It's a staple of gossip columns: celebrity divas (and divos, to include the men) who insist that the peons around them refrain from making eye contact.
J-Lo, Neil Diamond, Nicole Kidman, Barbra Streisand and Bob Dylan are among the stars who insist on no eye contact, according to a long-running thread at DataLounge, and Ellen DeGeneres was also recently accused of refusing to make eye contact with her long-suffering staff.
Which brings us to the latest official photo from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Photographed looking away from the viewer
The new photo is being compared to the Sussex engagement photo, perhaps because Meghan's head is slightly south of Harry's in both photos.
I find it more similar to one of the black and white wedding photos the couple chose to share.
In both the new photo and the wedding photo, Meghan is looking somewhere else, away from the viewer.
The wedding photo has her looking out of the frame (did she find somebody better? Maybe husband #4?), while the new photo has her looking bashfully, mid-laugh, towards her elbow on the arm of a chair.
The new photo might have worked for a puff-piece layout in a 1990s edition of Vanity Fair or Vogue, but it is a spectacularly bad choice for its stated purpose, which is to promote the Sussexes' "Time 100 Talks".
How can you talk to me, or talk to anyone else, when you won't look at me directly?
Looking away is a power move
Like refusing to make eye contact with the people who work for you, intentionally posting a photo in which you are looking away from the viewer is a power move.
"I don't need you," it says. "I have a fabulous life in which I am so terribly busy that I don't have time to interact with you, and I don't need your approval.
"Ha ha! I'm laughing at a private joke. But...you wouldn't get it."
Why Meg won't ever be a politician
If you follow politics in the US or any other country, you'll notice the one thing that almost every official photo of a politician seeking election - right wing, left wing, or in between - has in common.
The politician is posed to look directly at the viewer, simulating eye contact.
I see you, the politician seems to say. I see your needs and concerns.
Have you ever seen an official photo of a politician bashfully looking at his or her elbow and laughing?
Meg doesn't want to be equal
This is one of the many reasons I don't think Meg will ever become an elected official.
She doesn't want to "see" people; she doesn't really want to know people, which is why she has so few long-term friends and most of her relationships appear to be transactional.
Meg doesn't even particularly want to be liked, a desire that has driven countless celebrity careers, from Bill Clinton to Joan Crawford to Justin Bieber.
Instead, Meg wants to be admired and envied. She wants you to acknowledge that she is better than you.
Unsurprisingly, this doesn't sell well; most people aren't really looking for someone to envy.
This is one of the many reasons Meg (and Harry's) career has never really taken off.
Meg won't take advice
Another reason it hasn't taken off is that Meg seems incapable of taking advice.
I find it hard to believe that someone on the Time 100 team didn't tell Meg that this photo didn't fill the bill for a series of Time 100 Talks, which are presumably a ripoff of TED talks.
Photos need to tell a story. This one should have been her and Harry eager to welcome some exciting new voices to the stage. Curious, energetic, listening, learning should have been the vibe.
Instead, Harry looks like a Vegas lounge singer on a break, and he seems to be gently laughing at whatever's being said.
Not too encouraging for the Time 100 speakers pouring out their hearts or opening up about the ideas they have nurtured for a lifetime.
Meg, meanwhile, isn't paying attention to the speaker OR the audience. She's got something else going on, something more interesting and much more entertaining. Sorry, Time 100 speaker!
At any rate, if someone suggested that this wasn't quite the right photo for the Sussexes to promote the event - as opposed to promoting themselves - that advice was ignored, as so much advice given to the Susssexes has been ignored in the past.
Comments
Yes, new topic needed but it's getting harder and harder to find new ones. There's not much activity at Mudslide Manor. As for the upcoming trial, like everything else, we can only speculate.
The DM has a photo of H holding Archie in his christening gown with Charles standing next to him. I can't remember if we've seen it before.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8901171/Prince-Charles-sad-not-seeing-grandson-Archie-year.html
Is there any hard evidence that the anyone, apart from the Harkles, ever held the `babe-in- arms-Archie'?
