PR Disasters ….part 7

[AtIusvue]

Meg and Harry PR shenanigans

I can’t imagine Meghan is happy to be used as a prop for someone else’s success. She’s never struck me as a team player ?

Anyway, this is all tugging at a half-remembered story that I think came from one of David Niven’s memoirs about a party he attended at William Randolph Hearst’s mansion in Hollywood in the 1930s. It was hosted by Hollywood actress Carol Lombard who had imposed a strict dress code - white evening dresses for ladies and white tuxedo jackets for men. Actress Norma Shearer turned up, intentionally, in a scarlet red dress, and she and Carole Lombard were sworn enemies ever after. So deliberately ignoring the dress code has a definite Hollywood pedigree!

SM speculation is that Ted is trying to limit the possibility of a lawsuit, as some of his employees broke a very tight Non Disparaging Ageement when they bitched about Meghan and Ted being done with them. Apparently, the agreement is that he would present a public face of being supportive of Meghan to undermine the disclosures from the employees (possibly now ex employees).

It makes sense !!

We know how Harry operated with Sophie Chandauka when Meghan’s rudeness went viral, why would this even bigger humiliation be allowed to go unchecked.

You are not the only poster “ straining to do some explaining “ on this thread !
perhaps less main character syndrome is in order.

You are being pedantic, an inducement for me to be pedantic too.

Here are four clearer sentences, with lots of sub-clauses to reduce the chance of misunderstanding:

A quick look (or even a 30-minute scrutiny with a magnifying glass, which, incidentally, I have not undertaken ) reveals women other than the guest of honour Carey Mulligan dressed in monochromatic tones, with the exception of Meghan Markle, the hue of whose chartreuse, ankle-length dress draws the eye, in particular in a shot taken outside and in which Meghan is standing against a high stone wall. What the published pictures do not reveal is whether any of the photographed women are staff. On the balance of probability, however, they are likely to be guests as it is not customary to photograph staff at celebrity parties and issue the photographs to international image agencies such as Getty. Further evidence that Meghan Markle may have chosen to ignore the dresscode and dress in the same colour as the guest of honour can be found on two other notable occasions on which she chose not to follow the dress code which other women guests, out of respect for the hosts, did follow: ('Ladies, please wear pale blue.' Markle: 'Nope. I had a dish soap ad changed using the power of my female voice when I was 11 so I'm wearing khaki, a colour that reminds me of the dishsoap and my challenge to the patriarchy'; 'Ladies, please wear red, white or blue in honour of the Union Jack.' Markle: 'Nope. The British are colonialist and the Commonwealth is merely a twentieth century incarnation of empire. As an American citizen, a Nigerian and a Malteser, I owe no allegiance to red, white and blue. I'm wearing chartreuse, in homage to dish soap, a misogynoir ad for which catapulted me to feminist activism on a global scale as a woman of colour and a sister at the age of 12.')

It does seem irrational - that’s what’s so odd about it.

But Meghan’s main problem from a brand perspective is that there’s been enough weirdness around her clothing choices in the past that it’s easy for people to believe something deliberate was going on.

There has at least been a shift change

@IdaGlossop As an American citizen, a Nigerian and a Malteser,

A Malteser🙈

Thank you for the big belly laugh I just had. ❤️

Telegraph:

‘The visit Down Under has been in the diary for around a year but was originally planned on a much smaller scale. It was expanded in recent weeks when the dates coincided with various charitable and business invitations and the couple “saw an opportunity” to visit grassroots organisations that shared their values.
However, planned but unannounced walkabouts in Sydney and Melbourne had to be abandoned after an operational note was leaked, compromising security.’

They had planned a walkabout!!!!!! Are they for real!

Love that it’s gone tits up. But would have been funny to see the Aussies lacklustre response 😂

Aussie reactions:

A comment piece in Sunday’s edition of Melbourne’s Herald Sun described the couple as “grifters” and criticised their “preachy brand of empowerment”.
Susie O’Brien, the writer, said: “Last time Meghan and Harry graced our shores, they were starry-eyed newly-weds and we were foolish enough to line the streets in our thousands.”
Referring to this week’s visit, she added: “We’re too busy being authentically broke and authentically tired to care about their inauthentic issues.”

A piece published in Monday’s Sydney Morning Herald asked: “Does anyone seriously believe they are coming to our shores for reasons other than financial and reputational?”

It's my pleasure 🤩

Call me an old cynic but did they really want walkabouts? They didn't do them in Nigeria, Colombia or Jordan but saying they are planned makes them look important.

It’s the old ‘pigeons playing chess’ derailing tactic - don’t be drawn in, it’s a trap to distract from the Sentebale shenanigans and the upcoming Australia nonsense which no doubt will keep us chuckling for at least another week as the calamitous fools serve up more content for ridicule. Amazing that a MH conference would ask PH to speak on MH in the workplace when he has (yet again) been accused of bullying and belittling. It’s a pattern of behaviour investigated and exposed on many separate pervious occasions throughout his life - right up to this weeks law suit.

They absolutely do not want walkabouts because the first thing the press will do is put the 2018 crowds side by side with whatever predictably lackluster showing they’d get today.

