As ever#4 - As usual

[Words]

New thread!

Again

@Onlyonekenobe yes, exactly on ‘outsider’.

You have to be beautiful to get anywhere generally as an actress, prob true, but looks stark written down. I think men find her very attractive on the whole & yes, others are jealous.

She’s intelligent for sure & as you describe I think. No, not a great intellect but few are.

Yes, I see where you are coming from on the ‘shallow tribe’ & having broad appeal perhaps & magnetism but I fear I see a sinister calculating character too, at best, a personality disorder at worst. She’s certainly polarising. I think people don’t like her as she’s disingenuous, hypocritical & self absorbed yet many believe otherwise & that rankles.

@isaknowsbest is/was she more beautiful & well dressed than 80-90 per cent of similarly aged women out there? Absolutely, yes. Without question. Think of the average woman shopping in Tesco :).

It takes a lot of financial investment for Dolly's packets to look that cheap.

Sites are supposed to tell you what they do with your info. If you order something, you can opt out for it being sold to thirds parties. I messed up a few months ago and didn't opt out, and am now getting catalogs from some clothing companies with very bad reputations.

You could try contacting the Federal Trade Commission:

https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/contact

Edited for lots of typos.

@User14March - I've given it a go ( Late Flowering Lust ) I do thank you for making me read it. It is dark - here are so many go to cheap things you could say . I've tried not to . Only some stanzas used - the last I have used is the original.

and @Words @Uricon2

Late Flowering Lust

My head is bald, bad press I've had
Unshaven is my chin,
I have not now the joys I had
When Royals were close kin.

I gave you Pa' s grand largess,
And gave you Sussex name
And you respond to my noblesse
I hope you feel the same.

But I've a picture of my own
Of that Invictus night,
Where two celebrities are shewn
To hold each other tight;

I cling to you inflamed with fear
As now you cling to me,
I feel how frail you are my dear
And wonder what will be —

Normal service of commenting more relevantly will be resumed shortly 😂

You know, I think I'm falling in love with these threads a bit. Everyone is so intelligent, perspicacious, funny and well-read.

@Onlyonekenobe your magisterial summing up is basically the last word which anyone needs to read on As Ever. As I've speculated a lot, the clusterfuck that this rollout has been demonstrates that Meghan no longer has the benefit of high quality, expert, experienced PR or creative advice.

This can only be for two reasons:

1. She and Harry are running out of cash
2. She's seen as such a toxic entity in Hollywood that nobody wants to sully their professional reputation by working with her.

Personally, I think it's a little from Column A, a little from Column B.

But the ultimate problem is that neither of them are especially bright or gifted at anything, and, stripped of the Royal sparkle, their lack of talent and creative ideas is laid bare.

@GiveMeSpanakopita - your last paragraph is spot on. That amazing wedding seemed to make them believe that they were somehow special, rather than being supported and welcomed because of what they represented.
Prince Philip once said that it's important to remember that it's not about you, it's about the institution, and I think neither of them got that.

One of the Sussex narratives that annoys me is about how terrible the COVID time was for them.(Unlike the rest of us who breezed through it). It stopped them unleashing their full glory on the world.
Whereas I have always thought that without lockdown their lack of talent and creativity would have been exposed sooner.

I don't think it was just the wedding. Meghan's press when she first got engaged to Harry and then became part of the RF was hagiographic.

Palace PR pumped out loads of exaggerated flummery about her, and the UK press, excited to have a breath of fresh air entering the RF, obediently churned it out. Meghan was presented as a titan on the global stage: a well-read and highly conscious feminist, a humanitarian campaigner with a strong track record; a gifted and highly acclaimed actress. Together, she and Harry would heal the world.

It's a testament to the power of PR that a mediocre, mid-intellect actress was presented to the public as a combination of Amal Clooney, Ruth Baden-Ginsberg, Malala Yousafzai and Mother Theresa. We (well, not all of us - those of us who'd grown up with narcissists felt our spidey-senses tingle) swallowed it.

And you know what? I think Meghan believed her own press. Harry I think has always had an inflated view of himself because for all his life he's had every hour of his waking days structured and cared for and he's been constantly told he's special.

All it took was for the glittery curtain of royalty to be pulled aside and we see that they're just two deeply mediocre, psychologically damaged overgrown children trying desperately to make global fame and wealth 'happen' without any of the talent, money and smarts it actually takes to make that happen.

A very effective cautionary tale about the crucial differences between appearance and substance. Something that's often forgotten in our shallow appearance-obsessed media landscape.

Yes, I agree. Imagine the influence they could have had! They were on the world stage.
I was fooled - I genuinely believed all that presentation.

This show is what she's always wanted to do since the days of The Tig and her try-outs for cooking shows (sampling pickles in Brooklyn was a resounding fail).

Not sure I agree.

10 years ago if you'd told her she'd have her own lifestyle show on NF then sure, she'd have been ecstatic.

But her ambitions massively increased once she snagged a prince and became a duchess. She thought she was too good or the royal family and was going to become a globe trotting philanthropist, touring the world giving speeches and attending gala dinners, with a side of putting out the kind of 'elevated, uplifting' programming someone above alluded to. But none of that happened. So she's back to her 'Tig' days.

I think if this had been her dream she'd have started work on it 5 years ago. But she didn't even have a public Instagram until last month. I don't think this is where she wants to be at all.

