Let's try this again...
Not much appears to be going on. Living Legends came and went without fanfare ... what's the next event? Super Bowl - Sunday February 11th? Oscar's - March 10th? In the mean time, some things are still rolling along in various starts and stops like Samantha's law suit. Or tax season is about to begin in the US. The IRS just never goes away. Nor do bills (utility, cable, mortgage, food, cars, security, landscape people, cleaning people, koi person and so on). There's always another one. Elsewhere others just continue to glide forward without a real hint of being disrupted by some news out of California. That would be the new King and Queen or the Prince/Princess of Wales. Yes there are health risks which seemed to come out of nowhere. But. The difference is that these people are calmly living their lives with minimal drama.
Comments
This is a somewhat mystifying article. I didn’t see it posted here yet.
Her Majesty the Queen and Prince Charles convened for a rare outing/photo call in the gardens of Frogmore House. The cherry blossoms and daffodils are out in Windsor, and these are nice pictures of the two of them. Perhaps this is Mummy’s way of lending support to her embattled heir as his kid plumbs new depths of embarrassing behavior every day. So far, so lovely. Then the writer has to go ahead and spoil it by being sure to mention it as the site of the Sussex wedding reception for “200 of Harry and Meghan’s closest friends”. I thought, oh goody some shade. But in practically the next line here it is in black-and-white—-“It is understood” That Eugenie and Jack are renting Frogmore Cottage.
??????
It was just a few months ago wasn’t it, that the removal vans pitched up in the middle of the night, followed by the Brooksbanks moving in— then some six weeks later all the papers for crowing about how Eugenie had moved out suddenly, already, after a month. What, so we’re meant to believe that she has ditched Royal Lodge where she and Jack Have help and the support of the babies grandparents, to move back into Meg’s cast off construction site with a newborn?
I am very confused. I wish the palace would either confirm or deny whether FroggyCott has been sublet to E & J or this is more bogus PR from the Sussex camp. In the unlikely event that E would be desirous of the Sussexes’ Abandoned home in an unknown state of completion or habitability—Surely any rental monies would be paid directly to the Crown Trust and not given to Haz and Murky as was stated earlier, If E is not involved In giving H money for his Airbnb, that needs to be refuted—tout suite. Otherwise the Brooksbanks look shady by association. The resurgence of this “Harry and Meg are E’s landlords” Conveniently bolsters the narrative that E & Smegs have a special relationship within the royal family. I think it’s more likely that hell has frozen over.
Wow, wow, wow - they were using palace facilities and expenses while plotting for an independant income for themselves all the while.
Traitors - they should be hung.
Frankly, they bore me to tears. When I see him, I see a dimwit. When I see her, I see a trailer trash social climber way over head head with the royalty issues.
It is only the thought of them being exposed for the slime that they really are that is keeping me interested in reading the opinions of people like the wise commentators here and journos without stars in their eyes like Valentine Low, Piers, Camilla T. And Magatha - her contributions are such a delight to read.
Agree that it's odd about E and J living there when we thought they'd left after a month, but maybe those reports were false, and also maybe another point about how perfectly safe it is for a famous princess and her newborn? :o)
April 2019 story broke that H&M stole man’s SussexRoyal Instagram account.
May 2019 “had a baby”
June 2019 The paperwork for The Sussex Royal Foundation was filed.
Now we learn in early 2019 they were trying to set up a deal with a streaming service.
I’ll give her this, she hit the ground running. Just not in the direction anyone expected.
I am another one who have not watched the entire interview. Only seen snippets of it from chats and forums. Even with those, I make sure not to overdose on them.
Frankly, they bore me to tears. When I see him, I see a dimwit. When I see her, I see a trailer trash social climber way over head head with the royalty issues.
EXACTLY! I'm way past over them but I do so enjoy the witty comments here. I confess that I do sometimes worry about my eyes getting stuck from when I roll them upon hearing their grandiose yet meaningless announcements.
Sometimes I wonder whether they're going to merchandise their morning routine. "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex both use Happy Breath Mouthwash before they start their busy, event-filled day because one's breath can never be too fresh when meeting with the Hired Help!" (Shot of Meghan throwing plates at maids cowering behind furniture. One maid says to another maid hiding behind the sofa "She's ever so much easier to work with now that she doesn't have morning breath!")
The grounds are certainly beautiful. I don't believe I've seen it pictured in all of its spring glory before.
Can H be said to be `Rose' to M's `Pinkie'?
Knowing they pre-planned everything, not a little but a rolling plan long before they actually departed. Such underhanded lies, and lie after lie.
I know where it all went so wrong, Meghan BARBARA AMIEL
https://mol.im/a/9431569
Andrew's income is a very fraught area now. He is personally supported by the Queen it is understood, now HE is no longer a working royal. His Royal Navy pension was reported as only £25K a year. There are all those problems with the unpaid millions for the Swiss chalet. I don't see how the Queen would bankroll Andrew (and presumably Fergie indirectly to a great degree) and through them Jack and Eugenie's housing too, or at least a proportion of the cost. The cottage at KP is understandable. Frogmore not.
Unless Jack and Eugenie are going to become working royals which I would positively welcome. I remember their visit to the hospital that treated Eugenie's scoliosis and they were smart, polite, friendly - did the whole thing impeccably. I really like Jack. They project all the right values, though I'm uneasy with the tequila. Get him away from that. Then put them to work (allowing for the baby) to show the Sussexes how it's done.
Eugenie can't be held responsible for her father's sleaze. Using Jack and Eugenie draws a line under the previous generation of Andrew and Fergie. Shows it's a new start. We'd then have two happy young families as working royals. The Cambridges and the Brooksbankses. Harry and Meghan - going by the Tominey article which no doubt is just the start - will be an increasingly distant mistake. Irrelevant. Discarded. A dumpster fire extinguished.
There is nothing so lovely as an English garden in spring. I miss that terribly. The bluebells, daffodils, primroses and rhododendrons growing in the woods. Just magical for a young girl. My mother would basically haunt Kew Gardens, picnicking through the spring and summer.
https://archive.vn/WHilA
I think Tominey is on a roll so hopefully we can have this option again. I miss my Telegraph subscription! I'm waiting for those broad sunlit uplands after Covid to be able to justify the expense. Though I may not live that long.
This is the final paragraph:
“There are seven words that have come up again and again since Megxit: it didn’t have to be this way. And when it comes to the Sussexes and the media, it really didn’t have to be this way. Just ask William and Kate.”
The full article can be found here:
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/romantic-wills-and-kate-picture-that-proves-meghan-wrong/news-story/35ac52b21b286045151c863669803eb3#bottom-share
The Frogmore Spring photo op, released right after Megxit anniversary is on purpose! Out with the old, in with the new! It’s important to reframe that space.
I read that Meghan and Harry made a total of 1 whole rental payment to the Crown Estate for Frogmore, meaning they ended up being Evicted around October. Incidentally, this is when the news blast came of Eugenie moving in, and then out. It was perhaps Palace PR avoiding the articles that would come out of Harry’s eviction thus making the Queen look bad and giving Meghan ammo (they didn’t help us in our time of neeeeeed see!). The Queen probably covers the rent for Eugenie, or Eugenie uses it as a holiday home, etc There might not even be a nursery in the home, which the Palace would not want leaked.
So, I actually think the palace was more worried about the perception of HandM and Frogmore than Meghan. She’s not mentioned it again, anyway. I think the Eugenie smokescreen was a good move, and Meghan lied and said Eugenie was renting it from her. Makes it one less family issue from multiple perspectives.
The Right Stuff starring Meghan Markle's Suits colleague Patrick J. Adams becomes FIRST scripted show canceled by Disney+
Another one bites the dust.
How I look back on those days when I lived equidistant between The Regent's Park and Hampstead Heath. I love both though very different green spaces and I doubt there was a week when I was not in one or the other or both. I was always struck by the fact that in The Park the squirrels are so tame and will come and take food from you with their little hands but on the Heath they scurry away from humans. Is not London the best of all cities?
Sorry, my fault, I should have used an emoji or made sure I was being facetious :)!! I can spell and diarrhoea is the British spelling but the portemanteau name Diaria can sound a bit too close like the other word (depending how the first syllable is pronounced).
'There is nothing so lovely as an English garden in spring.' Yes, this is so true. Kew Gardens is a beautiful place but it's too cold at the moment for a visit.
I thought the British spelling was Diarrhoea
Apologies fellow Nutties...a horrid word to bring up. :o/
I thought the British spelling was Diarrhoea.
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That's what I wrote above. Anyway, Diaria doesn't sound regal enough, MM might want something grander or with some hidden meaning - maybe like Archie and Archewell?
Yes you did, I noticed that after I posted, apologies. Too busy munching on a chocolate bunny...it should have been for Weekittylass. ;o)
Or can we think she might go for some other made up combo name. I don’t give her too much credit for being overly imaginative. What about a name from one of her idols. ;o)
@Raspberry Ruffle said…
"I don’t think this has been posted....I didn’t agree with a lot of it inasmuch I found it overly biased, particularly the last few paragraphs. It’s a different take and insight compared to other articles.
I know where it all went so wrong, Meghan BARBARA AMIEL
https://mol.im/a/9431569"
I've always enjoyed Barbara Amiel's writing.
Her style is more bitchy and catty than she's accurate.
Fascinating life - she's recently written an autobiography, Friends and Enemies, that is an exercise in rudery about everyone she feels wronged her.
She gained wider fame for sparking her husband's downfall when she appeared in American Vogue in 2002 showing off her excessive wardrobe and jewels and recounting her exhorbitant personal expenditure which included the infamous quote,'my extravagance knows no bounds!'
That prompted closer investigation by IRS and financial scandal that saw her husband, Conrad Black,jailed for several years and stripped of his company.
She's rumoured to be the real life inspiration for Margaret Atwood's novel, The Robber Bride.
My Mum read the article and agreed with far more of it than I did, I didn’t find Barbara critical enough of Megsy’s lies etc. However, I did enjoy the different angle.
Conrad Black was in our news a lot at one time, didn’t he own a newspaper group? I remember his downfall, but oddly nothing about his wife and her part in it. Thank you for the reminder. ;o)
Wow, thanks. Fascinating! It would be fantastic to get a smoking gun showing that the entire interview was a set-up. Final nail in the debunking coffin!
Opus,
Your writing inspires me to jump on a flight, pop into the local waitrose, and head to the park. I spent most of my time at the bustling Hyde Park. My children and I would grab a spot under a large canopy tree. They’d end up running circles around other picnic go-ers, which led to laughter, and sometimes, delightfully, a mass game of tag. I adored how others would welcome their joy and respond in kind. We’d head for an ice cream and occasionally jump on a bike, with my youngest on the handle bars and zip around the pond. Pure joy! I cannot wait for life to get back to normal and the activities to resume! The London parks are what made my extended relatives, who would visit, fall in love with the city. When the kids were younger, we lived near Central Park in NYC which New Yorkers hold dear, but really it has nothing on London’s greenery.
Impromptu football matches, dancing with strangers during the summer concert series when we couldn’t get tickets into the gates, mesmerizing evening walks in the occasional snow, popping in and out during an Oxford St. shopping trip...ah, I need to be there soon!
(Giving her the benefit of the doubt which she probably doesn't deserve.)
"Camilla Tominey's article - I wonder if there's more of the same standard to come out on Sunday? I'm surprised they didn't save that for Sunday if not."
Sunday is Easter. In the US that wouldn't be a great day to drop a big bombshell. Maybe it's different in the UK?
But also, Swamp, I don't think Oprah cared about the facts; I think she had an agenda and that was that. And I just live for the day that it backfires on her ; )
@Raspberry Ruffle
Conrad Black was in our news a lot at one time, didn’t he own a newspaper group?
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I remember he owned the Telegraph and checked, in fact it was more than that:
'Black controlled Hollinger International, once the world's third-largest English-language newspaper empire,[4] which published The Daily Telegraph (UK), Chicago Sun-Times (U.S.), The Jerusalem Post (Israel), National Post (Canada), and hundreds of community newspapers in North America, before controversy erupted over the sale of some of the company's assets.' (Wikipedia)
No need to apologise. I hope you enjoyed your chocolate bunny :)
I think her previous missteps in public opinion has already resulted in the backfiring; that is why The Great Comeback is being plotted and televised.
I think she single-handedly shot herself in the butt with this, though. She is quite obviously biased in that she questioned nothing and looks to be taking everything out of Meghan's mouth as the gospel truth. Meghan may be the one person perceived as *more* unlikeable than Hillary.
"Sunday is Easter. In the US that wouldn't be a great day to drop a big bombshell. Maybe it's different in the UK?"
In the UK, Sunday newpapers regardless of type of media, tabloid or broadsheets, tend to use a higher standard of investigative journalism than their weekday / Saturday editions.
All the UK print media tend to save their big story drops for their Sunday editions.
And the population at large trusts that anything printed in the sunday papers is true and verifiable.
For public figures with secrets, sunday media is always something to fear.
Anything that is dropped on any other day is easily dismissed or reframed using PR unless the evidence it contains is so strong it can't be refuted.
The fact that this particular sunday is Easter doesn't make any difference.
That was a great find about the Joanna Gaines interview using a green screen. Is this the interview you meant? I checked with the Markle's interview and then garden furniture is very similar, although not the same.
https://youtu.be/Y8n6DkoT5YI
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/chip-and-joanna-gaines-met-with-oprah-via-green-screen-but-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-were-there-for-real.html/
(or this one - note the "socially disturbed"
https://granthshala.com/chip-and-joanna-gains-mate-with-oprah-via-green-screen-but-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-for-real/)
The DM has followed with the piece about how the plans to leave started much earlier thought. Drip Drip. And that's the way it's been since the big interview - a slow steady drip of how this piece of information is false and then the next one gets taken out. Slowly the web of lies is being demolished.
Soon, there will be nothing left to defend. So, I think that like Diana did a lot of damage to herself through the Panorama interview (which was not visible immediately), this interview will as well long term.
We had her Thanksgiving miscarriage.
Her holiday-timed Archewell podcast.
And most recently, her Valentine’s baby announcement.
Incidentally, none of those events had anything whatsoever to do with the holidays she tried to take over.
Were there any similar elements in the H & M interview?