Wasn't there once a report that she wouldn't let another person touch him? I wonder why not?
(That's ironic/rhetorical- we can all hazard a guess as to why. Darren's little secret would have been out - I assume he'd have been at room temperature unless he was thermostatically controlled.)
Do you remember how Ellen De Generes visited MM at Frogmore and fed him, even showing how she held him? No hard evidence, though...
I really do think that you can do a great deal to mitigate your disease should you get it via keeping your vitamin D levels high. We had discussions on the defunct virus blog about studies regarding ivermectin, for example, which has been shown to lower the death rate in a Florida hospital study. Lowering weight will reduce risk, as will keeping BP and blood sugar under good control.
BP made no such announcement, and all reports of BP courtiers talking about such announcement have been from unnamed sources. The story abut a trial period came from the Harkles and enabled them to hold on to some kind of official royal role. They were the ones who peddled the story about representing the Queen on their 'royal website'.
The patronages Meghan was given as a full-time working royal are still hers, but I guess the Queen left it up to those organisations to decide if they wanted her to continue, considering she no longer represents the Crown or the UK, and no longer resides in the UK or a Commonwealth country.
Same for Harry and his patronages. The only odd thing is that his ceremonial positions in the army seem to have been put on hold. Perhaps the Queen asked for that as a favour in the hope that at least Harry would return and could resume some kind of public role.
The QCT is an oddity. I doubt that the trustees want either of the Harkles involved (not working royals, do not live in a Commnwealth country, have become slf serving in all they do and have no charitable platform or credentials) but they cannot remove Meghan without removing Harry. I guess the Queen asked for a favour as a grandmother but used her status as monarch. Besides the QCT is not a permanent organisation.
Change of topic: I think it is so sad that Meghan is preventing Archie from having a life as a part of the royal family in terms of the line of succession and personal family ties. She ghosted everyone in her family except her mother (who has been financially dependant on Harry since the engagement), who is now the only family connection Archie has outside his parents. This is not normal.
Question: If the Harkles had to choose one person from Harry's close or extended family to include in their lives (like she did with her mother), who do you think it would be? What would their criteria be? Wealth, status, image, easy to control and manipulate?
It is very possible that Ellen was joking, and has never even met the Harkles.
However, Ellen probably would love the scoop of having the Harkles on her show and could have taken the chance of contacting them. If she did visit them at Frogmore with Portia, that meeting did not go well because nothing came of it. No connection since the Harkles have been in LA!
Wonderful news! :)
It's have to be someone blind, deaf, dumb and with no sense of touch or smell.
Either that or someone who is so far gone mentally that nobody believes them when they say it's either animatronic or someone else's child.
H&M certainly couldn't have fooled a royal dog that the baby was real. Also, it wouldn't take long for anyone to rumble that any older youngster they put on show is an hireling. It'd have to be mute lest it blurted out something incriminating in an unguarded moment.
I love your image - she's really snarling!
Question: If the Harkles had to choose one person from Harry's close or extended family to include in their lives (like she did with her mother), who do you think it would be? What would their criteria be? Wealth, status, image, easy to control and manipulate?
Interesting . . . If we assume that they would have to be willing to keep quiet about things (in exchange for something else?) and put up with the occasional insulting description (e.g. being referred to as the "nanny") in the Harkles' self-serving PR plants, then I really can't see anyone in the BRF willing to go along. A Spencer relative might, but only if he or she truly believed the BRF's treatment of Diana (more so than Diana's own behavior and decisions) led to her untimely death and wanted some revenge. And even then there would be a bit of a clash with the Harkles' own agenda, since they're not scapegoating the BRF on that, but the media.
But who is to say they haven't also turned the Spencers off? She supposedly really wanted to get to know them before their wedding, named them in the birth announcement in the same paragraph as the Queen, and gave two of them prominent places in the Christening photo -- so you'd imagine they'd either be thick as thieves or at least on cordial terms. But she has either ghosted them, too, or figured out that that association has nothing for her to milk, because every leak about private Zoom calls and every name-dropped family member only point back to the BRF.