Absolute worst case scenario would be potential boos.

But they have to pretend there’s a security reason for not doing them to cover for the above.

Oh yes. I believe that we are definitely being read by a lot of journalists and You Tubers.

It’s why we also we also get the try-too-hard ploppers and spouters from the, erm, South Saxon Brigade.

Actually, I want to give this post a thumbs up for sheer effort 😀. On an otherwise mundane Monday morning for me, this did make me smile for its seriousness.

Lady, there's nothing anyone - including Meghan Markle - can do or say to convince me that she's not all the things I think she is: self-obsessed, greedy, vainglorious, arrogant, insecure, duplicitous, unkind, ruthless, not very clever, but also relentless (in a good way), not a quitter, probably quite fun to hang out with from time to time, driven, ambitious, bold, tenacious. I don't care about her enough to come on here more than sporadically these days (certainly not daily!) as they've both become quite boring now, but I'm 100% waiting for the denouement of all this - mostly for Harry as he does hold a constitutionally meaningful position in the UK. I'm quite okay with "publicly trashing" MM as she lives for publicity so, live by the sword/die by the sword. She's free to hunt me down and sue me if she likes!

I will say, though, that over the many, many threads on MN about MM since she married Harry, I've always striven to understand the motives of people who come on here to defend her. I got close, once, when a poster kindly explained that for her it's about standing up to bullies. I don't think she thought that MM was reading this board and felt unable to respond and so she had to stand in for her. I think she was wanting to set an example for people trashing public figures post-Caroline Flack. But the narrative with MM has moved on from public criticism constituting bullying. Partly this will be because of the numerous and disparate accounts of victims of her bullying of them over many years and roles and positions and locations. Those in glass houses etc. It's also because she herself has provided enough and better fodder through her own words and actions and that's what people focus on now. So, posts like mine tend not to be criticised for bullying these days (I don't think that's what you're saying?). I'm drawn back to trying to understand why a poster like you would take the time to write such a post. I wrote mine because my cumulative impression of Montecito-based MM is that she's a talentless ex-actress with an over-inflated self of sense, with mean girl tendencies and no long-term plan and increasing desperation, and (frankly) I find it delicious watching someone who thinks they're 'all that' finding out, in slow mo, that actually they're not. Mine is running commentary, basically. Would you tell me why you're vested in rebutting this sort of post?

Having been in the position of wearing the duplicate dress of another woman at a function once (and she looked way better than me!), and knowing that the party was local to them, I don't see how the reaction to that situation could have been anything other than "oh shit, let's nip home so I can change!"

@Mylovelygreendress yes you were my name inspiration today!

Oooh that's an excellent point @CesarSoubreyon
I watched Beef a couple of years ago but wasn't aware of a new series, until this.

@Perhaps that's why they're keeping back details, * - so that if the hoped-for crowds don't materialise they can blame the need for security?

I agree with this entirely.

I’m also very interested in the psychology of the super fans/defenders because at this point there are a number of awful to questionable things that Meghan has done.

At the point of Megxit it was much easier to understand the defenders because there had been a lot of unfair commentary on social media and in the comments sections on articles. Not the main stream media - apart from the usual up/down news stream flow.

And some of that was genuine commentary on some of the odd things Meghan was doing - the bump holding and coat flicking was right there on video. The grabbing Harry and pulling him out of the way so she could always go first or be at the center of things was right there on video.

But at that point, it was possible to have a lot of sympathy for someone who just couldn’t cope with the Royal bubble and system.

But now - you can still have sympathy for someone but admit to their flaws and mistakes as well.

Excellent post. I agree that many people want to support the ‘underdog’ and that is absolutely admirable. But some of us saw who the actual under dogs were some time ago and it wasn’t MM.

So when you then read multiple investigations of her repeated belittling, harassment and bullying of staff from dozens of reports from victims and witnesses, some of whom required MH intervention and all just trying to earn a living then it’s a very different story.

The earlier spats with her best friends, her siblings, her father, her sister in law, her brother in law etc show she is the common denominator as a High Conflict Personality but these people hold money and power and it could have been a ‘he said / she said’ or clash of egos - but when it’s also lots of different people going about their business, trying to earn a crust it’s another level entirely.

I thought it was about a cartoon about a rat.

Spot on, wordler, and yes the media comparisons with last time's crowds would have been both inevitable and painful

I absolutely agree with you , and @Puzzledandpissedoff , Also a walkabout (in this context) is very much associated with the WRF on an official tour / visit. Wouldn't it involve closing off roads etc. which I am sure wouldn't go down well in those cities. I do think , like you though , the security is a bit of a smokescreen. It's one thing being a shiny new couple as part of the WRF with a baby on the way to being a couple who have been labelled grifters , accused of bullying and 50% of you being sued by a charity (inter alia).

edit spelling and adding other agreement

Any sympathy I may have had for Meghan and indeed Harry evaporated when they did Oprah and Harry wrote spare. That curtsey in the Netflix show was the icing on the cake. All of it showed us what they were. And it wasn’t pretty.