😂
Ah! I just figured it out -- it's socially DISTANCED!
So it's either translated or was dictated and transcribed or just poorly (not at all) proofread.
But with that solved, I wonder if this article is SAYING no, they were there in person while really meaning to bring up the fact that it's possible to do this CGI trickery and no, they probably weren't there at all? There's a term for this in rhetoric that I'm too lazy to look up right now, saying no while really meaning yes, basically.
Barbara Amiel is the type of character that Dominic Dunne chronicled. That excessive, larger than life personality.
Openly, deliberately targeting wealthy men and succeeding so spectacular is a very Amiel thing to do, but sadly Megsy lacks the attendant larger than life, genuinely charming personality that goes with such an ambition.
She also lacks the requisite attention to detail and an ability to adapt to the circumstances she works so hard to achieve.
She found the royal family unsurvivable and she'll find A-List Hollywood echelons equally unsurvivable because of that lack of ability.
Back to Amiel and the Conrad downfall....
During his trial and incarceration, Dominick Dunne and other society chroniclers speculated often that she was going to drop him because his reduced monetary value meant he couldn't keep her in the luxury she preferred, and she'd always been very public about being a luxuriously kept woman despite her own professional accomplishments.
Every so often if she's mentioned in society pages, it's always surprise that she didn't drop him and lives quietly with him in Canada now that he is out of jail.
Granted he remains a wealthy man, but not to the degree that once was.
Also nice M&H are being publicly exposed as liars about everything. There's a new lie exposed every day, it seems. They are going to be left with zero credibility and no one's going to touch them with a barge pole. Radioactive.
Shame really.
I don't know as I don't have the knowledge of spotting edges which don't make sense unless it is faked or shopped in some way.
I will say that they did the same angles over and over in the interview and no variation in height of the camera lens. I seem to remember: One of Oprah (face/body straight head on), one of M (face/body straight head on), one of M&JH (side by side, some head straight on) and one slight distance sweep from the edge of the patio tile from Oprah's left. Like A B A B C B A B C A B....
I don't pay attention to stuff like that normally so for me to notice that it is extremely repetitive in where the camera is then it was really obvious. Which is kind of funny considering most of the green screen stuff seems to be more action packed, movement and multiple angles to draw you into what is happening.
I was trying to pay attention to what was being said. As a side note, it would have been interesting to hear what her father thought of the technical aspects of how it was shot.
@Ian's Girl
@Hikari, this feels like a subtle slam to me.... going on and on about how beautiful the gardens are, how special it is to the Queen, how peaceful and serene.... making it sound like one would be a fool to leave it!
Agree that it's odd about E and J living there when we thought they'd left after a month, but maybe those reports were false, and also maybe another point about how perfectly safe it is for a famous princess and her newborn? :o)
@jessica
You raise really good points here. This is going to be a multi-part answer. (I know--shocker!)
The Frogmore Spring photo op, released right after Megxit anniversary is on purpose! Out with the old, in with the new! It’s important to reframe that space.
I read that Meghan and Harry made a total of 1 whole rental payment to the Crown Estate for Frogmore, meaning they ended up being Evicted around October. Incidentally, this is when the news blast came of Eugenie moving in, and then out. It was perhaps Palace PR avoiding the articles that would come out of Harry’s eviction thus making the Queen look bad and giving Meghan ammo (they didn’t help us in our time of neeeeeed see!). The Queen probably covers the rent for Eugenie, or Eugenie uses it as a holiday home, etc There might not even be a nursery in the home, which the Palace would not want leaked.
So, I actually think the palace was more worried about the perception of HandM and Frogmore than Meghan. She’s not mentioned it again, anyway. I think the Eugenie smokescreen was a good move, and Meghan lied and said Eugenie was renting it from her. Makes it one less family issue from multiple perspectives.
I think as we move forward from the Sussex Saga, we are going to have to accept a few frustrating realities: 1. Harry and Meghan will retain their HRH Duke and Duchess of Sussex titles. 2. They will continually exploit (or at least try) their 'Royal' brand in various guises. While they have hewed to the exact letter of HM's stipulation that they were NOT to use their HRHs or the word 'Royal' in connection with their pimping themselves out merchandising deals, as we see, they daily, hourly violate the spirit of the dictum anyway. They are definitely cashing in on Harry's Royal status. It's literally all they have to offer. Meg is allergic to honest work of any kind and has no talent in her chosen industry. She's alienated everyone who's ever worked with her or tried to help her, but being so disagreeable and litigious is a sure-fire strategy to ensure that she never will have to 'work' in any way which you or I understand it. She just gloms onto wealthy men and hires professional media people who, like the princess in Rumplestilskin, toil away to weave glowing testimonials about Meg's (nonexistent) work ethic, talent and compassion out of nothing . . or worse than nothing--a manure avalanche of deception. 3. The Palace will never release any substantive statement about what exactly happened with Frogmore Cottage and Archie. The latter is actually easier to keep under wraps--this child, whether he actually lives with the Sussexes or is a complete figment, portrayed by hired babies and digital tricks . . is all the way in America, so the fact that he's not seen or talked about in England is completely understandable.
I'd be a worthwhile journey for any of our British based Nutties who are close enough to hop a train to Windsor just as soon as that's allowed and check out the current status. A glimpse of Eugenie & Jack playing with August in the garden would be gold. Or any evidence at all that the place is actually lived in. We need some eyes-on-the-ground verification, because I don't think we will ever get satisfaction from the UK press and certainly not from the US press who doesn't even know where Windsor is in relation to London.
It would please me to know that FC was being used as the bucolic family home which we have been told it was intended to be, and presuming that it's finished and E. actually wants to live in it, why shouldn't she? Granny and Grandpa York are a couple of miles away and if it's been renovated at great taxpayer expense, it needs to be lived in and used. E. is the obvious choice to have it--IF that's what she actually wants, along with the Queen and everyone's happy with this arrangement, vs. this just being a bald-faced PR lie for optics. If E. does not care to be associated with the Sussexes in this way and is not in fact anywhere near FroggyCott nor wants to be, she's being exploited to cover for the family's ineptitude in managing Grip and Drip. E. seems like a sensible person and I find it hard to believe that after all that's happened, she would still be friendly with Meg and Harry, despite her former closeness to her cousin. She's a new mum now, no longer a party princess, and these burblings tying her to the Sussexes make her appear at worst deceitful, colluding with Meg and Harry to broker a 'secret' rental agreement that 'blindsided' the Queen . . or at best, just rather flaky and insecure: abandoning her clandestinely obtained rental property after a month due to 'ghosts', I read one place . . or appearing to suck up in 'friendship' to the grandstanding Narc who disrupted her wedding with self-centered drama.
Friends like this Eugenie does not need.
What an EXCELLENT idea! I, too, would watch him doing a point-by-point critique of their technique. I wonder why that hasn't been done (or perhaps his health is just too poor at this point).
Harry will have to catch up. Can you imagine 25 years from now if William ages naturally and Harry ages Meghan's way? That is if the Sussexes stay together that long. I still think Harry could end up alone in a cabin in an obscure corner of the Balmoral estate, like an eccentric old uncle. King George VII can have food hampers delivered to him occasionally.
I just have an uneasy feeling that it is NOT finished. We know the planning permissions have been filed, so the intentions were there. But more than two years on, there's not a shred of hard proof I have ever seen that any of that work was ever completed, much less started. H & M were too volatile and rolled around like tumbleweeds from hotel to hotel to Windsor Castle to Ibiza to one celebrity crashpad after another. Maybe the announcement that FC *would* be their home was an attempt to settle them down, but that backfired. H & M abandoned their Royal duties before their nest could be finished. With all that money unaccounted for for the 'decorating' and no occupants, I suppose that any reno may have been indefinitely halted as throwing more good money after bad. Even supposing that H & M had been grateful angels who were thrilled to move into the the Cottage and be excellent at their duties--the time window given for these renovations has always seemed unrealistic. It was announced in December/January that the Queen was giving the couple the Cottage for their home. The only pictures ever accompanying these stories were the shots of the ratty looking back garden with its tired facade and the shot of the two chimneys of the house as seen across the field from the public towpath. If FC has ever been freshened up on the exterior, where's the proof? And we were meant to believe that after 3-4 months of work or less, the place was ready for expectant Meghan to come and nest there for all of April? This conversion was absolutely massive. New roof, new walls, complete rewiring, new floors throughout; new staircases . . ? It *might* have been possible, just, to achieve all of this if a team of 20-30 guys worked 'round the clock for 6 days a week--not forgetting that the bulk of the reno period was during the winter and over the Christmas/New Year's holidays. Such a flurry of activity for 12 or 16 weeks straight would've, one supposes, been impossible to hide from local residents.
If anyone on the ground there in the UK has got actual intel about the Cottage being finished and/or habited, please let us know!
.
HM does not seem inclined to take those away. Harry has zero other draw as a commodity, so perhaps the Queen has resigned herself to the tawdry merching of Harry's 'royal' connection. This battle seems like one she is not willing to fight. Allowing the titles to lie would head off at least some potential Sussex drama going forward. Let the Shameful Shams think they have 'won' on this point and let them pimp themselves out to as many failing companies as they want . . or get fired, as 'The Duke and Duchess of Sussex'. 'Sussex' is irrevocably tainted and nobody else will want it ever again. Let it join the ranks of 'Windsor' for infamy. That is essentially what Harry is now--his generation's Uncle David--a self-exiled former Royal sell-out, pimping out his family history for cash and celebrity.
Let it be put to Harry that since he refuses absolutely to either live in the U.K. or pay toward the upkeep of an official U.K. residence as formally agreed upon, that he MUST be removed as Counsellor of State. He does not meet the conditions. The official places in the succession for Himself and his phantom children will probably remain, on paper, but if it is announced publicly that Harry is stepping down as a Counsellor of State, everyone will know what that means. If Harry ever returns to Blighty, it will be as a tourist, not as a member of the Royal family. The Queen will not domicile him; he can book a hotel and pay for it himself like a normal plebe. He will never be called upon for family business. He is a Prince on paper only. In this way, HM has not 'taken away' anything, officially. But the outcome is the same: Harry has effectively banished himself and may be allowed back for funerals, but he no longer has any official role.
Wallis stuck with Edward in exile; they may have been miserable, but they were miserable, together. Meg has no such fortitude or sense of obligation. So when she dumps Harry, what will happen to him? This is a rhetorical question; I don't actually care any more what happens to Harry. I really do think the both of them are effectively severed for good, no way back . . everything left 'on paper' for the looks, but in practice, Harry is dead to the BRF. I wonder if that's actually sunk in on his end, since he's been so busy celebrating his freedom from such a toxic institution. He may still believe that *they* want him back, which is why he's enjoying giving Granny the metaphorical finger.
The wake-up call may brutal. Unsurvivable, even. Oh, well
Lady C on Meghan/Zara home births & iron control; surrogacy/kids' custody; protect Prince Philip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2ooluukOMI
Sometimes I wonder whether they're going to merchandise their morning routine. "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex both use Happy Breath Mouthwash before they start their busy, event-filled day because one's breath can never be too fresh when meeting with the Hired Help!" (Shot of Meghan throwing plates at maids cowering behind furniture. One maid says to another maid hiding behind the sofa "She's ever so much easier to work with now that she doesn't have morning breath!")
Hahahhaha loved it, nice and light way start my daily headache with the Suck-exes.
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@Greyhoundmom12
I remember shortly after H&M interview, there was a promo for the next garden pair where the lady remarked how real it looked despite it all being a green screen. It also implied that the garden talk H&M had was just an inaugural one for a series of such.
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Nothing Meghan says publicly is without price or agenda. To me, everything said in the Oprah interview was either revenge/ clap back for petty to serious slights as perceived by the couple or warning shots. Or they were retrospective false or altered explanations for unfavourable incidences in the past - all of which were never their fault. That is the legend to the map.
Harry proves royalty is sometimes not in the blood, and alongside Meghan, is also five clicks above trailer trash, House of Windsor version.
If I could get into a time machine, and choose one era and one place . . the early/mid 1960s in London would probably be my pick. Once Vietnam got seriously underway and the Beatles lost their clean-cut look and started hanging with the Mahareshi and doing hashish and looking like bums, the shine was off the '60s. I might very much enjoy a world were it's always 1964.
I debuted in 1965, so I missed it all. But the cherry blossoms still bloom in Windsor as they did then. Nature at least, is timeless (until we destroy it with global warming.)
In regards to HM and Charles 'mixing bubbles' against regulation . . I think that can safely be relaxed for them since they are both fully vaccinated. Also, they were outside, albeit closer than the two metres. It could be argued that they are frontliners doing essential work, as the two most senior members of their industry and the essential work was cheering the nation, and the world, with their visible presence and vitality, celebrating spring and the renewal of semi-normal life after the Covid year and equally tumultuous Year of Megxit.
I have to say, though, how much I hate that brown coat on Charles. Yuck. He has worn it before, at Sandringham for Christmas, and I didn't care for it then, either, but the color and the heaviness of it is jarring against the colorful new foliage in the background. HM looks a lot more casual than her son, so maybe Chas should have matched her tone with a blue windbreaker. That's a quibble, and I didn't like to mention such a petty thing, but that coat needs to go. I'm sure it's the very best gentleman's overcoat that money can buy and probably bespoke, but it's horrible.
Apart from that, yes they will just fade away. Both Sussexes have coasted along, ludicrously, as "a young couple" for whom allowances must be made, adjustment time be given and attention be paid as the ones with credibility for younger generations. When that is gone there's nothing left for them to sell. The Canbridge children will obliterate them in terms of press interest as they grow older.
It IS awful to think of these people as commodities but that's what the BRF relies on to keep going. When you get down to it. All thanks to Prince Albert (principally) and Queen Victoria who marketed their family so cleverly.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9355339/Chip-Gaines-tells-Oprah-Winfrey-lost-fame.html
I haven't begun my Easter cakes yet, the kitchen and dining room are a disaster, and it is the Fault of the Royal Family and all y'all (grin). After all, it couldn't possibly be MY FAULT for reading online in my kitchen instead of doing chores in our new woke culture. Perhaps Oprah will invite me to an interview so that I can share my sorrow with the world about how the Royal Family MESSED UP MY KITCHEN and how it was NOT ME and NOT MY FAULT and I AM NOT TO BLAME FOR THIS! I was so upset by their racism against Poor Dear Meghan (tm) that I was quite unable to function. It may even mean that I make cakes with (gasp!) cake mixes and put Kool Whip on top instead of heavy cream whipped with some confectioner's sugar. (That whirring sound you may hear is all of my female ancestors rotating around in their graves. They're probably searching for a wooden spoon* to whack me on the head with when I cross over to The Other Side or maybe even before.)
