“A lot is forgiven when you’re on the ground and you show up and do good work.”
What work? What ground? Good for who? Is this about Ukraine and “I’m a member of the royal family and I’m here to work not holiday, ergo I’m a working member of the RF doing the good stuff the RF does butnothisisnthalfinhalfout”? Or is this suggesting that their unpaid appearances in Oz were “work” on the ground, and that “work” was good for…who exactly? And who are they thinking will forgive them for what? The public, for being obnoxious and arrogant? The RF for all the reasons they put in the public domain? Who told them that forgiveness can be won in this way because really I’m not so sure. Sophie Chandauka? Past employees? Meghan’s dad? Their children when they’re older (didn’t work out that way for Harry he tells us)? Such a random, unconnected-to-anything statement to make.
I felt during the Oz visit and again with this that H&M and their team are seeing something nobody else is seeing. As though saying something is so, makes it so (not for the first time does it seem they model themselves on Trump!). When they were in Australia one of their PR people, on day one or two, put out a victorious statement about how H&M are showing that there’s a new way to do things, combining philanthropy and private commercial endeavours. Even when he said it everyone could see that yes, they were indeed making so-called philanthropic and commercial efforts on the same days at different times on the same trip, but there was no indication that the endeavours were successful or that the combination was scalable and ought to be repeated. It was such an odd, out-of-step thing to say, as though they’d planned to say this on that day before the even left California and were following a rehearsed script A couple of weeks on and lo and behold, seems they’ve been resoundingly pasted on both philanthropic and commercial fronts and the statement looks even more ridiculous.
They just don’t get it. They’re not interesting (other than in failure and scandal) people. They have no monetizable value outside the RF. They keep trying again and again, and that’s a credit to them, but surely someone is telling them that the writing is in the wall.