@Mimi, I would recommend watching MedCram; specifically, Coronavirus update 114 re the falling mortality rate of COVID 19 in hospitalized patients https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQO1PB8-xtg. Mask wearing may be helping by lowering the viral load, giving the immune system a fighting chance. It gives a reprise of oxidative stress and NAC. My biochemistry classes have been enough to allow me to follow the explanations and nod thoughtfully yet are too far in the past for me to remember exactly the pathways. He draws the pictures and gives a clear explanation which I am not able to. Use it or lose it is real.
Dr. Campbell has a video on vitamin D up today going over how many people in Arizona had low vitamin D rates; black and Hispanics had low vitamin D rates as opposed to Caucasians and also went over the death rates of Native Americans (and 80% in a particular study had very low vitamin D levels). Vitamin D also modulates immune response; i.e., it keeps your body from killing yourself with an immune response to dead virus.
Dr. Been (Dr. Mobeen Syed) with Dr. Marik talks about the timing of treatments and how treating with antivirals after @ 8 days is useless because there is no live virus at that time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy1kdZhXsP8
They also point out that 20% of people that test negative per PCR for COVID actually do have COVID.
My conclusion from reading the studies about remdesivir is that the juice ain't worth the squeeze, it is an expensive yet ineffective treatment.
Dr. Marik also points out that methylprednisolone is a MUCH BETTER steroid to keep people alive in his opinion. Right time, right dose, right period of time is critical.
I think we need to take charge of the responsibility for our health and do what we can to mitigate our susceptibility to the diseases in the first case, and to have the best tools to fight it should we get it. I am good with getting it and having an asymptomatic or low symptomatic case. If a mask helps me do that (and it appears that they do), I am good with wearing as effective of a mask as I can afford. I do wear it in public almost without exception (although I did go out to eat recently with my brother and his wife and left the mask in the truck). Then I came home and used a mouthwash said to be effective against COVID, rinsed out my sinuses, and took ivermectin.
Since I do not want to go into the hospital to challenge the mortality rates, I use the tools available to me; i.e., I quit using the sunscreen (I am going to have to have some serious lasering done, I just know it) and also take a D3 supplement because I have found in the past that my predilection toward catching viral diseases that cause chronic bronchitis or pneumonia vanished when I had high blood levels of vitamin D. (I had the blood studies done in the past. They were expensive.)
I have found that quercetin keeps my allergy symptoms under control at 250 mg daily. For years, I could not leave the house without multiple handkerchiefs for sneezing and snotting. Now I can, even though my house is surrounded by oak trees, pine trees, and goldenrod. It does such a good job that I will occasionally forget to take it for a period of days and then suddenly remember (grin) why I take it when I am doing my impression of a salted slug. Since quercetin is a weak ionosphere and helps zinc cross into cells, I also take a zinc supplement daily. I take low-dose aspirin daily for anticoagulation purposes just because it seems like a good idea. I take low-dose melatonin. As I said above, I take a vitamin D3 supplement, 2,000 iu or 50 mcg daily. People at higher latitudes should probably take a higher dose. I take 600 mg of NAC daily; if I felt symptomatic, I would double the dose.
Now back to MM.
OR
Statements from the Harkles for which we have no evidence, especially photographic or other wise..
Thanks for listening
I'm a long time lurker and first time poster.
Has anyone seen the recent Halloween episode of The View? Whoopie was wearing a crown and she was "Meghan Markle except.. I've been out in the sun for too long". Interestingly, she did not say princess or royal.
I remember the ladies on the View being huge supporters of MM but they have been rather silent in recent months.
I am not anonymous. For now I will call myself Lady Butterfly.
Thanks,
Lady Butterfly
Interesting. Yes, they are keeping "Archie" (if he is not a complete fiction) from learning the lessons and protocol that he needs to navigate in the royal family. Otherwise, he would be like a bull blundering about in a china shop, sending various things crashing about due to non-understanding of precedence and protocol.