That blame game may work in the media fairy tale world powered by unicorn farts some people live in. In my world, yeah, my fault, gotta jump on it and get 'er done.
/If Prince Charles would separate and transplant some of the hydrangeas in the front flower bed and put in some colorful annuals, all would be forgiven. Some advice on making living willow structures would be appreciated, too.
Happy Easter!
*Must remember to request that I be buried with a hefty wooden spoon to whack the living with.
How she desperately miscalculated the entire situation.
“(WHAT? I have to feed them THREE TIMES a day?) Haha, just kidding, it is more like they require feeding 8 times a day. “
Hahahahahaha! Why don’t children EVER stop eating?! Your comment is too funny.
I am not quite sure whether you are saying or not that you were in London in 1965. Even so, I agree with you that London would be better had it always remained 1964 - or at least never got past 1966. What you are really saying if I may be so bold is that you wish London was Swinging London again; with dolly-birds on the King's Row and cool dudes hanging out in the boutiques of Carnaby Street (rather than as it is now, just a tourist trap) - a world inhabited by Austin Powers and Sgt Pepper. That is the world which begins in Billy Liar when in the final shot Julie Christie (up north) swings down the road leaving for London, where Rita Tushingham and Lynn Redgrave (also from up north) have a Smashing Time and which ends with Vanessa Redgrave and David Hemmings not quite getting it on in Blow Up. Although I was a little too young then to benefit from the full experience the sense of excitement and change was (as can be heard in the popular music as performed by the off-shore pirate radio stations - and what could be more enjoyable than a disc by Dusty who only wants to be with you or Cliff who is doing it on the beach) very much in the air and I was as much as everyone else at the time conscious of it but by 1968 the atmosphere had and in my personal experience soured - revolution is so dull.
There was of course as there always is a darker side: there were still many bomb-sites as well as unoccupied houses which for an adolescent were always fun to explore (health and safety had yet to be invented), many people were abjectly poor and with a large proportion of males leaving school at fifteen going into physically demanding blue-collar work; even so it was as they say, West Ham (my local team) wot won the World Cup (in 1966) though I always insist that had Ramsey played the unfortunate Greaves (also a local lad though then playing for Spurs) it would have been over in ninety minutes. I am not sure I would relish however your wish for colder weather. It is April 2nd and frankly it is a bit parky out there today and the forecast is not predicting any imminent improvement. Would I were in D.C. to see the cherry blossom around the Jefferson Memorial - or has Jefferson been cancelled.
I was born near London in 1964 and that seems to be the dividing line - that year - between the old and the new world. I saw a photo of Clementine Churchill walking down a London street that year and she and all the other women wore hats and gloves and were all very correct. My mother remembers wearing white gloves and hats and all the rules you had to follow. Yet a couple of years after that I just about remember short skirts and long hair and me and all my little friends singing Yellow Submarine like the Beatles, only in a conga line. Several families in one big, high house in rural Wales by then and we children all ate together, the mothers taking turns to cook. Like a commune. We did our conga line from the ground to the attic, collecting more children on the way. I especially remember loving singing along to Peter, Paul and Mary and The Seekers. Happy times. Everyone was broke but no one seemed to mind. No pressure to buy the latest thing. We just lived.
@Hikari - I agree with you. I increasingly feel the titles don't matter now as they are comprehensively tainted. They are finished but I agree the Counsellor of State aspect needs to be dealt with. I'm uneasy about leaving the succession as it is as it's not just on paper. After 9/11 and Covid nothing would surprise me by way of tragedies.
If I had my wish, the erstwhile, ersatz Duke and Duchess of Sussex would be stripped of everything and reduced to living in a trailer park in Crenshaw. Mugsy could get a job working nights at the nearest club with a stripper pole . . all that yoga should be put to some use . . and Haz can get a job at a car wash, if he's lucky. He wanted a 'normal, private' life in America, he said. Either that or being a stockboy at Walmart, if that wouldn't tax his capabilities too much.
Someone mentioned earlier on this thread that the BRF is most likely choosing to turn a blind eye to the shameless merching of the Royal connections even though it is explicitly against orders because it was unrealistic to think that Harry could ever be self-supporting any other way. So the choice before the Queen is: Let the bonehead pimp himself out as the Duke of Sussex for these corporate mascot sinecures OR have to financially support them to the manner in which Meghan has become accustomed forever. TQ must know how fed up the British public is and continues to be about supporting these two leeches and the lack of transparency over all those funds and the murky security arrangements for them. It's probably been weighed up in deliberations and thought that if the Sussexes could be entirely cut loose from funding if merching the title gave them enough income, in was a worthwhile trade. It's far too late for the Sussexes to embarrass the Crown any more than they have done already, so they might as well keep their pitiful 'brand', such as it is.
Removing H. as Counsellor of State would signal an absolute vote of 'no confidence' to Harry's current and future investors by making it clear that he is no longer considered an official royal for purposes of representing the Queen at so much as a dog show. His patronages are gone. His residence at Windsor has apparently been allocated to another family member who actually lives in England. All of his military associations have been removed. Regardless of what he has done, he's still Charles's son, so I think actually removing him from the succession would be very, very difficult. Not just because of sentimental reasons. He is the son of the future King, and of royal blood, even though he doesn't deserve it. If his cousins Peter and Zara remain in the succession, though they are technically commoners as the children of a non-titled father, and never having been working members of the Firm who had to earn their own income, it'd be tough to strip Harry of his birthright on account of making a bad marriage and skiving off to America. Many of the lesser Royals including the Phillipses and the Tindalls, have resided in other countries for periods of time. Isn't there a Royal cousin way down in the line who lives full-time in Florida after marrying an American husband?
I think it is HM's preferred MO to let everything lie in theory, while in practice, she is moving forward with her remaining forces as if the Sussex blip never occurred. With Covid lockdowns, she probably has not had to utilize anyone other than Charles and William. The current Counsellors are Charles, William, Harry and Andrew. (PP is the 5th, but only the 'honorary' as the monarch's spouse.) As we see, Andrew has not had *his* titles or place in the succession/on the Council officially removed, so it appears that HM feels a similar 'don't poke a sleeping beehive with a stick' approach is desirable with the renegades in California. Unlike the Sussexes, Andrew has laid very low since his disgrace and is not calling attention to himself. This is probably how things are going to lie, during the remaining lifetime of the Queen. If Charles, as monarch, gets his younger brother removed from the succession and the Council, he'd better do the same for his worthless kid. Things being what they are, the York girls are the only 'young' royals left. The Wessex children will have their turn eventually but they are both still in secondary school.
Best case scenario: Both Harry and Andrew step down and Bea and Eugenie are inducted into the Council of State as working Royals. Charles is 73; Camilla is 75; Anne is 70. The Wessexes, both 56 this year, are the only royals except William and Catherine who aren't senior citizens. It is entirely plausible to assume that Charles will be 80 years old or more when he finally becomes King. He's going to need his York nieces whether he wants them or not. Harry and Andrew are absolutely useless to the Crown, whether they stay 'in' on paper officially or not.
It's really too bad that Charles and Diana only had two children and one of them was such a complete failure as a human being, not just as a royal. For the purposes of the Royal family, William is an only child. He had, therefore, better stay healthy and fit until George is grown up. I don't even like it when the Cambridge family travels together any more. Even trains are risky.
When Diana and Charles's boys were young, this is definitely not how we thought events would play out, but it's what's happened and the BRF have to play this hand they've been dealt. Irrespective of what Charles does when he's King, for whatever brief time that will be, it's a fair bet that King William V will not tolerate his brother as a deputy, even on paper. Harry might be dead then and it will be a moot issue.
That would certainly send the message that the Harkles will not be invited back as working members and are no longer entitled to FrogCott. THey may retain their titles, but the message would be very clear to the world. All the lame-statements about working with the RF to fix the problems, coming back if they had more "support", "healing" the relationships may be because they realized TQ was about ready to slam the door shut.
The Queen looked so happy in her two outings this week and I could see her being extremely happy and relieved if the Brooksbanks agreed to this change. Even if EUg/Jack said in the past they wanted to work other jobs, when a door opens...
I am not quite sure whether you are saying or not that you were in London in 1965.
For most of 1965, I was in utero, so I was, technically speaking, obliged to accompany my mother wherever she went, and she didn't get to London. The trip would have been wasted on me even if she had, since the view was incredibly limited.
Even so, I agree with you that London would be better had it always remained 1964 - or at least never got past 1966. What you are really saying if I may be so bold is that you wish London was Swinging London again; with dolly-birds on the King's Row and cool dudes hanging out in the boutiques of Carnaby Street (rather than as it is now, just a tourist trap) - a world inhabited by Austin Powers and Sgt Pepper.
I suppose, yes, Swinging London, though dolly-birds on the King's Row wouldn't have tempted me. I'm not a big fan of beehive hairdos and white lipstick and I would never have been able to pull off Twiggy's fashions. I have only been able to visit that era through the relics of its culture--books, films and music. Every era has its good and its bad. In the 1960s, there was Jim Crow, Thalidomide .. Cold War angst. In London you were dealing with postwar austerity and bomb sites still in ruins. On my side of the Pond, we had our high profile political assassinations and every DIY dad was building a bomb shelter in the basement or the back yard. The New York scene of the early '60s, from movies like 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' look fab. But that of course was 'movie reality'. It's dangerous to romanticize the 'good old days' because we can cherry-pick the best of any era while conveniently ignoring how bad those good old days were for some people/groups, depending on one's circumstances.
Pre-Vietnam, pre-9/11, pre-Covid times feel rather halcyon and innocent from the current perspective. I'm sure if I'd lived through it, I would've seen the blemishes. These are just far more cynical times, and more dangerous ones, even if we have cottoned on to the dangers of chain-smoking and chain-drinking, especially while pregnant. But there are certain things I miss and mourn that will never come back. Like LPs, and buying them in a special shop, communing with other vinyl enthusiasts. Quality in craftsmanship, where you could buy clothing and housewares and automobiles that would last for generations and didn't say 'Made in China' on them. When people took pride in dressing up to go out and fly in airplanes. Before the rise of industrial farming and Iran and North Korea having nukes. I miss newspapers that I hold in my hand. I decry what has happened to the publishing industry.
If I had to sum up, I'd say I want to live in the time when John Updike was a young staff writer on the New Yorker. Those times will never come again.
Otherwise the BRF will eventually be unable to fulfil their role as expected. That aspect anyway. The constitutional side already took a knock with the illegal prorogation of Parliament.* I don't think George VI would have been such a pushover for Boris Johnson. I know the Queen has to bow to the advice of the PM but it seemed all too easy to me. What is she there for but to be a safeguard and an subtle restraining influence against unwise or hasty decisions? She's the one with decades of experience.
Sometimes the Queen reminds me of Emily Brontë who for over a century was thought to display financial acumen in the way she handled the modest shares left to the sisters by their aunt. Actually she did nothing with them. Left them where they were. Fortunately the investments held while some rival companies went to the wall. But it was pure luck. She was lucky. People looked at the end result and not what she actually did towards that outcome. I often think the Queen is praised too easily on too little evidence. She probably thinks so herself. Don't get me wrong. I admire her and will be sad when she's gone. But she's on thin ice. They all are. They will have to work increasingly hard to justify their way of life, as more and more ordinary people slide into the ranks of the precariat.
* I'm scared of mentioning this as I don't want a slide back to politics. So please let's tippy-toe away quietly and go back to wondering what's going to be in tomorrow's papers ... :-)
Inside Idris Elba’s friendship with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle – from Prince Charles ‘changing his life’ to DJing at Royal Wedding
https://metro.co.uk/2021/04/01/inside-idris-elbas-friendship-with-prince-harry-and-meghan-markle-14342371/
The 48-year-old has a long-running connection with the Prince of Wales’ charity, The Prince’s Trust, and has credited it with ‘changing his life’.
‘I left school at 16 with dreams of attending the National Youth Music Theatre but was disheartened when I realised how much it would cost,’ he wrote in the Mirror in 2013. ‘It was The Prince’s Trust who made it possible. They gave me a £1,500 grant and set me on the path that would eventually change my life.'
Seems a shabby way to repay Prince Charles then, defending the utterly treacherous Sussexes by spouting nonsense about their right to a voice. They had a voice and far greater opportunities to do good than they have now or will ever have again. It's just that they didn't get to charge for their services, pocket millions or sue people who justifiably called them out for being selfish, greedy, hypocritical idiots.
I'm sure I should be feeling more generous and compassionate to all, since it's Easter, but there is a limit.
The Queen has prorogued parliament on other occasions which were equally scandalous because of the reasons for them Eg John Major in 1997 proroguing parliament to delay a report into his party's MPs taking bribes.
From The Queen's POV, proroguing parliament is something she rubber stamps without much pushback as do her Governor Generals in the realms because it has never been challenged until 2019.
The difference this time is that we have a supreme court now - a body created by Tony Blair which was able to challenge the decision.
In the past, the abscence of the SC meant that there was nowhere to protest proroguing or indeed any PM's decisions.
Since it's creation, it's increasingly being used to challenge any govt's decisions to the detriment of the govt. Given how weak the opposition has been over the past 25yrs, one could argue that the SC has become the only effective opposition to the govt of the day because opposing parties tend to be damp squibs.
In general she's been a very passive monarch possibly due to the fright of her grandfather and father who she follows and emulates.
However, her grandfather had to deal with disappearing monarchies around the world and how to insulate the BRF against it's own abolition and her father had the abdication crisis.
These required nimble work to steady the ship, but perhaps bad advice in it's maintenance going forward whereby they advocated not rocking the boat.
The Queen follows that maintenance advice to the letter which leads to mistakes like proroguing without asking more questions.