I was unfortunate enough to be raised and abused by a narcissist, then married and had children with a violent narcissist. So my spidey senses were vibrating from that engagement interview. (Not saying she's violent or abusive OBVIOUSLY but I could clearly see the traits and symptoms of narcissistic manipulation and lovebombing).

I think also, because I work in PR, I'm very good at separating out fine-sounding words and presentation from the actual substance. It's a key onboarding meeting I do with all new clients - they tell me what they want to say and how they want to be seen and I say OK, that's fine, but if you want to present yourself that way then you need proof points - you need substance and evidence. And then we work together to pull that out. If they don't have it, then the presentation won't work.

Good PR isn't really all about lies. It's about presenting the truth as well as possible. But to succeed, you need to have an underlying truth (an actual empirical truth, not a Meghan-esque 'my truth'). So to take an example, you can't present yourself as a seasoned feminist unless you have actual theory and praxis. Julie Bindel and Emma Watson are not the same. One IS a feminist, the other presents the surface only.

I hope that makes sense. But anyway, Meghan got found out very quickly. South Park gets it - showing Meghan as hollow was a perfect visual representation of what I've said above.

@Onlyonekenobe a great analysis. I would also add though that people like that are successful until we see behind the scenes. Meghan's problem is that she is trying to maintain that image whilst simultaneously there are credible reports of bullying coming from all sides. This wouldn't happen to a private person but it's hard to maintain the cool fun image when we also read about how she is in private.

@GiveMeSpanakopita you must be quite brilliant at your job & you write so well!,

I echo a PP above who said this thread has attracted some of the best wit, erudition, perspicacity, even handedness & brilliance I’s seen on the site.

I've filled out a report re not being able to unsubscribe, I hope I get a response.

@GiveMeSpanakopita how do you think this ends & plays out within a year let’s say?

I read some really interesting posts on threads from a poster who had worked for many years in Hollywood as an assistant, and who was sharing some of her war stories about the people she had worked for (she figured as her NDAs were all over a decade old she was probably safe).

She had an interesting story about Meghan - her brother had worked with her as her agent in the early days, and he got her the job on Deal Or No Deal. She said she had met Meghan through her brother, and that she was very nice (while noting of course she was - he was her agent!), but that her brother’s take on it was that Meghan would never make it big in Hollywood because she just lacked “it” - the undefinable star quality that you need, and that really makes you stand out from all the other stunning, immaculately turned out, incredibly well-behaved aspiring actors who are also desperate to make it.

She mentioned she enjoyed reminding her brother that he had been wrong about Meghan, while also acknowledging that she’d ultimately made it to the A-list via marriage.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see whether Meghan’s show can harness the quality that’s needed to make people like her and tune in to watch her. Because beyond idle curiosity that is what she’ll need to make it a hit in audiences beyond her dedicated fans.

Bravo, quite brilliant! I am glad this thread is bringing Betjeman’s forgotten gems to light. Some kids absolutely love & miss so worth unearthing. The originals that is. :)

There’s another about having baths in Camden town that might be suitable. Will have to look up.

Any other poets suitable for our tweaked anthology?

@Onlyonekenobe @GiveMeSpanakopita On the £ front, I think they don’t want to spend their own money on PR expertise & as little as possible on anything else. @GiveMeSpanakopita how much would the very best representation cost?

@User14March

On cost of good PR. It really depends on what the brief is and who the agency are. Meghan started with Sunshine Sachs, who I've worked alongside tangentially (I'm not claiming to be on or anywhere near their level, I am very much small fry, and my rates are too in the grand scheme!). SS can levy retainer fees of anything from $25k per month upwards for a sizeable brief. And they are excellent, impeccable power and credentials, excellent juniors. But it really is a case of how long is a piece of string - agents will charge a retainer or a discrete project fee and it depends so much on the situation, the size of the team required, is it cross border, does it cover social media AND legacy media, is it multi-lingual etc. The costs will rack up quickly for a 360 degree brief.

Rumour in the industry is that SS let Meghan go for non-payment of invoices. That I can believe.

An individual agent or a start-up or small agency would be much cheaper BUT they won't have the same skillset, reach, influence or power as one of the big agencies.

As to how I see it panning out, I dunno I'm not a soothsayer :-)

Professionally I think it'll continue to be a slow slide into irrelevance UNLESS something external changes eg a major acting job, an awesome product line that flies off the shelves, a change in their relationship etc.

Personally, folie a deux type relationships whereby each partner has some form of personality disorder and/or trauma, never end well.

@GiveMeSpanakopita I’ve heard it said that possibly some other Royals are slow payers, namely Sarah Ferguson, possibly this comes with turf of entitlement or disorganisation, likely both. Thank you.

I don't think we see the real Meghan, even her description from Harry do not match the persona on the tv screens. Personally I feel she masks, a fake it till you make it approach. She becomes what she perceives the audience wants, this is more than acting a role as you get to name that role. This comes at a cost and it usually exhaustion and the mask slips and generally that persona is not accurate either. I find it jarring as she has a slightly resting bitch face and hasn't mastered facial transitions so often go from raucous laughing to a deadpan face instantly.

Another stellar post, GiveMeSpanakopita, and if you were right about the thread being full of "intelligent, perspicacious, funny and well-read" comments I'd say yours shine out among them

Anyway it makes a pleasant change from "you're all raaaaaycist"

I'm happy to have learnt a new word today.

perspicacity

Every day is a school day.