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We go back and forth here about whether Archie even exists or not, but IF he does, I imagine the BRF would be interested in welcoming him back when he gets older. After his mother's (unfounded) accusations of racism, it would be good PR for them to welcome a long-lost mixed-race teenager with open arms. And well, he's totally innocent of her sins, isn't he? Reintegrating Archie would involve a lot of controls at the beginning, of course -- and probably an extended testing period, just to be sure -- but if he proves he can fit in and be a team player, he'd have a spot on the balcony at Trooping someday.
(I'm imagining a best-case scenario inspired by William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair. Mild spoiler: The mean, petty female character ends up with the kinder, stronger son. It's not due to any parenting decisions she makes, but to a naturally good heart that she manages not to spoil.)
May all Nutties and your loved ones stay safe, healthy, and at peace.
P.S. Thanks @SwampWoman for these golden nuggets on Covid-19.
I polled a few friends and my SILs about that way of describing one’s own child. All thought it was ludicrous, one said “perhaps my great-aunt, in her simmer frame, or an old dog,” and I will leave those thoughts right there as I nurse my Halloween Prosecco and candy hangover.
Day 545: still think there is no real Archie.
Also the famous quote attributed to P.T. Barnum "There is no such thing as bad publicity."
gfbcpa said…
"Moving about and lively???????" It sounds like she is describing a goldfish. Who talks about their child like that?
---------
A nurse describing a patient's condition. A patient who previously was gravely ill.
Returned to add that another friend, now as jaded as I am, just texted:
“Ever think she really hopes to get caught or is setting up a tragedy with messed up Harry, her moving lively kid and the ocean?”
Ugh.
I'd really love to know Nutty's opinion on the postponement and it would be interesting to dig into all aspects of the case starting with the letter to her father.
I know it's all been discussed before but the events connected to the case are stretched over such a long time period that it would be great to have a new discussion of all aspects focused in one thread. Her latest moves in the case may offer some new perspectives on her motives and how they may connect to her other ambitions.
https://fb.watch/1uDdMBtGf2/
Coming back to the eternally scintillating topic of Archie... I remain convinced that there is no child with them in Montecito. As to the child/children we have been presented with as Archie...That Meg’s child would turn out fair Especially in combination with Harry is not surprising. Meg is very fair skinned, aunt Doria is on the lighter complected side. However, if we look at pictures of Meg’s childhood features and hair, they were decidedly African. Meg had a gigantic Afro of African textured hair. I think she still does under all the wigs if it hasn’t fallen completely out from chemical abuse. We’ve had this discussion before, but I think it would be a minuscule genetic anomaly for a child who is half megs to come out with baby fine straight blonde duck hair. In the core of herself, Meg wants to be 100% white and has spent most of her adult life repudiating her black heritage. If she’s pulling a con with Archie and wanted to make it more plausible, she should have cast an infant with curly black hair. I think out of all African features, African hair texture is the most prevalent among biracial children. I see many biracial children in my community, and almost always, Even a fair complected child with blond hair will have black hair texture. There are many kids with golden Afros running around this town; red also. Blue eyes, green eyes, hazel eyes, freckles, golden skin, pale skin...I’ve seen the gamut. But I’ve not seen a biracial child with hair like Archie’s.
The chance of Megan actually giving birth to a golden haired lily white baby I pretty minuscule. She presented us with a child who was supposed to be prince George 2.0. She wants to be Kate so bad, It stands to reason that only a white skinned golden haired prince or princess would be acceptable...Not a child who shared any of the African features of her or her mother. That’s why it’s so ridiculously ironic That she’s trying to turn Archie into a poster child for biracial families. I am 100% Caucasian and Archie is way whiter than me in his appearance. Why don’t all the black sisters crowding around the deceitful Duchess’s banner Call her out for claiming to embrace her biracial heritage while at the same time visibly rejecting everything about herself that is black? She’s bought herself some “good hair”, Surgically altered her features to make them more white and presents us with the baby...Not hers, in my opinion, as a mixed race child who presents is anything back. I think it was this baby fraud, not the desire to monetize Sussex royal, That forced them to leave. I don’t think either one of them will be welcome back, but it’s almost too late to come clean, because what does this say about the royal family‘s involvement in some sort of colossal fraud? If Archie were real, and a true prince and heir to the Queen, He would not have been cast off to outer Siberia along with his parents. I think issues of child endangerment are legitimately raised if those two actually have a baby with them.