I know that she was educated by Eton tutors who taught her constitution and history, but i fear they skipped John Pym as everyone tends to do. Clearly she didn't recognise the John Pym strategem played out by the parliamenterians in 2019. The only outcome for such a strategem is the result we got. Thank goodness we were in 2019 because in 1642-1646 it led directly to civil war.
My only surprise today is that a historian like Boris didn't recognise it and allowed himself to be cast as Charles 1.
I think this is Oprah's new schtick.
In November 2020, she interviewed Obama in the same way. He was in Washington DC and she was in Santa Barbara.
Several articles about the green screen and CGI that made it possible were released at the time.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/obama-oprah-green-screen-b1741841.html
Here is a video of the process, released by Oprah herself.
https://www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/a34692636/oprah-barack-obama-interview-technology/
A couple of months ago there was a post on Skippy I think, from someone who said Omid had accidently revealed that the HaMs carried on keeping a property in the Cotswolds when everyone was under the impression they had moved into Frog Cott . . .
This would totally not surprise me at all. That Cotswolds house they sued the papps over was obtained through Soho House contacts, as you mentioned, and also practically next door to Soho Farmhouse. Like, a quarter mile away. Easy walk back and forth for the intoxicated and for those impromptu parties. All roads lead to Soho House, it appears. It's how Meg snared Harry and there's definitely shady, depraved activities, sexual, financial, drug related, swirling whenever that set is mentioned. Which is why it distresses me that Eugenie was in that crowd. It's no doubt how she met her Jack, too.
I can understand the appeal of the trendy bar and club scene for a 20-something, but not continuing on to the 40s. E. and J. seem to be more wholesomely settled and occupied now. E. has been actively involved with several charities for many years, on her own initiative, and not getting paid or recognized publicly for it, just appreciated by the organizations she supports. *That* is true philanthropy, giving of one's time and talents . . and family connection if it helps the organization--not attempting to leverage 'charity visits' into press and profit to benefit the patron. Eugenie would totally hit the ground running as a working royal; she's been doing it all along. Her sister, too, has had pet projects over the years--she trained for the London Marathon for a charity cause & gave an interview via Zoom about something that escapes me now, but that was really the first time I had ever heard Bea's voice or seen her in any venue besides photographs of her often eccentric dressing style. Of the two York girls, she seems like the more reticent/shy personality, though she has causes she cares about, too. We really haven't heard anything from Bea since her wedding, other than that she was in lockdown with Edo's mother at her house. If she doesn't want to be pushed into the spotlight as a working royal, that is totally fine, but if that's the case, provision should be made for Euge to fill her spot on the Council since Bea is next in line. Eugenie & Jack would be great assets to the Firm.
So maybe you also need to ask if any local sleuths in the Cotswold area heard about the HaMs maintaining a property there and this is where H stays on his secret trips to the UK.
OK, local sleuths in the Cotswolds area . . .consider yourselves deputized!
I've also heard a number of rumors that Meg was installed in a flat in Kensington (off KP grounds) & was seen in the area, while Haz carried on living at NottCott and was seen coming and going from there. I've been convinced for some time, since the 'separate rooms/massive rows' in Australia that the two basically lived separate lives in different establishments & only came together for their stage-managed Royal appearances and papp strolls. They have never exuded the comfortable body language of an established cohabitating couple to me but have always seemed like two actors who dislike each other being forced together to improvise scripted scenes that have been rehearsed, badly. The engagement interview was the first of these. If William refused to have her continuing on the grounds of KP, they had to stick her somewhere, though Kensington is very high-profile. The rural Cotswolds would be easier to keep under the radar from sniffing press. Perhaps this is why Meg felt so isolated during her time in the BRF--she was, both emotionally and logistically, being in a completely different county. Lord knows what (or whom) she might have done while away from official duties in London.
Re the video mentioned by Greyhoundmom12, I posted this video at 5.10 PM. It is with Chip and Joanna Gaines.
https://youtu.be/Y8n6DkoT5YI
https://youtu.be/Y8n6DkoT5YI
What a busy time for you! It looks like you're just surviving and not thriving! I hope you enjoy your weekend.
Your post reminded me of when Meghan came to an event with mud splashes (?) or mud stuck to her heels giving rise to the doubts about where she stayed. I think this was because nowhere where Harry was staying would she have had to step into wet mud. Those are the only details I remember.
https://pressgazette.co.uk/mail-publisher-attacks-oprah-over-faked-meghan-markle-headlines/
So, no professional standards or integrity then.
The way things are going, drip, drip, drip, they'll have to use a microscope to find any literal or substantial truth remaining in that travesty of an interview.
Re. the midnight dash to the Portland that nobody saw . . .it was also making the rounds of the blogosphere that in the weeks prior to the birth of 'Archie', the couple stayed in a couple of London-area hotels that were favorites of theirs, close to the Portland. Whether it was always known that the surrogate mother would deliver at the Portland, or the Shams just wanted to f*ck with the press camped out in Windsor . . they weren't seen going to the hospital because they were already in London. They couldn't return to FroggyCott for the same reason--the press would be trying to get pictures of a newborn in the car with them. Umm, tricky, if they didn't actually have a newborn. They needed those couple of days to get their hands on a Reborn, possibly. Amazon does offer two-day express shipping and all.
Harry's utterly bizarre baby announcement to the world from the Queen's stables, in front of Royal steeds Sir John and George makes a raftload more sense if the Shams were actually staying at Windsor Castle when he made it. FC is not far; but if Meg was there nursing Arch after the world's fastest labor, delivery and hospital discharge of a geriatric first time mum who was two weeks overdue in the history of the Portland Hospital . . why would Harry announce it from the stables at Windsor? Nonsensical. Maybe at this stage, the Queen had offered them sanctuary behind palace walls owing to the . . .irregularities . . of Archie's birth and Frogmore being not sufficiently secure. Or potentially . .furnished.
We must conclude, therefore, that at the time Archie's birth was announced to the world the Royal Family was complicit in trying to manage the gigantic and grave PR mess/constitutional crisis which Meg had created. I don't believe Meg gave birth at all, but even assuming for the sake of argument that she did, something occurred which necessitated that the Palace step in to manage. The Palace knows to what extent it has covered Meg's deceptions of grave national import and since their position is very precarious, they will never shine a light on their role in these dramas. The official stories is all we are going to get from BP.
There are others, though . . investigative journalists like Tom Bower, or even William, after a decent interval has passed, who may let certain truths slip. William may decide someday, when the power is his, that he's tired of staying silent about his brother's most egregious mistakes. William is well-liked in a way his father isn't, so he may even get away with it, too.
S
Re sixties London, don't forget The Avengers which, for me, epitomise the era.
We now know for a fact what chaos there was behind the scenes, dealing with the press about Archie's arrival, and how the Sussexes broke every rule in the book. But we all really knew that when we saw Harry at the stables. What a carry on. Meghan and her machinations are truly exhausting. One day we will all look back and find it hard to believe it ever happened.
Which is why it distresses me that Eugenie was in that crowd. It's no doubt how she met her Jack, too. [e.g. through SoHo House]
------
Eugenie and Jack met through mutual friends in Verbier, a Swiss ski resort, in 2010. They mentioned it in their engagement interview.
I remember Jack's remark that he found Eugenie 'uncomplicated' when he met her and obviously this was something he liked. God knows what he must have made of Megsy, high maintenance that she is.
"Oprah Winfrey’s production company has defended the controversial montage of headlines used in ‘Oprah with Meghan and Harry’, claiming the programme’s depiction of the Daily Mail is “either literally true… or substantially true”."
What i would give for a lawsuit. Oprah and CBS vs ANL. The interview was clearly libel, and these two organisations are not protected by section 230.
It's interesting that in their refusal to take down the false claims, they cite the one article that was written in 2016.
And don't address the other 29 articles that were falsely presented or non UK media.
I would also be interested in knowing the demographics of the surveyed journalists because that would reveal a better understanding of the results.
"@Hikari
Which is why it distresses me that Eugenie was in that crowd. It's no doubt how she met her Jack, too. [e.g. through SoHo House]
------
Eugenie and Jack met through mutual friends in Verbier, a Swiss ski resort, in 2010. They mentioned it in their engagement interview.
I remember Jack's remark that he found Eugenie 'uncomplicated' when he met her and obviously this was something he liked..."
To add to your comment, they met when they were both fairly young. Eugenie was in first year at university and he was in his first or second adult job placement.
The soho house connection started several years after Eugenie had graduated.
No worries! I do that too!
I think the YouTube video is easier to watch rather than have to go to the DM.
Sometimes the Queen reminds me of Emily Brontë who for over a century was thought to display financial acumen in the way she handled the modest shares left to the sisters by their aunt. Actually she did nothing with them. Left them where they were. Fortunately the investments held while some rival companies went to the wall. But it was pure luck. She was lucky. People looked at the end result and not what she actually did towards that outcome. I often think the Queen is praised too easily on too little evidence. She probably thinks so herself. Don't get me wrong. I admire her and will be sad when she's gone. But she's on thin ice. They all are. They will have to work increasingly hard to justify their way of life, as more and more ordinary people slide into the ranks of the precariat.
'the ranks of the precariat' . . thanks for providing me with a new phrase and such an apt one. It's a rank I belong to!
My mother was born two months after the Abdication and just turned 84 in February. So for her and certainly for me, Elizabeth has been a fixture of our universe as fixed and constant as the compass points. My mother was in high school during the Coronation, though I don't think her family had a TV set at the time. It was still pretty new-fangled and expensive for a working class family. But there were newsreels and gobs of magazines of the event. A generation later, I at the same age (15 going on 16) watched with my mom as Charles and Diana got married on global television. Diana was just four years older than myself so I thought of her as kind of a glamorous older sister living out an incredible Cinderella story (if the daughter of an Earl could be considered a Cinderella. I didn't know what Diana's palatial ancestral home looked like then; only that she shared an apartment with three other girls, drove a tiny car and worked in a nursery school. I knew she'd grown up wealthy but her daily life seemed indistinguishable from any college aged girl of my own class.) We even had some very similar clothes, though Diana's came from top Sloaney places, not JCPenney's in a suburban mall.
I avidly followed Diana's life and that of her boys until that terrible day in Paris. Having literally watched William and Harry grow up from babies makes it all the worse to see Harry's current state. I used to be able to find compassionate excuses for his behavior but I am no longer able to. He is dead to me. Whatever his ending, with Meg or without, it's not going to be a happy one, but to this I am resigned. I just wonder to what degree his traitorous disloyalty will negatively affect the reigns of his father and brother.
It wasn't Harry's romance with an obscure cable actress I'd never heard of that re-ignited my interest in the Royal family which had gone a bit dormant--rekindled briefly during the wedding of William and Catherine--but rather the Netflix series The Crown. I know it's fictionized/dramatized to a large degree, but it does hang on a framework of historical facts about Elizabeth's life and times, and most of this was all new to me. I knew about the Abdication, of course, and the speech she made in South Africa on her 21st birthday, and some of the peccadilloes of Princess Margaret . .but most of that colorful family history and the challenges faced by the young Queen were all new discoveries. As loosely tied to the truth as some of it may be, I finally have more of a handle on the Suez crisis and the Thatcher years, and what the Falklands War was all about. But the people surrounding the Queen and TQ herself have become human figures in a way they weren't before to me. The Queen wouldn't thank Peter Morgan for this, but it needed to be done, I think, now more than ever.
Elizabeth has internalized the lessons from her grandmother Queen Mary that it is her job as sovereign to never allow Elizabeth the human woman to intrude upon the mystery that is Elizabeth Regina, and that air of mystery and impartiality is best maintained by keeping herself inscrutable and being seen to 'do' little to exert her will upon events. I think this advice has been easier to take to heart for a personality who came out of the womb being cautious and dutiful and traditional. Not one to rock the boat; eager to be viewed as not shirking her duty or being in any way 'improper'--trained to lean upon others for advice, and happiest with horses and dogs rather than affairs of state. More serene than dynamic--at least, this image she has consistently cultivated. At a remove from ordinary people. This is how she was taught to be a Queen, and Elizabeth was the most diligent student of what was expected of her. She is also the product of the 20th century but a system that conducted itself for most of her girlhood as though it were still in the 19th. Her mother was Empress of India. So the Queen herself is a throwback to an earlier age. My favorite images of Elizabeth are during her wartime years. Images of the future Queen of the United Kingdom doing grease monkey work under a chassis are heartwarming, and also a little sad. The young Princess is so happy to be, for the first and last time in her life, apart from a few brief years in Malta, just like her peers. Never an 'ordinary' girl, but for once being allowed a brief window of experience of doing the things ordinary girls her age did and took for granted.
Then her father died young and everything had to change.
It has been said that no one truly becomes an adult until one loses both parents. That happens sooner for some than others. By that standard, ER did not become fully mature and self-actualized until the age of 76 when her much more forceful mother passed. Perhaps ER might have become a more dynamic and forceful Queen if she hadn't had Mummy to rely on for most of her reign. Even so, I just don't think those qualities are in her personality. Which is not to say she's easily led once having made her mind up--she just chooses not to have a firm opinion, or exercise one, about subjects which many people think she ought to. But she is the Queen, so things get done her way. Or not done, as the case may be. On the whole, her way works--except when other people fail to live up to her own high standards in their behavior.
Harry is the living embodiment of the failures of the privileged system into which he was born. Without a firm hand applied to the development of character in tandem with the privileges, we get a Harry, or a Margaret or a David. I think William understands that it is imperative that his younger children be educated and given the tools to succeed in a civilian career. Not just for 'show', with exceptions made for them because they are Royal; they should be held to the same standards of achievement that would be expected of middle class children who are going to have to make their own way. Because they may have to. Luxury and privilege erode character if there aren't any consequences for not trying one's best to become a good and useful person. Elizabeth is remarkably unspoiled and frugal, considering who she is and how she has lived all her life . . her cast-iron dedication to her duty and her strong faith in God has kept her on course. But Margaret and the second generation hasn't fared as well. Too much privilege, not enough purpose and necessity to work hard to realize that purpose. Character is not grown in a vacuum; it is cultivated by example and a certain amount of deprivation and obstacles. That's the problem with being rich and pampered and deferred to just for existing--all the obstacles and deprivation which nurture character are automatically removed from one's path.
I agree with whoever said that there may not be any big bombs dropped this Sunday due to the Easter holiday.
