward’s new book describing “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” at the center of the Trump White House?
You are keen to remind the liberal readers of the New York Times that yours “is not the popular ‘resistance’ of the left” and that you believe this administration’s policies have “already made America safer and more prosperous.” You cite “historic tax reform” and “effective deregulation” as the supposed “bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture.” But by tax reform, do you mean the Trump tax cuts that give the richest 1 percent of Americans almost half of the benefits? And by deregulation, do you mean the rescinding of Obama-era protections for the oceans; the lifting of controls on toxic air pollution; and the green light to Wall Street to once again cause havoc in the financial markets?
What is it, then, that you object to? Well, it seems, your biggest concern is “not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency,” but how Americans have “sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.”
Also, what did you think would happen when you signed up to work for a reality TV star who was accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women, and of rape by his first wife? Who stiffed hundreds of contractors, ripped off Trump University students, cheated on his third wife just months after she gave birth, and cut off health care coverage to his own nephew’s sick baby in a fit of rage?
You knew all of this and yet you still chose to work for him at the highest level of government. You now acknowledge that “the root of the problem is the president’s amorality.” But how about your own amorality? I hate to agree with your boss, but you are “gutless.” You’re a shameless coward, a cynical opportunist.
Don’t hide behind anonymity. Don’t pretend that you have “gone to great lengths” to restrain Trump and “put country first.”
Tell us your name. Quit your job. Call out this president in public.
Call him out for his bigotry, his mendacity, his sheer mental and emotional unfitness for the office he occupies. Call him out in front of a congressional committee. Or a court of law.
Watching everything that has happened since the engagement, I can only conclude that Meghan is completely oblivious to the negative PR and public opinion. In her mind, she was separated from the royals at birth and has now finally been reconnected to the family she never had. She has to makeup for 36 years of bling and clothes she didn’t get.
But stepping back and taking a broader perspective: there is so much corruption within the higher levels of government, corporations, media, etc. these days. Everyone is a fake on the make. The so called “liberal” media in the “free” world has been dead for several years.
Corporate media is full of gushing articles on Meghan. The Daily Mail and possibly Yahoo are the last two places where the public can still express an opinion on a larg(er) scale. (For comparison, I comment a lot of Financial Time, but a really hot topic gets only a few hundred comments compared to DM thousands). Google search will not bring up blogs anymore unless you already know of the existence of the blog. Twitter, fb, etc. are not places where you can get reasonable analysis of anything.
I’ve seen for myself that in the biggest bank’s headquarters, senior executives are only concerned with hanging on to their paychecks. Every decision they make hinges on that one objective. Apart from a small number of entrepreneurs (and even many of those eventually sell out), you have to hustle your way up the hierarchy if you want to recognized as a mover and a shaker.
Face it, Meghan is a small fraud compared to Lloyd Blankfein or Jamie Dimon, or even the Clintons with their pay-to-play schemes through the State Department. No, I am not a Trump supporter, I am a Julian Assange supporter and I was a Sanders supporter ….long live the liberal media for exposing all the shenanigans around the democratic nomination. Said nobody ever.
Corporate media is composed of craven journalists also attached like limpets to their paycheques, They spew whatever narrative is required. I’ve seen “news reports” that have entire chunks cut and pasted from press releases. The media’s job is to protect institutional elites.
75% (?) of the public buy every narrative they are fed, whether it is about the War on “Terrorism” or Meghan Markle “modernizing the monarchy”. Just look at the all the photos of European royalty playing dressup in their silly gowns, crowns and sashes
….fakes on the make, the whole lot of them.
Thanks for sending this in! I love the FT comment section and it’s so depressing that it’s only a handful of people chiming in. I also follow FinTwitter and a fantastic thread will get maybe 32 RTs, which is also sad.
The fakery is everywhere nowadays, which is downright scary. One reason I blog about Meghan is that it’s less stressful than commenting on Trump or Elon Musk or any of the other fraudsters. Meghan has little effect on my real life, my country, or its economy. The other have a huge influence.
And the press is useless. I can sort of see why the royals get this worshipful pap because they are so secretive and finding real info is hard. I don’t understand it as to the other fraudsters. it reminds me of Chuck Price’s legendary 2007 quote “as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance.” It’s good while it lasts, but eventually the music stops and the whole house of cards comes down.
A Threat to Global Democracy: How Facebook & Surveillance Capitalism Empower Authoritarianism
House of Brat 