Have you noticed how genuine good news such as the above regarding Meghan often gets overlooked, while haters fall over themselves to create content from every tidbit non-event which can be spun as bad news? The Meghannilation pile-ons are ferocious and unrelenting, seeking to destroy the woman and perhaps end her life, while making money from clicks and views along the way. Every has-been and non-entity seeking to raise their sagging or non-existent profile (Mia Farrow? Chris Rock? Millie Mackintosh? random Spotify exec? Z-list YouTuber?) just has to find some creative insult for Meghan like “grifter”, and it’s days of front pages guaranteed. And not just in the UK’s tabloids, the broadsheets frequently jump in on it too. JC (not Jesus Christ)’s one article got slapped down, no small thanks to 25000+ principled residents of our nation who sent complaints to IPSO, the 64 cross-party MPs who signed a letter of protest, and the two charities who were signatories to the official IPSO complaint. At least there’s a shred of decency, perhaps even empathy, left in public discourse in the UK. Many celebrities get roasted in the British press, but the level of obsessive hatred Meghan faces is unprecedented – the stuff of PhD’s on parallels between media and online mobbing today and public floggings and executions of ancient Rome or medieval times – in that respect JC was inadvertently on to something: Meghan is already being paraded in the streets and excrement thrown at her, only virtually.
Anyway so one misogynist and the media outlet supporting him get their knuckles rapped, but what about the hordes of other armchair tormentors, who from the darkness of their bedrooms bombard the world (well, mostly the UK) with hundreds, perhaps THOUSANDS of Meg-hating articles, blogs, vlogs, Twitter rants, Facebook posts, YouTube or TikTok videos EVERY SINGLE WEEK? The woman has barely said a word or shown her face in public in the past year, yet you’d think it’s her picture on the front pages every week in a different costume, tennis whites, camouflage, bee-keeping suit… (and no doubt soon, space-suit?)
It’s impossible for a body like IPSO to regulate so many haters and platforms they use, yet the impact such intense public vilification has on a person is equivalent to JC’s article to the power of six. What can restore some form of respect for the truth, and basic empathy for a fellow human being and mother, who has committed no crime or spent no time befriending paedophiles?
[Title of thread edited to say Jeremy Clarkson, not Jeremy Clarke]