The Times does not have anything new other than a positive Kate article which I will post in a bit. The Telegraph dropped their Camilla Kraken early.
I will look to see if there are any good reports on Piers.
Eugenie and Jack met through mutual friends in Verbier, a Swiss ski resort, in 2010. They mentioned it in their engagement interview.
I didn't see that interview; I should look it up. I had heard that Jack was actually bar staff at a restaurant Eugenie frequented, but both things may have been true--they met at a ski resort while both were on vacation and she frequented his restaurant in London, where they became closer.
I remember Jack's remark that he found Eugenie 'uncomplicated' when he met her and obviously this was something he liked..."
Jack seems like a really good bloke. It's unsurprising that he would prefer an uncomplicated girl. His own grandmother was on the record as being quite shocked that her intellectually uncomplicated grandson had been able to impress a Royal princess that much. His grandma seems rather unkind to have mentioned that, but I assumed that he wasn't cut out for academia since he was doing bar work. Being a brand ambassador for Clooney and Rande Gerber certainly vaulted him into the jet set, along with his romance with E. But he seems genuine and he's very nice looking too. I think this couple is solid and I don't question the groom's commitment in a way I might do with her sister's husband.
You can tell by the way they look at one another and have a laugh that they have the real thing; not manufactured for cameras.
Just another reason for Meg to be jealous of Eugenie.
As another pic of Haz's foot. Maybe he stepped on Jellyfish and was asking guy to pee on it? Not that's a good idea.
I posted a few blogs back that Trump liked & owed the QM. A few days after I found where Trump said if Meg ran for president it would make him run again. This blog makes a difference for so many people through difference opinions, link's, and with well thought out common sense. Not to mention many laugh's sorely needed.
@swamp can you please send bull shark with the croc's?
The media chose to mock them rather than highlight any work in this area such that it isn't common knowledge that they have been doing charity work since their teens. Consistently.
Or that they have patronages and personal charities that are doing great work.
When their charity efforts receive positive media coverage, it surprises the public who have been primed to see them in a negative light since their teens.
Eg the marathon that Beatrice ran as per your comment. A wonderful achievement for sure. And forgotten is the fact that it was her response to being fat-shamed by the DM which printed bikini pictures of her with an accompanying article pointing out that she was a fat teen. Echoes of the Duchess of Pork.
Imagine the storm Meghan would have raised if that were her?
I don't think it's right for anyone to be fat-shamed, but Beatrice at 18yrs old handled that episode with so much grace and humour. A lesson for us all.
Just as she did her much mocked wedding hat which she auctioned off and raised £81,000 to charity.
I am surprised you bemoan the lack of records shops and the demise of Vinyl because although things are not as once they were, presently, sales of new Vinyl are more profitable to the music industry than new CDs. In England HMV (there is an HMV yards from where I live) where the whole of their top floor is taken up with new 180 gram Vinyl.
I think Philip Larkin put it best, as follows:
Sex began in 1963
Between Lady Chatterly
and the Beatles first LP
he added
alas that was too late for me.
It might be said that the long fifties ended in 1963 indeed if one was born after 1964 one is not a boomer.
I have no idea what this Vietnam you mention might be (surely a French colony and so no concern of ours hence my ignorance) or who Jim Crow is but in England where no prime minister has been assassinated since 1812, the end of the Tory government of The sixth Earl of Home, preceeded by the Orpington bi-election, the Profumo affair, the Beeching report and the cancellation of the TSR2 are on one side of the divide and on the other the white hot heat of technology, James Bond, Dr Who, The Beatles and The Avengers (which of course I have not forgotten - my first girlfriend thought she was Emma Peel - so you can tell exactly and in what way she was attractive) and winning the world cup. I also think you are out by a year or two on Beehives - they had surely gone by 1964 - at least I thought so (though maybe not for Dusty) and the craze for The Twist which had lasted a few years was also gone by 1964 which was the year of the best of the Carry on's - Cleo, and the beginning of the Mods with their parkas and scooters. I have never forgotten whilst walking back up to school through the town one Saturday afternoon passing the music shop in the front window of which was a poster displaying what we now recognise as the cover of With the Beatles the fab four's faces half in shadow. So different.
Part 1
Is Kate Middleton the real royal revolutionary?
Forget Harry and Meghan. The Duchess of Cambridge is quietly becoming the Firm’s most effective activist
Tony Allen-Mills
Saturday April 03 2021, 6.00pm BST, The Sunday Times
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/is-kate-middleton-the-real-royal-revolutionary-xwq0fx92f
For a moment it seemed as though the Duchess of Cambridge might become embroiled in yet another messy, polarising ruckus about pampered royals suiting themselves at the expense of the rest of us. She turned up at an unlawful gathering at Clapham Common in the middle of lockdown! She wasn’t wearing a mask!
Her protection team seemed strangely unaware that earlier that Saturday morning last month, a senior police officer had warned that the vigil in south London for Sarah Everard, 33, who was abducted and murdered as she walked home at night, might be “attractive for terrorists”.
Yet somehow, the duchess still showed up, casually dressed with minimal security, with a bouquet of flowers she had picked from her palace garden. Later it was reported that she had sent a private letter of condolence to the family of the murdered woman.
Hang on a minute, are we talking about the right duchess? A feminist campaigner, showing solidarity with vulnerable women, with seeming disregard for police advice and lockdown regulations? Can we really be talking about Kate?
There was an embarrassing muddle at Scotland Yard last week as senior commanders offered conflicting accounts of whether Britain’s future queen had attended the vigil legally, and whether the police had known of her attendance in advance.
It emerged from an independent report into policing of the event that the senior officer in charge of the operation learnt that the duchess had been present only from a television news report after she had left. Yet Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, told the BBC that “the Met did know [about the visit], absolutely”. Palace sources have described Kate’s visit as private, but Dick said she was there “in the course of her duties; she’s working”.
Getting the story straight has increasingly become a problem for royals embroiled in public relations debacles — just ask the Dukes of Sussex and York. Yet what emerged most clearly from Kate’s modestly controversial outing was not another disaster for the House of Windsor. It has turned into something of a triumph.
“I think she’s played a blinder,” says Jennie Bond, a former BBC royal correspondent and author of several books on the Windsors. Unlike some of her royal relatives, Kate, 39, has barely put a foot wrong in her public embrace of worthy causes over the past few years.
She has made early childhood and mental health the centrepieces of her charitable efforts. Her Early Years initiative produced a landmark survey of attitudes to the first five years of childhood and their links to subsequent social challenges such as addiction, family breakdown, suicide and homelessness. Her passion for photography helped launch a nationwide pandemic project aimed at capturing a portrait of Britain in the grip of Covid-19. “She’s widely admired now as a public figure,” says Bond, “and I think she’s demonstrating that she’s very much in touch with the mood of the country.”
Part 2
Penny Junor, biographer of Prince William and Prince Harry, describes Kate’s visit to the vigil as a “wonderful gesture”. What might have turned into a made-for-tabloid tempest instead became the story of a young woman who lived in London before marrying a prince, and may have remembered what it was like to have to walk home alone at night.
After the manufactured theatrics of the Sussexes’ interview with Oprah Winfrey, Junor adds, “Kate was making a very subtle point. You don’t need to make a song and dance about things. She showed up at Clapham quietly with absolutely no fanfare. I just thought it spoke volumes.”
Few royal insiders are expecting Kate suddenly to turn into a fire-breathing apostle of “wokeness”, or even to express the remotest hint of a political belief. She does not issue bold proclamations to compare with, say, the welcome page of Harry and Meghan’s new website, Archewell, which announces: “Through our non-profit work, as well as creative activations, we drive systemic cultural change across all communities, one act of compassion at a time.”
Yet Kate is no stranger to acts of compassion, and her low-key approach may strike many as a great deal more effective. “When Harry and Meghan talked to Oprah, they were more concerned about their own welfare; it was all about them and that’s been their narrative all along,” says Junor. “But there’s a difference between service and self-service. I feel real service is doing things selflessly for others. I think that’s what Kate understands.”
She won’t be the queen of Britain for a while, but she’s already a queen of Zoom meetings. Through Kensington Palace’s social media feeds she has become an online video-conferencing force to be reckoned with during lockdown, and the causes she supports and the charities she endorses are reaping incalculable benefits. “All the Zoom calls William and Kate have done are showing them in a very good light,” says Bond. “Usually you just see a tiny bit of them on the telly or a picture in the paper or whatever. But you kind of feel from their work online you’re getting a peek inside their true personalities, inside their homes. They seem much more natural and Kate is coming across as very knowledgeable and compassionate.”
Junor adds: “I think the whole of lockdown has opened people’s eyes to working members of the royal family. They are reaching a far wider audience than before and Kate is coming out of it really well.”
In the past few weeks the duchess has spoken via video links to Harriet Nagaya, the founder of a community midwife project in Uganda; to nurses delivering vaccines in the Midlands; to frontline workers and counsellors dealing with the mental health impact of Covid; and to the family of a 12-year-old boy whose life was saved by a volunteer at the Shout 85258 mental-health support service. It was during the Cambridges’ visit to another mental health project, at a school in east London, that William offered his first response to the Winfrey interview: “We’re very much not a racist family.”
One notable success last month was the video Kate posted to her official @KensingtonRoyal Instagram account, showing a pair of hands opening a box addressed to HRH The Duchess of Cambridge. The hands were unmistakably Kate’s — she was wearing her sapphire and diamond engagement ring, formerly worn by Diana, Princess of Wales.
The box was ripped open and the packaging removed to reveal a book: Hold Still, a collection of photographs of the British experience of the pandemic, with proceeds benefiting the National Portrait Gallery and the mental health charity Mind. Kate, a keen amateur photographer, helped select the photos and wrote an introduction to the book.
Part 3
“Through Hold Still, I wanted to use the power of photography to create a lasting record of what we were all experiencing,” she writes. “When we look back at the Covid-19 pandemic in decades to come, we will think of the challenges we all faced ... but we will also remember the positives: the incredible acts of kindness, the helpers and heroes who emerged from all walks of life and how together we adapted to a new normal.”
Her short video clip has been viewed by more than two million people. Nicholas Cullinan, director of the portrait gallery, has declared himself “astounded” at the response to the project.
A different side of Kate emerged in a video exchange last month with Jasmine Harrison, 21, who in February became the youngest woman to row solo across the Atlantic. It might easily have been a routine royal congratulatory quickie — jolly fine show, keep up the good work — except that Kate somehow turned it into a stirring eight-minute celebration of womanhood and willpower and dreaming and dedication.
Those with long memories may recall that Kate once embarked on a long-distance rowing project of her own. In 2007 she trained for a cross-Channel attempt as the helmswoman of a dragon boat with an all-women crew, but her then status as William’s girlfriend forced her to give up.
There was nothing remotely artificial about her admiration for Harrison’s achievement in rowing 3,000 miles. “Oh my God, I can’t get my head round 70 days at sea,” Kate laughs at one point. “What you’ve achieved will really change the perception of what is achievable ... I think you’re an inspiration to lots of young women out there.”
Kate ends by wishing her a safe flight back “and enjoy seeing your doggies in Yorkshire”. Harrison, whose Twitter tag is @rudderlymad, replies: “It’s been really nice to talk to you ... it was a surprise to get that call, I thought maybe I HAVE done something big.”
Junor says: “Kate is just really very good at it in a relaxed, friendly way. She’s not over the top, not ‘me, me, me’ at all. I think she’s absolutely coming into her prime now — she’s confident, she’s competent, and you don’t get the impression that she’s waiting for cameras to be there and it’s all a publicity stunt.”
All this might well be encouraging news for a family that seems to specialise in disaster mismanagement. After the transatlantic travails of the Duke of York and the ongoing agonies of the Sussexes, a duchess who gets things right might yet prove an invaluable asset.
At the same time, the burden of royal expectation has crushed many a free spirit. The closer Kate gets to becoming Queen, the more she may be expected to conform; to be careful with her words, to avoid spontaneous excursions in the middle of a health crisis. Can she really carry on being Kate, the increasingly daring duchess? Or must she prepare to be Catherine, our smiling but silent queen?
“I think what William and Kate have demonstrated is that you can have a much greater impact if you go large on a smaller number of causes,” says Bond, who like many royal watchers believes Kate will stick to non-controversial issues such as child development and mental health.
“She’s naturally engaged and comes across as genuine because she is genuinely interested in the topics she has espoused,” Bond adds. “I think she’ll be wise enough to stick to issues quite specific to her personality and knowledge.”
Junor notes that Kate may have learnt an important lesson from Diana, whose popularity began to outstrip her husband’s. “Charles was Prince of Wales and not used to having the limelight taken from him,” she says. “That caused huge problems. Kate is being very careful to ensure she doesn’t outstrip William. She is not on an ego trip, and her head has not been turned by celebrity.”
Junor concluded: “Kate is a working woman doing a job. She didn’t leave the human race when she joined Planet Windsor.”
"Elizabeth has internalized the lessons from her grandmother Queen Mary that it is her job as sovereign to never allow Elizabeth the human woman to intrude upon the mystery that is Elizabeth Regina"
You have to remember that Queen Mary was in awe to the point of idolatry of the position she found herself as Queen Consort and Empress Consort.
She was born a HSH - Her Serene Highness in a family of HRHs - Royal Highnesses and a couple of IMs - Imperial Majesties.
In the royal club, your rank matters. Being a *Serene highness might as well be a peasant to the higher ranked royal highnesses and beyond.
Her Serene Highness, Princess Mary would have felt the distinction very keenly, and the other royals would have made her feel it.
To be elevated to a royal highness and then Her Majesty would have seemed like a miracle beyond her wildest dreams.
She interpreted her role accordingly, at home and publicly.
Any advice she gave her granddaughter would have come from that understanding of her role.
*The HRH is one of the speculated reasons Caroline of Monaco won't divorce her deplorable husband. The marriage elevated her from Serene Highness to a Royal Highness. After The Queen's 1996 amendment to the Letters patent 1917 that govern who can hold HRH, Caroline would automatically lose her HRH in a divorce.
O/T
It was the Undoing. A Very English Scandal was even better with him in it. ;o)
You may have missed Eugenie and Jack's engagement interview in the US. It probably didn't make the news.