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All the times Meg has held “Archie” her hands are very stiff, as if she is holding nothing more than a bag of poo that she doesn’t want to get on her clothes. There is no cuddling or warmth Which one normally sees between a mother and child...Only staged performance for the camera. Meg is such a terrible performer, stilted and unnatural— i’m convinced she’s NPD, and a pernicious case, because she appears to have no grasp of normal human emotional behavior. Seeking out such a high profile role as she has has put all of her pathologies on display on a global stage. It’s quite something to witness. Can’t wait to read the case studies. It still amazes me that the MSM still tiptoes around this so much.
Meg’s emotional makeup is anything but normal, so she does gloat over even negative attention...However, it’s hard to believe that even she couldn’t see that having the world think her baby is fake is in her interest in any way. I think she is desperate for everyone to believe that she has a golden haired, although sometimes with red tufts, extremely advanced for his age 18 month old gambling around the garden in Montecito and kicking around the soccer ball with his old dad. She wants to be given credit for being woke mother of the year without presenting us with any corroborating evidence that she’s actually had a child, never mind doing the day to day mothering bit.
Even her pet outlets are starting to get tired of all her obfuscations. She can’t front forever, and her house of cards is already crumbling. The next six months are going to be interesting. Can’t wait to see what make plans for Archie’s second birthday!
I, too, have felt ambivalence over how much fuel every one of my comments gives to a raging narcissist.
Related: When I was a teenager, I remember really loathing a certain newspaper columnist. I couldn't stand certain content that he insisted on revealing -- and given multiple letters that the newspaper published over months, I wasn't the only reader who thought so. Every time his column came out, I'd read it to see if the editor-in-chief had finally reined him in . . . and every time, I was disappointed. Then one day, he himself brought up the issue.
He said that he got a lot of letters lambasting his columns . . . but also a lot of letters supporting him. And for him, both types of letters had exactly the same value, because they were evidence that people were reading him. He'd actually worry if he stopped getting negative reactions, because it might mean no one cared what he wrote any longer. And the worst thing to happen to a columnist is to lose his readers.
After he pointed that out, well, I simply never read a word by him again. And I just hoped others took the same broad hint.
Perhaps one day the Sussexes' slow-motion train wreck will get boring enough for me to get off at Cambridge Station and never look back. But I greatly enjoy the company and insights of the commenters here. So that may be a long while yet.
I'd go with Charles aka Mr. Money Bags.
Did the RF really not confirm the 1-year review?
Another thought to add to your summary of the Archie Obfuscation:
Have you noticed that all comments related to Hoaxie seem to have to do with only arm’s length, strictly physical markers?
Changes in two weeks, sleeps solidly on long flights, has tooth growth, grew hair, Is active, crawls, stands, chews books. It is like...well, lab notes of what the subject has done over weeks.
Am I missing the parts about Love, cuddling, filled my heart, life is suddenly full, hearts are bursting, soft baby cheek, scent of his baby hair.....all the things the new parents I know (and even celebs) commonly sigh over? Do you know what I mean? I may not be expressing it clearly. That....you can see the heart Is now a happy hostage to this adorable little being. The emotional avalanche of love? Even if she is a damaged narcissist who views the invisible child as an instrument p, what about Harry, supposedly the father?
And I don’t mean their b***h fests and whinging about security and privacy for “the little one” they named after a cat and a line of housewares sold online by Soho House.
No baby. I will no longer budge without proof,
I have always thought that whatever we hear about "Archie" comes across as having been copied from "What to Expect The First Year" or similar book. Facts no love.
