Porkies, Perfidies & Pomposity - Harry and Meghan thread 2

[YaMuvva]

I do not take credit for the title

First thread here

Shall we continue the discussion? I will not be engaging with the posters spouting damaging and unfounded gossip

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/the_royal_family/5084429-why-do-harry-and-meghan-tell-porkies-that-are-so-easy-to-prove-wrong?page=1

Thanks @AliceOlive. That’s good to know and I’m really glad. I will have to check that interview out!

I posted this in another thread but just came across it today even though it’s older. Have you seen it?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/meghan-and-diana-could-have-saved-royal-family/618318/

<a class="break-all" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220323233028/www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/meghan-and-diana-could-have-saved-royal-family/618318/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20220323233028/www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/meghan-and-diana-could-have-saved-royal-family/618318/

That article was a fascinating read.

Was her problem naivety? Possibly, although she was a woman in her late 30s who'd been around the block, not some sheltered teenager. Anyway, she seems to have been shockingly ill informed, partly Harry's fault of course.
Interesting article though, thanks

Very snarky. Interesting to think about what’s happened and not in the 3 years since:

“He was a combat veteran, a prince, the grandson, great-grandson, and great-great-grandson of English monarchs, and now he was going to have to think up some podcasts.”

This 'MM didn't know anything about Harry' baffles me. I'm 70 and where do I go to find out stuff? the internet. I research and I check and I read up, and I'm not even the generation that grew up with computers and the 'net. And yet this savvy, smart woman apparently didn't even do a brief google check about who she was seeing.

Agree, and it’s been debunked by her former agent Gina Nelthorpe Cowne. Meghan absolutely knew who she was going on that ‘blind date’ with and had Googled him.

I am just struck by the stupidity of both of them. Also, Harry inherited $30 million from his mother. Enough to keep me in luxury for a lifetime. He's pissed it away.

When I watched Harry with kids and the Invictus Games, I thought that he would have been a great physical therapist with kids. He could have started small, gotten a degree, opened a small clinic. He could have led a happy life helping kids.

Instead he is flying around with lots of sound and fury to no purpose.

Just reading the article now. Jaded at 32?!! 😱

Declining help from Lieutenant Colonel Nana Kofi Twumasi-Ankrah and the now Duchess of Edinburgh wasn’t a great decision unless Harry had a hand in that and she truly believed that only he could help her.
Sophie is clearly very popular with the rest of the family and would have been a useful ally.

What was she, Meghan Markle, a simple girl from Los Angeles, to have understood about such an institution as the British? How was she to know that Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other realms and territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith was in any way different from the Lady of Gaga?

🤣🤣🤣

Sophie is clearly very popular with the rest of the family and would have been a useful ally

Poor Sophie clearly got dumped with the Meghan babysitting duties at state occasions preMegzit - and right hacked off she looked, as well.

Thanks for the link to that article, plenty of truth bombs !

She told Oprah that she had never even Googled her future husband’s name—a remark that united the viewing world in hilarity, time zone by time zone.

😁

Thanks for the link to that article @AliceOlive It’s really interesting and multi-faceted.
Caitlin Flanagan is known for being pro Sussex, or at least Meghan. (She has less of a sympathetic pen for Harry!) she comes across as being biased and being anti-royal. When I read the bit about Meghan putting the oxygen mask on the Royal Family, I almost couldn’t read further.

In one part of the article she writes how Meghan is accomplished and philanthropic (not delving into details about how the internship and charity visits came about-(through networking and family contacts). Then tries to persuade the reader about Meghan’s naivety at first on how the Royal Family works was not her fault. All of a sudden she is cast as a simple LA girl, in an innocent mistake, thinking that the workings of the institution would be the same as that of celebrity culture. Which Meghan is she?!

The article hasn’t aged well and I wonder if it would differ much if she were to write it today. Her take on Diana becoming narcissistic and vengeful is interesting because that is how many see Harry. Also interesting is that she saw Harry as something owned and kept by Meghan, like the chickens. This was astute.

The Monarchy doesn’t need an oxygen mask in the form of one person, to future proof it. They’re not the same as ailing celebrities and it seems from that article that ironically, Caitlin is making the same mistake as Meghan did.

@MummyJ12 I don’t know anything about the author but that article seemed to be mocking Meghan and Harry at every turn. I think she was dripping with sarcasm.

I didn’t pick up on the sarcasm (my bad maybe). I know that she’s written a few articles on the couple and the articles usually seem sympathetic towards them.

Here’s another one.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/12/harry-meghan-netflix-attention-apology/672581/

I agree the oxygen mask remark was weird. Anyone who has read anything about the monarchy knows that its popularity rises and falls. It wasn't unpopular before Meghan, maybe a bit boring, but not unpopular. I don't remember reading articles demanding racial diversity within the family which would be the only context that makes sense.

Is the writer American? I have found a tendency in Americans in general, and you can see it in Meghan, to expect the UK to have exactly the same racial issues and context as the US and it just doesn't. Yes we have problems with racism but they aren't the same problems because they arise from our history not theirs.

The other difference I find when discussing the Royal family with my American friends is the difficulty in explaining the way they intersect with culture and society and history. We want to see them in tiaras and carriages but on a day to day basis we expect middle class thrift (the Queen's tupperware, Charles' ancient suits) and a lack of pretension.

The whole thing is a bit weird and complicated and I think a lot of us didn't realise how complicated until Meghan married in, obviously without any preparation or warning from Harry, and then failed to grasp the details and expectations of what she had married into. And how could she, I know she refused the Aide and Sophie but I would bet good money that Harry was in her ear getting her to refuse.

In summary, she wasn't an oxygen mask, she was a victim of Harry's preference for feelings over facts and truth.

Another fib reported here.

Meghan knew how to curtsy, she apparently had to curtsy during a scene in Suits. Sarah Ferguson didn’t teach her or need to teach her.
Maybe, she forgot like she forgot that she helped Scobie with Finding Freedom?!

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/us-celebrity-news/meghan-markle-claims-sarah-ferguson-32943781

She had ballet lessons and every ballerina knows how to curtsy.

It’s just such a silly thing to lie about isn’t it?! Why? I don’t understand the motivation behind it.

It seems to me that her default is to lie, and about stupid things. Who cares if she doesn't know when and how to curtsey, or if she's a bit rusty with the technique? I get the feeling that she thinks she has to do everything perfectly and be seen to be flawless, so if she can't or if there's a gap in her knowledge she just rushes in with a lie.

I think they forget the lies that they have told before, and expect everyone else to as well. Such a shame for them that people do remember things and that the internet exists 🤷🏽‍♀️

I think she wanted to paint a picture of herself as innocent and went overboard.

If she had said, “I had ample life experience but still felt out of my element. Of course I knew who Harry was, but I didn’t truly know anything about him. I had watched the royal wedding and even written commentary on it, but that’s not preparation for becoming part of a family. I was surprised at their formality. Surprised about so many things. I was nervous about meeting the Queen, and of course they understood that and tried to prepare me.”

All of that I could believe; I do believe it actually. But Meghan often gilds and embellishes the truth to the extent that it becomes unrecognizable. It’s as if she wants to come across as fragile and innocent but it never plays well against the facts.