Below is a BBC video of the engagement. I saw it on the news at the time and listened to it again tonight. Jack doesn't mention the word 'uncomplicated' but it must have been in another interview as it definitely stuck in my mind. I think uncomplicated is a very good quality.
The interview shows that Eugenie and Jack are so happy, genuinely in love, spontaneous and very supportive of each other - unlike another interview we can think of.
https://youtu.be/FPZn3IIN_fw
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9433581/Meghan-Markle-coffee-firm-bought-oat-milk-company-Chinas-police-state-Xinjiang-province.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9433543/SARAH-VINE-Does-Prince-Harry-know-anymore.html
She'll be spitting feathers.
Hahahaha - won't she just!
Thanks to @JennS for posting the article.
Re:slave Oatmilk lattes
OMG
O/T
Pantsface did you see this:
In 2018, HG as Jeremy Thorpe in the BBC One miniseries `A Very English Scandal' - he was almost totally convincing, apart from parting his hair on the wrong side!.
There was for me, just one thing that was odd about the film - Hertford was used for 1970s Barnstaple but Bideford (rival town across the river) was deemed good enough to march `German' soldiers through for 1940s St Peter Port in `The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society'
(There were some terrible gaffs in GPPP&LS book - the usual route to the CIs even in the 1930s and after the War when I went with my parents as an overnight deck passenger, was from Southampton in 1947. I still remember being put on my pot in public and Dad emptying it over the side! I was 2.5 yrs old. Why go to Weymouth when there were boat trains from Waterloo taking you to the So'ton quayside? There are many photos online of trains going both the the old docks and the new Ocean Terminal and on the level crossing in Canute Rd.
It was a `proper' steamer too, not a paddle one, let alone a Scottish one flying the saltire as filmed. Of course, when Clovelly appeared, pretending to be StPP from a distance, the cinema audience here recognised it instantly and called out like a pantomime audience `It's Clovelly!'
That film can't have been intended for a British audience, still less those that know the locations!)
April 4, 2021 at 1:53 AM Delete
Newspaper and TV journalists are among more than 4,000 people who have made complaints to Ofcom about Oprah’s Winfrey’s interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.
The complaints included that inaccurate and misleading allegations about the press and the Royal family had been broadcast by ITV as facts without giving any right of reply.
https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/meghan-interview-ofcom-complaints-oprah/
A biography of the couple by Tom Bower, Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge, was published in November 2006. According to Bower, "Black wanted to appear as a billionaire, and Amiel was an eager accomplice to his desire". She "could have discovered that her husband's income was insufficient to finance their ambitions, but she preferred not to investigate".[15] Black denounced the book in The Sunday Telegraph finding "disgusting" Bower's "key-hole, smut-mongering side-piece portrayal" of Amiel.[43]
Black filed a suit in Canada against Bower in February 2007, claiming that the biography described Amiel as "grasping, hectoring, slatternly, extravagant, shrill and a harridan".[44] At the time of Black's release from prison in 2012 the case was described as a "$2.5-million suit" and Bower said "How can a convicted fraudster find a jury who will say that his reputation has been damaged by a book that says he's a fraudster?"[45].
Does "grasping, hectoring, slatternly, extravagant, shrill and a harridan" remind Nutties of someone?
-Xinjiang province where a million Muslim Uighur people are kept in camps and brutally persecuted
-The Duchess of Sussex announced she was investing in Clevr Blends last year
-Firm imports 19 tons of an ingredient from Chinese supplier in brutal police state
-Oprah Winfrey has also plugged the coffee company on her social media
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9433581/Meghan-Markle-coffee-firm-bought-oat-milk-company-Chinas-police-state-Xinjiang-province.html
Oh boy, is Megalo really this sloppy or does she not care?
You're probably right - I was just wondering if she researches and checks into things properly. But if we're dealing with a total lack of empathy here, then she wouldn't care even if she did have one of her poor bullied staff investigate the company.
Now I wonder who brought this to the attention of the DM? Are they looking into all things Harkle this closely - because if they are then they must be sitting on a lot of Kraken level material!
And they must be mighty mad at Megalo considering the lawsuit and now the issues with the doctored headlines in the interview.
But why would HRH HM QE2 of England UK letters patent have any say over Monaco's or Germany/Austria/or any other countries royal ranking systems and titles? Isnt that up to that countries law defining their ranks.
1) katzenberg is close to David geffen who is close to Oprah.
2) quibi failed and closed at end of 2020. Markled. Ha
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9432645/Prince-Harry-Meghan-Markle-told-royal-advisors-stop-doing-want.html
I don't know what the RF plans. And i honestly don't really care. We don't know if they are truly cut off financially (I doubt it although i think it has been cut back) or if they are in communications with anyone from the family on a regular basis. I don't care if they lose their titles because here in the US, they really don't mean anything.
They are being used by a lot of different companies who will drop them as soon as they become liabilities or don't produce. I don't think Oprah really cares anymore. She used them too.
Zara & husband playing peacemaker. They signed off on the statue & it is being cast for the unveiling in July.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=162&v=7tQKbIJJGNs&feature=emb_logo
It seems Meghan rushed out the Zara and Diana statue story today to counteract the press her slave-trade coffee was getting! She must have an arsenal of ‘backup’ strategies - using every communication with the BRF as PR ‘validation’ of the duo. The BRF needs to stop contacting these two. Frankly, I don’t think will or Harry should be unveiling anything together, ever. Let Diana Rest In Peace and put the statue up quietly.
Katzenberg worked with Igor for many years, so now we know where they got the Disney ‘in’. Both Markled! Meghan uses her connections to validate her presence. Piers emphasized this trait of hers when she mentioned to him that ‘Serena sends her love’, prior to even meeting Piers.
Further, the oat milk latte she publicly backed. Oprah must be horrified today to read her name in the papers. She clearly cannot trust Meghan’s word, history, or judgment. Will we see her associate with the two clowns again? Probably not.
Another DM article presenting Messica’s *best friends* photo. Meghan’s not included. Mess is distancing herself from Grip, which is probably the smartest thing she could do to further her career and put her back in the Canadian social scene. She was fine in that world prior to Meghan. I wonder if Meghan is pissed about this?
Apparently, the Princes of Hanover regained their status as Princes of the UK after it was revoked during WWI.
What I'm finding increasingly amusing is the peripheral nature of the people in her past coming out and defending her now. She recognises the challenges to "her truth" are building but these are all she can muster unless they are celebrities who barely know her but share the same PR agency or some other tenuous link.
Soon we'll be seeing "I served Meghan [insert whatever food was obscure and aspirational at the time] in August 2012 and she seemed really nice". Though knowing Meghan's form with staff waiting on her (the poor waiter at the Inskip wedding comes to mind and don't forget to dodge the teapot) that particular scenario is unlikely.
@Hikari - many thanks for your recent thoughtful post about the Queen. Sometimes it brings you up short to really realise how long she's been Queen. Compare that to 1936, the year of three kings. My parents were born less than five years apart, yet my father has lived through four reigns and my mother only two. Now you have to be nearly 70 to have known more than one!
I honestly feel Oprah's prerogative in this was to further divide. To make Meg the face of British racism. Very clear to me in the way this "interview" was conducted. Not only were the horrendously damaging claims left unchallenged but she fanned them with her exaggerated hand motions, gasps and wild eyed expression. Of course to heighten drama but beyond that her refusal to now remove the doctored headlines cements her prerogative.
Cast of characters she associates with is downright disturbing. She is in bed with the devil and collectively They have an agenda. Nearly grateful Meg is so rogue and batsh*t crazy as with proper direction she really could have became more than bit player.
I also believe Oprah to be SoHo member. Interesting choice of venue to host/release her movies and media ..
Believe what you will of her but cannot deny she purposefully framed conversation to inflame and divide our nation(s) and beamed it across the entire world.
BRITAIN IS RACIST
Where was/is the outrage and headlines over "the firms" refusal to help a suicidal family member?
https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/daniel-kaluuya-jokes-harry-meghans-23849911
[...] He said: "First of all, I know you're hearing my accent and thinking 'oh no, he's not black, he's British'.
"Let me reassure you that I am black. I'm black and I'm British.
"Basically I am what the royal family was worried the baby would look like."
Well done Harry. Is this what you wanted to do to your family?
SNL and CNN have left my life now Trump is out of the White House, but this is typical of the casual, careless adoption of the Sussex distortions, omissions, innuendo and just plain lies. Not just by Americans either, as we see.
I can imagine Meghan laughing at this from a Montecito sofa not necessarily hers. What does Harry do?
Interestingly, I can’t recall where I read it, but Meghan was supposedly pissed that the interview take-away and coverage turned into a race conversation (because this is beyond her) whereas she was hoping the sensational bit would be the mental health ‘suicidal’ claims.
Of course this makes sense, she only brought up race when she couldn’t adequately explain the Archie/title situation.
The mental health angle encompassed Archewell, Spotify deal, programs for Apple, Harry’s past, etc. I don’t think Meghan particularly wants to be a race advocate. She just uses that card to get her way.
You're right - this came out in several places I think, especially the Daily Mail. There's such a slew of articles we need a professional archivist for this blog! I can just imagine her frustration as she watched the race debate spread through the media. This was supposed to be about her. Dovetails of course with her use of the race card all along.
If she was truly interested and actually cared about the wider issue she would have known what a hornet's nest she was prodding. Let alone the enormous rise in mental health issues from the pandemic among people who can't afford professional help or are on endless waiting lists. Harry could have had mental health charity CEOs and top professionals on tap in less than an hour.
"Is Oprah embarrassed?"
I don't think Oprah has it in her to be embarrassed, but she is sensitive to her image and that's probably the closest we will get to knowing where she is.
The key is Gayle.
Gayle usually comes out guns blazing when talking about Oprah's interviews if reception has been positive.
The minute it goes the other way, she shuts up completely.
In this case she's now trying for reconciliatory language.
I think that is a tell for how where Oprah is.
"...But why would HRH HM QE2 of England UK letters patent have any say over Monaco's or Germany/Austria/or any other countries royal ranking systems and titles? Isnt that up to that countries law defining their ranks...."
Putting aside the history of UK and Hanoverian Monarchy and how they came to be intertwined, the Hereditary Prince of Hanover, born in 1914, was made a British Prince by George 5 shortly after he was born with the style and titles of a Prince of UK.
Though his future ducal titles were stripped / suspended in 1917 from his treasonous father, his HRH remained primarily due to his successfully suing the British govt over his nationality and titles invoking the Sophia Naturalisation act 1705. Titles are still suspended, but not his HRH.
This dessignation continues to be inherited by the reigning Prince of Hanover, currently the deplorable husband of Caroline of Monaco.
It doesn't apply to other European Princes or Royal houses nor should it.
An example of British hold on Hanover: in 1999 when Ernest August married Caroline of Monaco, a catholic, he needed permission from our British Queen for the marriage and suffered the loss of his place in the line of succession before it was restored by the succession act 2013 which repealed the Catholic ban and returned him to his place in the line.
Exactly! I too remember her whining race issue overshadowing her. Oprah used her. She was used to thrust race back in headlines. Wee bit of calm after January and then this hit to get everyone all fired up again.
All rather imploded (for now) cue "Asian hate". Not to discount or dismiss valid issues but we are now continually bombarded with headlines designed to divide and stewing in perpetual tension. Media is powerful beast. Frightening out of 90 or so media corporations delivering news, we now have 5or 6. Scary sh*t how "blindly" and stealth like they all ran Meghan's tale as gospel. And look at how CNN hid article debunking "interview" 200 million eyes on website and they bury it. Why? Who made that call?
Not trying to get political. Leans evil to me, depths of Hell there is no right or left. Thank goodness and God bless the press and citizens across the pond who fought back. Systematically debunking multiple lies with FACT. Does America even know?
Happy Easter to those that celebrate! P.S. what the heck is up with Welby wanting to create a set date for Easter? He is another one who leaves me uneasy
Interestingly, I can’t recall where I read it, but Meghan was supposedly pissed that the interview take-away and coverage turned into a race conversation (because this is beyond her) whereas she was hoping the sensational bit would be the mental health ‘suicidal’ claims.
I read this also... but thought the part she wanted sensationalised was 'the evil palace didn't defend me from the racist press'??
I think this is two halves of the same thing, that thing being Meghan must be protected from all scrutiny and criticism. Her two cards that she thought would make her untouchable to that end are race and mental health.
That she has failed is testimony to the fact that she had already caused such conspicuous damage and upset, spent so much money and failed to deliver in a role that other people are doing perfectly well. No one will give her a pass but deluded sugars or those too lofty to delve into Meghan's trashy world to know the truth.
It's amazing that she would pursue a prince with the number of skeletons she has in her closet and her horror of the scrutiny or criticism that is the price paid to enter that world. I don't believe her nationality prevented her from knowing in advance how it would be. Oh she knew. She's not stupid. We know she was fascinated with Diana for years. A huge part of the Diana story is the UK press pack. Diana did her version of feasting with panthers there.
Meghan knew but believed she would succeed where everyone else would fail. She keeps surprising people because it's virtually impossible to plumb the depth of her narcissism and will to power. It's thankfully outside our experience.
She's beyond rescue or redemption so all that can be done is to limit the damage by pariently amassing and communicating the evidence against her and trying to get through to those who fall under her spell. The influential people I mean. Otherwise she will go on spoiling worthier people's lives and teaching young people that you don't need to accomplish things on your own as long as you look good, know the catchphrases, have a direct line into someone else's bank account and can piggyback on someone else's work.
Note too around 1:45 mark how the other anchor skillfully talks over legit question.
You see too why Oprah has death grip on doctored headlines. This is horrible. Gayle continues to spew. Saw article she was on Drew Barrymore show yesterday touting same narrative.
If this was my family business I would be livid. Not sure if RF (HM) realizes how damaging and effective this continual coverage is. and by effective I mean millions of Americans know nothing of RF but this (and maybe The Crown)
https://twitter.com/i/status/1371820323612540933
Link: https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/romantic-wills-and-kate-picture-that-proves-meghan-wrong/news-story/
Part 1:
The Swiss ski resort of Klosters has provided a backdrop to a number of significant royal events.
It was there in 1988 that Prince Charles survived a fatal avalanche, which killed a friend and where, in 1992, Diana, Princess of Wales found out her father had died.
