Omid Scobie Endgame PART 5

[Mymilkshakebringsallthepapstomycar]

A continuing civilised and enjoyable discussion of all things relating to Endgame. Please keep posts on topic - I do not want to have to invoke Ross Gellar again!

Previous thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/the_royal_family/4957618-omid-scobie-endgame-part-4?page=1

@QueenOfHertz - yes! 😂
Plus, I love your user name....

I'm sure someone somewhere has photoshopped Piers Morgan's head in there

I keep thinking the girl on the right of the photo is Beatrice! It’s not but definitely a resemblance!

The green and font make me think of Hallmark stuff in the USA.

What do you wish your colleagues of other faiths/backgrounds when you skip out of the office on the 24th of December? Happy time off? Surely you don't go, "John, Chris, Edith: Happy Christmas! Anouar and Aisha: see you wednesday!" That would also sound weird and unfriendly. So what do you say to them?

I think it sounds a bit strange here, because the more established phrase here is Season's Greetings

This is a US corporate card, and they're using US speech habits

Americans also refer to what we in the UK call public holidays as just "holidays". I've been caught out at US customs when being asked what my purpose of travel is - saying "holiday" instead of "vacation" and getting a confused response. I'm pretty sure they start saying "happy holidays" from Thanksgiving onwards until the new year (happy to be corrected by any American posters).

Anyway, their card looks a bit hastily put together (they should have tried to airbrush some of the background figures out) and a bit 1980s in font style, but the Happy Holidays bit is fine, imo. They aren't aiming it at the UK, and it's a perfectly normal phrase to use in the US. I'm glad if they did indeed have a more controversial picture and decided to opt out of using it for an Archewell communication.

I'd imagine not using the picture they wanted has been added to their long lists of grievances.

I agree that Happy Holidays is an accepted American term.

@Andarna I just say Merry Christmas much like they wish me Eid Mubarak

yes that’s my question too @Andarna

Perhaps it’s because I live in a country that is more multicultural than Britain is as yet, but I started saying ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry/Happy Christmas’ decades ago. People become exercised over the strangest things.

One more hypocrisy: all their Archewell top people are white

As were the men in Megan’s life before Harry.

I think it’s very obvious she never identified with he African American heritage

Didn't she say in their Netflix series that she never felt black in the USA?

I wonder if she has much to do with her mother's family.

https://andscape.com/features/meghan-markle-harry-race-netflix/

Interesting article on this topic.

I don't think we can blame MM for how she was brought up or what identities were or were not imparted to her by her parents - or for doing what she needed to do to fit in. What irritates me is the lack of self insight, self reflection and acknowledgement that she too may have been perpetrator of bias (conscious or unconscious); whilst at the same throwing accusations of the same at everyone else, most particular parties who have, more often than not, demonstrated quite the opposite. It's the same with Harry. Their overwhelming sense of their own perpetual victimhood and their own rightness in every situation is maddening.

The point about the Archewell staff is that they will argue that they have employed qualified people and people they trust for the job. Which is as it should be. But their friend, OS, does not afford the same grace to the RF. And when a very respected and trusted person of colour is in their employ, he denigrates his position to assist and mentor in favour of the opinions of MM's "friends", as if that trumps the man's service and experience in the armed forces and in the royal household.

https://www.newsweek.com/meghan-markle-bombshell-oprah-winfrey-race-1852300

Interesting article on the naming of the Royal "racists"

From the above article, just to clarify

Oprah asked Meghan: "You certainly must have had some conversations with Harry about it and have your own suspicions as to why they didn't want to make Archie a prince. What are those thoughts? Why do you think that is? Do you think it's because of his race?"

I can give you an honest answer," Meghan replied. "In those months when I was pregnant, all around this same time...  so we have in tandem the conversation of 'He won't be given security, he's not going to be given a title' and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he's born."

Oprah asked whether Meghan meant "they were concerned that if he were too brown, that that would be a problem?" and the duchess said: "If that's the assumption you're making, I think that feels like a pretty safe one."!

Again, so the first half of that conversation is obviously a lie. The reason Archie, then, wasn't a prince is procedural.

Yet, they've styled their children Prince and Princess without a hint of embarrassment. That's some volte face.

@CallmeSand thank you for the link. That was a good overview, and interesting points about the Equality Act.

Not sure I agree wit the conclusion: that the initial charge made by Meghan may stand the test of time and be the abiding memory, in the way the Diana "three people in our marriage" has. For a start, Diana was not wrong, we all know what was happening and obviously the romance between Charles and Camila continues. Diana died not too long after that interview, and that really is everyone's last and rare glimpse into her intimate thoughts and feelings.

Whereas we have a vague and confused set of racism charges, made by a person not party to the relevant conversation, who seems confused about the time of it and is conflating it with other unrelated matters (titles and security). We have had Netflix and Spare not mentioning it, Harry's extensive interviews and backtracking on it, lots of satire on the couple and now OS's making a pig's ear of bringing it all up again. We have both sides on show for years to come, and at least one side being vocally expressive about their ongoing lives, feelings etc. We have Charles who has demonstrably always been liberal and multi-culturally minded (much to the consternation of many conservatives), and we have no reason to suspect any ill intentions on the part of Catherine, who gets on with things without complaining, which is an admirable quality in today's world. Unless M&H themselves bring the matter to the fore again, and do so with full disclosure, I don't think the Oprah interview will stand up to the test of time. Oprah herself is no longer as beloved and trusted as she once was either, and. that reflects on her work.

I’m additionally confused as to whether the racist allegations refer to one isolated conversation or many - even in the Oprah interview it’s not clear. Not that it matters, if true, one conversation is one too many. But it’s another example of how vague, unspecified and murky this whole “bombshell “ is.

There's an article in (I think) Marie Clare, before she met Harry where her character in Suits had her 'father' introduced as a black man, and there followed on social media an awful lot of racist comments about her being 'black', and in a very negative, derogatory and misogynistic way. I can probably link if you like . So she clearly did.

Did feel black, or did have much to do with her mother's family?

Looking at the article linked above (Meghan Markle thought being biracial could protect her from racism. She was wrong. — Andscape) her words seemed to be that no-one treated her as a Black woman in the USA, and it was a shock (and unwelcome) to her that people in the UK saw her as black.

@wildernesssw From Elle (July 2015). I think this shows there was an element a racial othering. Long before she lived in the UK.

'At the end of season two, the producers went a step further and cast the role of Rachel's father as a dark-skinned African-American man, played by the brilliant Wendell Pierce. I remember the tweets when that first episode of the Zane family aired, they ran the gamut from: 'Why would they make her dad black? She's not black' to 'Ew, she's black? I used to think she was hot.' The latter was blocked and reported. The reaction was unexpected, but speaks of the undercurrent of racism that is so prevalent, especially within America. On the heels of the racial unrest in Ferguson and Baltimore, the tensions that have long been percolating under the surface in the US have boiled over in the most deeply saddening way. And as a biracial woman, I watch in horror as both sides of a culture I define as my own become victims of spin in the media, perpetuating stereotypes and reminding us that the States has perhaps only placed bandages over the problems that have never healed at the root'.

No. 1 in the queue for the Scobie-fest at the local library.

Had to wait six months for the execrable 'Spare' so feeling like a winner esp. as I'm spanking the recent 99p Kindle deal😎

Finding Freedom was free on Kindle about a year ago.