There’s an old saying that goes, essentially: if you meet a jerk in the morning, you meet a jerk. But if you run into donkeys all day, well, you’re the donkey.
There is no better summary for Harry and Meghan’s epic Netflix tirade, the second and final part, excuse me, ‘Volume II’, launched on Thursday morning.
For all the literal and metaphorical soft-focus treatment, the oh-so-casual sale of your new lifestyle, the kind of freedom that can only be found strolling barefoot on the beaches of Big Sur or picking fruit from a lush private garden or owning of a private property. stable full of horses, there’s no mistaking the truth: Harry and Meghan are two very angry people, the common denominator of their many problems.
Not surprisingly, but there has been no shortage of horrific stories about Harry and Meghan: the alleged ‘what Meghan wants, Meghan gets’ tiara tantrum; the report that Meghan made Kate cry after giving birth; that both William and the Queen would have spoken to the dreadful couple about the way they spoke to staff; and the high churn rate of those said to be running away from H&M employment, sometimes in tears.
For anyone wondering if Harry and Meghan ever considered that maybe, just maybe, they are the problem, the answer is a resounding ‘no’. Here they are not responsible for any family conflict. Zero. They are totally innocent, except for being such paragons of truth and beauty, their light shines so bright that other royals simply had to finish them off. They just can’t help but be so cool.
Yes, these would-be global do-gooders who promote kindness, love and humanitarianism (Meghan ‘selected to break generational curses that need to be healed,’ according to a Beyoncé text) are seething with rage. They are jealous, resentful, spiteful and without an ounce of loyalty.
There’s an old saying that goes, essentially: if you meet a jerk in the morning, you meet a jerk. But if you run into donkeys all day, well, you’re the donkey.
Worst of all, in my opinion, is its utter lack of humor. They lack joy, perspective, an iota of self-loathing. Poke them and they won’t just bleed: they’ll squirt, whine, moan and tear their clothes off all over the media platforms that will pay them millions. No one in history has been so hurt, so unfairly treated as Harry and Meghan.
We’ve now spent six hours one-on-one with the Sussexes, and it’s safe to say that neither have any discernible personalities. Harry, of course, never needed to develop one: his wealth and fame, his pampered life, all but assured it.
But Meghan, wow. For someone so sure she’s special, telling us here that she was so good at being an instant royal that she was intimidated by the family, it was such a blinding light that she couldn’t even wear colored clothes for fear of outshining her peers. mothers-in-law: there is nothing idiosyncratic about her. Not one.
She is, as they say, the definition of basic. She’s a girl from California interested in yoga, guided meditation, ‘taking space’ and meeting her future in-laws, second in line to the throne, clad in ripped jeans and barefoot. She’s just that uneducated, casual, crazy type of girl.
Everything Meghan wanted on the morning of her wedding? Not to watch the global pre-wedding coverage or have a quiet moment alone, savoring the last moments of her as a civilian. It’s not a genuine moment with the nearest and dearest of hers. No, Meghan says that all she wanted was ‘a mimosa, a croissant and play [the song] ‘Going to the Chapel.’
Does it get more on the nose than that? More literal? Meghan Markle’s cardinal sin isn’t that she’s a stalker (an accusation her lawyer denies) or a hypocrite or our very own Woko Ono, claiming that she didn’t really know much about Prince Harry before meeting him.
No: Meghan’s cardinal sin is being boring. Perhaps that is the root of part of his anger. Maybe all this public tantrum is overcompensating for a lack of personality. The only thing that really made Meghan special is her royal status derived from an institution she hates and claims to be above, but clings to with an iron fist. Maybe she knows what we know: she’s a fake. A woman who spent her life searching for the sizzling spotlight she now claims she never wanted.
It’s all so exhausting.
This whole misguided Netflix series seems to be built on selling one notion: that these two have found happiness with each other in their new American life, the kind of pure joy that King Charles or Prince William and Kate Middleton will never know.
Meghan’s cardinal sin is being boring. Maybe that’s the root of part of your anger.
Seriously, is anyone buying this? Has Harry really convinced himself that he has achieved his ultimate post-royal purpose by contributing to low-level Zoom meetings and scouring random comment threads online for negative feedback? That ratifying all the grievances of his wife is emotionally or psychologically healthy?
There is no victory that Meghan cannot turn into a loss. She lives to be wronged, regardless of her excess of good fortune.
Listen here as Harry takes a rare moment, recalling his wedding triumph, his father ushering Meghan halfway down the aisle, the Queen enthusiastically greenlighting a gospel choir for the ceremony and suggesting to the Best vocalists in all of England, over 100,000 Brits filled the streets and cheered, this new royal couple was treated to a breath of fresh air by the media, Meghan is soon expecting her first child.
It was, Harry says here, a triumphant Year One. There was a moment when they did a victory lap.
Harry: ‘I mean, looking back at this moment – [I’m] Surprised that we managed to do what we did!
Megan: ‘Well, [it was] even harder when she was pregnant.
Just like that, Harry’s expression falls.
It’s your own fault, really, for deviating from the message! Harry and Meghan’s mission here is to issue endless whining and pity, nothing more, except to potentially ruin any hope of reconciliation between Harry and his brother, the future king.
Who, Harry complains, yelled at him.
Meghan to Harry, insisting she won’t badmouth Prince William: “He’s your brother,” she says of another perceived attack. I’m not going to say anything about your brother. But he is so obvious.
Just to be clear: Meghan says she refuses to attack her husband’s brother while attacking her husband’s brother.
That’s the kind of ‘stay in your truth’ that really resonates with all of us.
It all feels as disingenuous as Meghan’s claim, repeated here yet again, that the Palace would not allow her to get help for her suicidal urges while she was pregnant.
Or this howler, Meghan’s raison d’être: ‘All I want is peace.’
Harry and Meghan aren’t even worthy of loathing. They have become the world’s laughing stock, self-identified peacemakers who refuse to acknowledge the truth: they are agents of chaos, heat-seeking missiles of misery.
Not surprisingly, but there has been no shortage of horrific stories about Harry and Meghan: the alleged ‘what Meghan wants, Meghan gets’ tiara tantrum; the report that Meghan made Kate cry after giving birth.
It’s impossible to take everything they have to say seriously, but if you look at ‘Harry & Meghan’ as pure camp, theater of the absurd, at least a mildly entertaining spectacle.
I mean, what’s more authentic than running away from a multi-million dollar mansion in Vancouver and flying privately to another multi-million dollar mansion, this one lent to them, as Harry puts it, by a friend of his they’d never met, famed Hollywood filmmaker Tyler Perry?
How is that for authentic?
You know, in the days leading up to Oprah’s meeting, Harry and Meghan released a statement stating that this interview would be their last word. That was almost three years ago.
This Netflix venture, with its blandness and lack of originality, gives us a clichéd Hollywood ending, our two ostensible heroes coming to the end of their journey basking in the California sunshine.
Unfortunately, this is also false. Harry and Meghan will never be happy. And really, it seems they don’t want to be. They are captains of their own industrial complex of misery, complaints and grievances for sale to the highest bidder, the loss of father and brother, nieces and nephews and sister-in-law is just the cost of doing business.