And it was there nearly exactly 17 years ago to the day in 2004 when history was made and it was revealed to the world, with a suitable tabloid flourish, that the future British King had nabbed his first steady squeeze.
“Finally … Wills gets a girl” The Sun announced on its front page next to secretly shot paparazzi photos showing the Prince and Kate Middleton sharing a T-bar and smiling at one another.
Turns out the 21-year-old duo, who were then housemates at St Andrew’s University in Scotland, were doing more than simply revising for their finals together.
On that April day, Kate was outed for the first time as a royal girlfriend thus putting permanent press crosshairs on her Zara-clad back and firing the starting pistol on photographers stalking the backstreets of Chelsea in pursuit of shots of her.
Now, all of those lovey-dovey Klosters pictures might be nothing more than a romantic moment on the couple’s long and winding road to the altar, something they fish out to entertain their three kids when it’s nanny’s night off and the Phenergan is yet to kick in.
However, looking back at those shots now and something very interesting comes into focus, namely that what the young couple did afterwards highlights just how badly Harry and Meghan Duke and Duchess of Sussex botched things.
Let’s get a couple of things straight here: To be a royal girlfriend was never a particularly envious role. Sure, one might get invited for grand country house weekends and who could beat the frisson of passing beneath the palace gates for the first time? (Also, snogging next to a few priceless Rembrandts or just outside the throne room must be quite the aphrodisiac.)
The downsides though were legion, the most weighty being, of course, dating a Windsor meant being hunted ceaselessly by the press.
Link: https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/romantic-wills-and-kate-picture-that-proves-meghan-wrong/news-story/
Part 2
By the time 2016 rolled around, Prince Harry’s two most serious relationships – with Chelsy Davy and Cressida Bonas – had foundered and ultimately failed in part due to the intensity of the media scrutiny.
Cupid, luckily, had other plans for the former army Captain and in June of that year he was introduced to actress Meghan Markle on a blind date. The rest is a story of such high highs and low lows that it would make Cinderella want to have lengthy lie down.
When their romance was revealed, it was entirely understandable (and applaudable) that Harry would want to protect his girlfriend from the media onslaught that followed, going so far as to have Kensington Palace put out a statement excoriating the media for the sexist and racist coverage of the Suits star.
But what followed was a steady escalation of animosity and bile, on both sides.
During the Sussexes’ nearly universally applauded Australian and South Pacific tour in 2018 the newly-married duke told the journalists covering the trip, “Thanks for coming, even though you weren’t invited.” (Raising the question, what would be point of a foreign tour if there was no one to cover it aside from cheering monarchists shooting jerky Facebook videos?)
Meanwhile, the British press took umbrage during Meghan’s pregnancy for her touching her bump in public and even raised the question of whether her favourite snack (avocados, natch) was “fuelling drought and murder”.
In 2019, during their southern African tour, the prince snapped at a Sky reporter Rhiannon Mills after she asked an unscheduled question after a visit to a health centre, saying “Rhiannon, don’t behave like this”.
The following month, Harry said in a statement his wife was “one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences – a ruthless campaign that has escalated over the past year” and that “put simply, it is bullying, which scares and silences people”.
A flurry of lawsuits, both in the UK and the US followed.
Speaking to Oprah Winfrey last month, the Sussexes’ identified the press as a key reason they ultimately decided to quit their royal gigs and the UK.
Link: https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/romantic-wills-and-kate-picture-that-proves-meghan-wrong/news-story/
Part 3
A week after the interview aired in the UK, broadcaster ITV was forced to edit part of the program after the prime time special “included misleading and distorted headlines which portrayed British press coverage of the couple as racist,” per the Telegraph.
But what William and Kate have proven in the years since 2004 is that to stand up for yourselves and to guard their family’s privacy does not require declaring all-out-war on Fleet Street: nor does it have to be a choice between kowtowing to the press or setting oneself up in litigious opposition.
Make no mistake: the Cambridge’s have had a tough time of it too at the hands of publishers.
In 2005, lawyers acting for Kate wrote to editors and the Press Complaints Commission claiming that photos of her taking a bus breached the watchdog’s code; in 2007, after William put out a statement warning against the “harassment” of Kate after she was chased down her street by an estimated 50 photographers and cameramen on her 25th birthday; in 2012 a paparazzo staked out her a remote holiday house her family was staying to snap pictures of them playing tennis; in 2012 the by-now Duchess was photographed topless during a holiday in France; the following year a snapper covertly snapped the pregnant royal swimming during a Seychelles babymoon and then after the arrival of their son Prince George, the couple revealed in 2015 that the press had stalked the tot and his nanny and had been found hiding in the fields around their rural Norfolk home.
As recently as 2016, Kate made a privacy complaint to the UK’s Independent Press Standards Organisation, which was upheld, after several news sites published shots of the Prince George sitting on a police motorbike at Kensington Palace.
Yet despite all of this, William and Kate are mature and pragmatic enough to realise they need to have a decent working relationship with the media.
While the dynamic between the palace and Fleet Street things have been particularly fraught at times, underpinning much of this is the understanding they need one another.
Sure, the advent of social media has disrupted this unspoken accord to some degree but the essential mutual necessity holds.
Which is why on each of the Cambridge kids’ birthdays, William and Kate put out new shots of the young princes and princess, and why during normal times, they agree to having a carefully chosen snapper shoot the kids as they start the school year.
Steadily meting out new images of the family gives the nosy public a modicum of entree into their lives and for the Duke and Duchess it guarantees their family enjoys a level of privacy that would have been unthinkable during William’s childhood.
Link: https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/romantic-wills-and-kate-picture-that-proves-meghan-wrong/news-story/
Part 4
To take such a practical view does not translate to knock-kneed appeasement. Over the years, William and Kate have repeatedly taken stands against media intrusion, including calling in the lawyers at times, while still managing to build what looks like a working relationship with the experienced journalists deployed to cover the palace.
Recently, royal reporter Camilla Tominey (who broke the news that Harry and Meghan were an item) revealed that after William and Kate’s engagement press conference in 2010, Kate was introduced to the journalists who cover the royal family.
“I still have fond memories of a then Kate Middleton … showing me her huge sapphire and diamond ring,” Tominey has written.
Beyond that, William and Kate seem to understand that the vast, vast majority of public interest in them is inherently rooted in deep-seated affection. The British public, and parts of the world, care about and are invested in the royal family.
This is an immutable fact and the reason why, no matter the barrage of lawsuits, the media will keep reporting on the Cambridges, the Sussexes, and the Queen ad nauseam. (Prince Andrew is a whole other ball game …)
That unwavering level of interest in and fascination with their lives – an unfortunate, lifelong consequence of being a member of the royal family – is something that Harry and Meghan seem to have never quite made peace with.
What would have happened if back in 2019, they had tried to come to some sort of détente with the press? If the media had agreed to stop peddling an incessant stream of nitpicking invective and the Sussexes had in turn acknowledged the fact they would always be objects of intense global obsession and agreed to carefully controlled moments of access in return? Would things have still deteriorated quite so badly?
Consider this: Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis have never been photographed leaving the school gates, going to swimming lessons or buying new shoes; when they have been spotted whizzing about the Kensington Palace gardens on their bikes in view of the public, big images don’t end up on the front of newspapers, the reason being: William and Kate, through gritted teeth most likely, have come to an understanding with the media and can guarantee them a level of protection.
Will Harry and Meghan be able to achieve the same level of protection for their kids too? For Archie and his soon-to-arrive sister’s sake, let’s dearly hope so.
There are seven words that have come up again and again since Megxit: it didn’t have to be this way. And when it comes to the Sussexes and the media, it really didn’t have to be this way. Just ask William and Kate.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Unfortunately now, much to Meg's chagrin, the story supersedes her. One day she will be fully exposed , perhaps draw some pity but it won't ever cancel cries of racism.
For the heck of it I went to cnn.com and typed meghan markle into search bar. Plethora of bias, scathing articles. No where on web have I easily located any counter to Meg's claims. (probably Foxnews, didn't look) but our country is so divided ,most people read one or the other
Here is article from PBS. Rather eloquently presented, invokes sympathy and written as truth with no recent updates
https://artscanvas.org/arts-culture/oprahs-deft-royal-interview-shows-why-shes-still-the-media-queen
Invalidations of Meghan’s claims of racism hurt Black women
Arts Mar 10, 2021 4:46 PM EDT
CHICAGO — As Prince Harry and Meghan’s TV interview reverberates internationally, it’s left the more than 50 million viewers who tuned in grappling with the couple’s claims of racism and lack of support that the Duchess of Sussex says drove her to thoughts of suicide.
But for many Black women worldwide, the headlines and social media discussions were painfully familiar. With social media conversations questioning whether racism affected treatment of Meghan by the British press and royal family, many Black women say it is yet another example of a Black woman’s experiences with racism being disregarded through denials and gaslighting.
“White supremacy seeks to isolate you, make you feel like no one is listening and no one is supporting you. It uses that as a tool to keep in power,” said Gaye Theresa Johnson, associate professor in the Department of African American Studies at UCLA. “And so when you aren’t validated in your feelings or feel supported, that does real harm.”
Meghan, the daughter of a white father and a Black mother, said that when she was pregnant with her son Archie, a member of the royal family expressed “concerns … about how dark his skin might be.” The former television star also said she sought mental health help through the palace’s human resources department but was told there was nothing it could do.
(cont.)
On Tuesday, Buckingham Palace released a statement saying the “whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan” but that “some recollections may vary.”
Audiences around the world watched Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, describe life in the British royal family in a revealing interview Sunday night. Marcus Ryder, a visiting professor of media diversity at Birmingham City University joins Amna Nawaz discuss.
Johnson said the doubts and questioning cast against Meghan’s claims were emotionally exhausting to watch for many Black women, who may relate to the trauma of having their personal experiences with racism invalidated by others.
“It’s an insult when people are incredulous about the racism people like Meghan Markle experienced because that incredulity speaks volumes about what people refuse to see, what is right in front of their eyes all the time and that some people have to navigate daily,” she said.
“That takes a toll on a person and their mental health.”
Dr. Anita Thomas, executive vice president and provost at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, said watching Meghan’s interview with Winfrey was emotional.
“It speaks to the burden that many African American women face,” she said. “For Black women, it was upsetting to see that, even when she had the courage to speak out about her experiences with racism, that she didn’t get the support that she needed and, in many ways, her experiences were invalidated.”
Thomas said facing this kind of racism, as well as any invalidation of those experiences, requires ” psychological and emotional energy” to navigate.
“As a psychologist, I hope people talk about this effect of racism and sexism on psychological functioning,” she said.
Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, pointed to the racist attitudes of the British media as reason for stepping away from royal duties and moving to North America last year, something Harry reiterated in the interview with Winfrey.
(cont.)
When the news first broke of their relationship, publications were quick to refer to Meghan in racist terms, with one tabloid columnist referring to her “exotic” DNA. A Mail Online headline stated Meghan was “(almost) straight outta Compton,” and a Daily Star headline asked whether Harry would “marry into gangster royalty.”
Then, when Meghan and Harry announced they would step away from official royal duties last year, people quickly began to question if racism was what drove Meghan away.
Heather McGhee, author of the book “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together,” agreed the immediate rush by some to deny Meghan’s allegations following the interview were upsetting.
And that denial is something Black women face every day, she said.
“Very often, Black women in conference rooms and offices experience discrimination and have no recourse, in the same way that one of the more powerful Black women in the world had no recourse except to give it all up,” McGhee said of Meghan.
“I hope we realize there’s a much less powerful version of Meghan likely at your office or school who is being discriminated (against) and doesn’t have champions. I hope this encourages more people to stand up for their Black co-workers, neighbors and friends.”
end
It also makes Meghan look silly for constantly courting news and press to this day! It makes her *suicidal* and yet there she is, announcing her pregnancy, miscarriage, biz deals, xyz.
The regular person cannot follow the narrative she spewed because it doesn’t add up with common sense and actions.
https://artscanvas.org/arts-culture/oprahs-deft-royal-interview-shows-why-shes-still-the-media-queen
Oprah’s deft royal interview shows why she’s still the media queen
By Lynn Elber, Associated Press
March 8, 2021 @ 8:04 PM
LOS ANGELES (AP) — There were royal victims and villains in Harry and Meghan’s tell-all — or tell enough — interview with Oprah Winfrey. But there was only one immediate and clear winner: the American media queen.
While the couple drew both strong support and rebukes for detailing why they fled Britain and their royal roles, Winfrey burnished her stature as a master interviewer with Sunday’s special that rivaled “The Crown”‘ for drama and heartache.
She was in her element, breaking news and making entertainment. In past big “gets,” Winfrey had grilled Lance Armstrong about doping, Whitney Houston about her troubled life and Michael Jackson on whether he’d lightened his skin to deny his Blackness.
In those encounters, Winfrey played prosecutor or mother confessor. This time, she asked the couple holding hands in a manicured California garden to reveal the sins of a monarchy with 1,200 years of history.
(cont)
Winfrey carefully framed the interview’s legitimacy at the outset, asking Meghan to confirm that questions hadn’t been provided in advance, no subject was off limits and the couple wasn’t compensated. CBS reportedly paid Winfrey’s production company, Harpo, up to $9 million to air it and, according to early Nielsen estimates, was rewarded with 17 million viewers, an unusually large audience amid multiplying choices.
“The thing that struck me first and I think will stay with me the longest is that she began the interview” with ethics-related disclosures, said Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “That was such a fantastic way to be transparent about what we were going to see in that interview last night, and how we as viewers can judge its credibility.”
Winfrey also pointedly noted that she had attended the couple’s wedding — thanking Meghan for the invite — and that they were neighbors in the posh Montecito area of Southern California.
(cont.)
When Meghan revealed the depth of her emotional distress, however, she stopped short of confirming that she considered suicide. Winfrey guided her toward that bleak revelation with a deftness honed by long experience.
Her questions were short and direct, including this memorable query to Meghan: “Were you silent, or silenced?” A careful listener, she let nothing escape her notice, including when Harry almost offhandedly mentioned that his father, Prince Charles, stopped taking his calls at some point. Winfrey coaxed Harry to explore the rift.