So.........do you suppose the DM piece today about Charles being so sad he hasn’t seen Archie “in over a year” is actually a sly clever “so show us this kid in person so we can we have his DNA checked by royal doctors, if you expect to come of the 12-month review with more than a tea cake wrapped in a monogrammed napkin”?
If so, I salute the CH staff. Stay sly!
I also think they need a couple of snarky fresh university graduates who are clear eyed about posers, who are ready to have some fun and employ some nips, coughs and curtain pulls to expose the Harkles as needed, if needed via entertaining PR pieces with new headlines:
* Charles and Queen surprised to see Archie is already five feet tall in loving Zoom call
* Sussexes tell Charles that Archie stole a horse from Montecito stables
* Harry shares Baby Sussex in four of Meghan’s wigs and her Zoom teeth for fun Halloween video call; Queen “delighted”
* Baby Archie utters first sentence: “A woke democracy creates the wings for Mommy’s most authentic and inclusive storytelling”
* Harry expresses fervent wish that Kate could teach them healthy parenting skills; “babies are harder than dogs”
* Archie’s sense of humor: winsome tot surprisingly calls mom “Duchess My Queen” repeatedly in zoom with Camilla and Sophie
Pretty please? It’s a long time until next fall...
You may have hit the nail on the head. There is a category of people called emotional vampires. They thrive only in the midst of drama and high emotional storms. They actively promote them to get their feed.
Megs really is one. I feel so sorry for Archie because he is the tool for her. As for Harry he will be left an empty shell
Yes, maybe Ellen was possibly joking. I should have added I'm very sceptical of the whole thing: did she have to mimic holding a baby? They could have taken a photo of Archie with his auntie Ellen while respecting his privacy (roll eyes).
Am I the only one who thinks the Harkles had been told to shut up from very high up? they are suddenly off the radar.
Or this is simply a quiet before the storm?
I love your image - she's really snarling!
____________
Thank you! That snarling face is a bit much, though, it makes me dislike MM even more. I'm not sure which his worse, her snarling face or her Saint Meghan butter wouldn't melt in her mouth face.
"Am I the only one who thinks the Harkles had been told to shut up from very high up? they are suddenly off the radar."
Maybe. Unfortunately I'm sure they'll be back, as obnoxious as ever.
Personally I doubt they are quiet because anyone in the royal family told them to be. Maybe her attorneys did so we might have a blessed week (or if we are lucky, even two) of silence in service of her excuses to the court last week. Whether she claimed poverty, sickness, COVID dangers, disability/dysfunction due to pregnancy, serious illness/pregnancy in one of the "Big 5," whatever, it probably wouldn't do to be seen immediately whooping it up on the world's stage or filmed in pricey Zoom events in rented digs with non-household members.
I doubt the silence will last long. It's still not clear to me though when the (new) deadline is for her to turn over texts, etc. If it's really still this month, that might keep her quiet longer.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/royal/1354117/Meghan-Markle-news-Prince-Harry-latest-coronavirus-uk-Piers-Morgan-book-wake-up
TITLE: "Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Lied to the Press About Archie's Birth to Protect Him from the Paparazzi"
By Kayleigh Roberts Nov 1, 2020
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/amp34543592/prince-harry-meghan-markle-lied-to-the-press-about-archie-birth-to-protect-him/
Re MM having to submit texts etc (DM article):
Meghan's lawyers have asked the High Court for disclosure of evidence, such as emails and texts between her and her friends to be delayed until next August.
A lot can happen between now and August.
Sorry for my absence, which is due to work duties relating to the upcoming US election.
Thank you for catching this. So, they publicly admit lying and are looking for excuses. Archie is seventh in line and practically irrelevant. And what damage can come from taking a picture?
Kate didn't lie about her children who will be an heir and a spare
Is something brewing behind he scene
To get in the mood for Megs case, this has been copied from Skippy, many thanks to the poster.
How Do Court Reporters Keep Straight Faces
How do they indeed. Thanks, Puds, for bringing it over!