Other intimate details poured out, including what Meghan and Harry called a lack of palace support over Meghan’s harsh treatment by U.K. tabloids and dismaying accounts of how their son, Archie, was perceived as lesser than other royal offspring.
That included one of the interview’s bombshells from Meghan: That someone in the palace, whom the couple refused to identify, had speculated on how dark Meghan and Harry’s then-unborn son, Archie, would be.
“What? Hold up,” a shocked Winfrey replied, a potent exchange made more so because it involved two African American women with a shared perspective.
(cont.)
“She is just so tremendously talented that it just sort of, in an unspoken way, undercut the racism” directed at Meghan, she said.
With the special fixed firmly on Harry and Meghan’s comments, there was scant room for context or clarification. That included the unanswered question of who had commented on Archie, a void that created a frenzy of speculation. It wasn’t until Monday morning, when Winfrey appeared on “CBS This Morning,” that viewers learned that Harry had disclosed that his grandparents, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, were in the clear.
In an almost defensive tone, Winfrey said she had pressed Harry for the person’s name during the edited interview that in all spanned more than three hours. She also explained the palace bureaucracy that dictates aspects of royal lives, aside from the wishes of the queen, something that U.S. viewers may be unfamiliar with.
John Doyle, television critic for Canada’s The Globe and Mail newspaper, said Winfrey was “the best kind of person” for the job.
While she is “a media superstar, incredibly rich and successful,” Doyle said, she’s able to view the British monarchy as a representative American who’s fascinated by it but “cannot quite understand all of the nuances and subtleties involved.
“I think she played that role and did it very well,” he said.
AP Media Writer David Bauder in New York contributed to this report.
(end)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9434643/Meghan-Markle-not-return-UK-help-royal-expert-claims.html
“Rob Lowe, 57, is still a Hollywood heartthrob as SHIRTLESS movie star rises dripping wet from ocean during sizzling beach day.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9434239/Rob-Lowe-57-rises-dripping-wet-ocean-sizzling-beach-day.html
Eat your hearts out 💋 😂
`P.S. what the heck is up with Welby wanting to create a set date for Easter? He is another one who leaves me uneasy.'
I watched Welby celebrating the Easter Eucharist in Canterbury Cathedral this morning. Both Epistler & Gospeller were female and black, Belver (Kenyan member of the Community of St Anselm) and Rose Hudson-Wilkin ( Bp of Dover) respectively. I could have done without the Gospel singers and dancers though.
The community of St A was founded by Welby so I'll give him credit for that. It gives young people a year of monastic experience of prayer and service to the poor in London - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_Saint_Anselm
It certainly looks as if JW seeks to strut the World stage in an even greater role than he already has - as per the comment about why he spoke to an Italian paper. I'd missed hearing about him wanting to change the date of Easter though . I know the Synod of Whitby brought the English Celtic church into line with Rome, over the date of Easter and other things, in 664AD (I've no idea if this had any effect on Ireland or Scotland). I've just realised there are only 2 degrees of separation between me and the Ecumenical Patriarch - I shall have to look into this, my contact has never mentioned this.
"jessica248, nyc, United States, 6 minutes ago
Hot Rob!!!!!!!!! Hes looking for Harry the Lochness Monster!!!!"
Well done! I was tempted to add `He can be my toy boy any day!"
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16249352-a-swarming-of-bees
Particularly because the central character is a middle-aged woman with a mind of her own and useful skills. She rebuilds her life on finding herself alone, as a herb-wife for the nuns at Whitby. I also like that she makes mistakes but picks herself up again. I've read it several times. Although it's not set in Northumberland, it has the feeling I love at Bamburgh and the Farne Islands of wild winds and salt air and freedom. Ancient Whitby must have been very similar. It's available on Amazon in the usual formats and second-hand bookshops too of course. You may already know about the book.
Ahead of their 10th wedding anniversary, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are ramping up their relatability, but have they copied from the Sussex playbook?
https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/have-the-cambridges-reclaimed-their-place-as-the-jewels-in-the-crown-20210331-p57fmc.html
Don't get annoyed about the subtitle. There's nothing to it really in the article.
With the coming of Spring it would be nice to view the Cambridge's 10th wedding anniversary as a return to relative normality and ethical standards. Draw a line under the tawdry Sussexes. At least we still have who we want for the future of the BRF and those we didn't want are now outside palace walls and have left our shores, at least one of them forever.
MM and Harkles having meetings on huge money moaking business opportunties at least a year prior to Megexit.-
One thing I found interesting in these articles - was MM controlled their Social Media voice (another O interview lie ) like Instagram, and had large Grid to plan the Cadence of their Drops of Content ( images and statements) presumable to ensure they stayed in the media limelight on a regular basis. BUT also probably confirms everyones suspicions that MM planned her SM Content drops to occur when other higher ranking BRF members had prescheduled events, thus taking media attention away from them and drawing to the Harkles.
That article just confirms what we nd the gossip sites already knew, that Harkles planned all of this, of course readjusting the plan as her ill-fated plans would fail, but as JH said “ it wasn’t part of THE Plan” hahaha . he let the cat out of the bag.
But lets scratch the surface very well and look at things properly without emotions. Are the Sussexes really succeeding financially? Have they gotten what they want? They wanted to keep their patronages. They failed. They wanted to be half in and half out. They failed. They wanted tax payer funded security. They failed. They wanted good press always. They failed. They thought by now that they will be rolling in billions. They failed. So what exactly have they succeded in?
They supposedly got deals with Spotify and Netflix but like is well known, they cant earn real money unless they produce content. They haven't produced any content since the last podcast, so where exactly will the money come from?
Has anyone bothered to calculate how much they spend on recurrent expenditure monthly? To maintain that large house will cost not less that $50k on a monthly basis. Security cost about $2m yearly. They spend not less than $50k on PR monthly according to someone who works in a top PR firm. They will be spending not less than $40k on staff salary. I've not mentioned their large mortgage, feeding, clothing, utilities etc. The minimum they will spend on a months basis including mortgage would be around $500k and I'm being very very conservative.
How much are they making monthly?I can bet you that between the both of them, they aren't pulling in up to 200k monthly. So what exactly are people pissed about? They may have made some cash from the interview, but trust me, whatever they made from there won't last for two months given the expenses they are incuring.
In 2019, Cardi B revealed that she spends about $300k monthly on maintainance and that hers is one of the cheapest compared to other celebrities.
https://pagesix.com/2019/02/05/this-is-how-much-it-costs-to-be-cardi-b/
The Sussexes are definitely spending far more than Cardi B and are earning less than she is. So, rather than get pissed off at them, I pity them because it is obvious that they are living far above their income.
As for the titles, believe me that they will soon become worthless in the US as time goes on. So whether or not it is removed, it won't change anything neither would it improve their financial situation. There is a reason why they were complaining about money in that interview and its because they are burning out cash faster than they are earning. I wonder what is left of the money Diana left for Harry. And about their merching, they aren't earning so much from that either.
The only way the Sussexes can live comfortably is if they are earning at least 1m monthly. But we know they aren't and I won't be surprised if they are already living in debts.
,
Harry's Mommy money must be nearly gone unless they're squatting at Oprah's. Even so, attorneys, PR, designer clothes, plastic surgeries, all of those special tutors for "Archie" The Invisible Child, (yeah, right!) 24\7 childcare, costs for surrogate for new pregnancy (or fertility specialists if there is a 'real' pregnancy), those all cost. Hopefully those they do business with are demanding pay in advance.
I still think about that lovely Herefordshire estate Harry could have had from his father. He could have had dogs, horses, an organic farm, a happy baby in a high-chair, a cat by the Aga. Collected and taken to events when needed then returned home. A steady supply of money turning up like magic in his bank account. Sharing times with his brother's family. Their children becoming friends.
Harry 'just' needed to find an undemanding, well-adjusted, uncomplicated wife who understood his world or could adapt to it as Catherine has done. Though what are the odds that both brothers could be so discerning and fortunate in their choice of wives?
Your comment reminds me of the old adage “fake it ‘till you make it”. And boy, are these two faking it. $100 million Netflix deal. $50 Spotify deal. Yet they can’t afford security or even a new suit and shoes for Harry. They project an image of success because they are desperately trying to be successful. So far, they are hanging by their fingernails from the periphery of it. If they were as successful as they claim, they wouldn’t be so bitter about Charles cutting them off financially.
I like your comparison of H/M's finances with Cardi-B's. I am sure you are right. That Carbi-B is doing lots better. Cardi knows her audience and they buy what she produces, however slutty it might be. At least with Cardi her stunts make me chuckle and laugh.
To Megs and Harry --- They gotta buy your product and are not putting out any unless you got a cut of the Orpah interview. Harry's new San Fran "Mental Fitness" job might get him one million per year before taxes. Upkeep and taxes on your mansion are at least $300,000. The water/irrigation bill must be tremendous.
Thank you for the recommendation - I hadn't come across the book but it sounds a good read. I haven't dealt with Amazon since we were bounced into paying for Prime - it was quite a performance to escape. I have, though, got a neighbour who will order on my behalf so that's what I'll do. The annual total for a Prime sub would have added a serious cost to the few items I'd ever want from them - I'd have to sell my soul to them to break even!
I used to love Rosemary Sutcliffe's `Eagle of the Ninth' but was very disappointed with the film - complete elimination of the courageous female characters & instead an almost a gay subtext. The son of a friend worked on the production - when I mentioned it to him he said `Ah, everything has to have an `angle' now.'
It's been a glorious Easter Day here, made even better by the results of the Boat Races!
Excellent post.
@SwampWoman
Yes, even without staying at the Manor, their costs are high.
I would like to add to all the calculations, the cost of secrecy - it's one thing to be buying services of staff, surgeons, PR, the whole list, but to then ask for a cloak of secrecy to shroud the exchange, bound by threats of litigation - that's got to cost. I hope everyone's ripping them off.
They could also have left the UK gracefully instead of throwing entitled brat tantrums and accusations of racism to counter stories of their bad behavior. They could have returned for visits to the family. They could have kept a lower profile and not called paps for anything. But no.
Thank you for posting the articles. It's good to know - however difficult to digest - how it's playing out on the other side.
I wonder though if they are reading the damning articles being published regularly in the UK disputing the H&M narrative. Otherwise, it's two echo chambers.
`In any pair of criminals, one is always the junior partner - it's never equal' or wtte.
He was right, the wife was in control and faking victimhood. Their difficulty lay in ascertaining which was which.
It includes $9,000 for security, $5,000 for gardening, $1,000 for grooming and $3,000 for his wardrobe. With a monthly income of $184,969 — mostly in royalties and interest on investments — Fitty pays $72,000-a-month on the house, including $14,200 a month for utilities and $30,700 a month for mortgage, property tax and insurance. Note that this doesn't include child care, payment of staff salaries, payment to PR firm etc.
In fact, he was owing his stylist and personal trainer at the time he was in court.
Note also that at the time, his monthly income was $184,969, yet, he filed for bankruptcy. Between Harry and Meg, can we really say that their monthly income is up to 200k? Yet, I can bet that they are spending more than 300k monthly because whatever they are paying includes PR, child care, etc, which isn't included in 50 cent's expenditure.
Now, with this scenario, can we actually say that Harry and Meghan are cashing out? Yes, they are monetising their titles but how much have they actually earned even with the titles? One of the reasons why they did the interview is to force the RF into paying for their security and resume funding. They are desperate for money thats why they were complaining about Charles cutting them off financially.
The so called Netflix deal doesn't translate to money in their pocket unless they produce content. Same as spotify. At most, what they would have been paid is sign on fee which is usually little.
There is a reason why Meghan had to let her agent Nick Collins go. She can't afford to give him 20 percent of any deals because money is tight. And no one should think they are making bank through merching. Meghan's Mirror makes about 15k per year, so there isnt anything fantastic there.
With the illustration I've given, can we really say the Sussexes are successful in the real sense of it? They are monetising their titles, yes. But what actual income is coming into their pockets even with those titles and their royal connections? There is a reason why they never ever mention the amount of money they donate to these random charities except the funds that doesn't come out of their pockets (like the money from the cookbook). They never mention the amount they donate because it's usually very little.
Underneath all the noise about titles, there is really nothing significant coming into their pockets compared to their expenditure.
It includes $9,000 for security, $5,000 for gardening, $1,000 for grooming and $3,000 for his wardrobe. With a monthly income of $184,969 — mostly in royalties and interest on investments — Fitty pays $72,000-a-month on the house, including $14,200 a month for utilities and $30,700 a month for mortgage, property tax and insurance. Note that this doesn't include child care, payment of staff salaries, payment to PR firm etc.
In fact, he was owing his stylist and personal trainer at the time he was in court.
Note also that at the time, his monthly income was $184,969, yet, he filed for bankruptcy. Between Harry and Meg, can we really say that their monthly income is up to 200k? Yet, I can bet that they are spending more than 300k monthly because whatever they are paying includes PR, child care, etc, which isn't included in 50 cent's expenditure.
Now, with this scenario, can we actually say that Harry and Meghan are cashing out? Yes, they are monetising their titles but how much have they actually earned even with the titles? One of the reasons why they did the interview is to force the RF into paying for their security and resume funding. They are desperate for money thats why they were complaining about Charles cutting them off financially.
The so called Netflix deal doesn't translate to money in their pocket unless they produce content. Same as spotify. At most, what they would have been paid is sign on fee which is usually little.
There is a reason why Meghan had to let her agent Nick Collins go. She can't afford to give him 20 percent of any deals because money is tight. And no one should think they are making bank through merching. Meghan's Mirror makes about 15k per year, so there isnt anything fantastic there.
With the illustration I've given, can we really say the Sussexes are successful in the real sense of it? They are monetising their titles, yes. But what actual income is coming into their pockets even with those titles and their royal connections? There is a reason why they never ever mention the amount of money they donate to these random charities except the funds that doesn't come out of their pockets (like the money from the cookbook). They never mention the amount they donate because it's usually very little.
Underneath all the noise about titles, there is really nothing significant coming into their pockets compared to their expenditure.
@Nelo...great break down of the finances. I whole heartedly agree that the spin that their "winning" is false and that their lifestyle is likely unsustainable. I can't even wrap my head around $500K per month in expenses and they still complain and want people to feel sorry for them?!?
He is risen indeed.