Fwiw, The Telegraph, a tabloid, is reporting that Harry and Meghan will be invited to the Coronation. I don’t see them using Archie’s birthday as a reason to not attend.
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And it’s being reported Jeremy Clarkson attended a Christmas lunch with Camilla and Piers Morgan.
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This horrible report about Jeremy Clarkson, close confidant of Camilla, sort of sums it up for me. Regardless of who may have been in the right or wrong on any given incident, regardless of who bullied whom or who made who cry, the bottom line is that when the palace comms people signaled that it was OK to attack Meghan, when she was “fed to the wolves” as she says, it unleashed a torrent of racist, misogynist abuse at her. The most charitable take is that the palace comms people thought it was business as usual and fair game to feed negative stories to knock down one member of the Royal Family and build up another. But when they did it to Meghan it was fundamentally different and gave permission for the worst kind of hate. And it sounds to me like Harry tried to explain that to them but got nowhere. What Clarkson said is sickening, and the fact that he said it on the same day he was partying with Camilla is very disturbing.
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I wasn’t going to click on the Clarkson story but when people kept commenting on it I did. Who is this guy? What a miserable person he must be. Really just gross.
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I didn’t watch any of the Netflix documentary, and then binge-watched all of it yesterday.
I felt much more sympathy towards H & M after watching it. Loved seeing the videos of their family life. They seem to love each other very much.
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Best known as a presenter on Top Gear and Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
This was not his first first into trouble.
Also telling is that Piers Morgan, who has often expressed his own less-than-flattering views on MM, was also at the event
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The fact that the Royal Family would associate with scum like that is telling.
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The timing of Camilla’s expensive lunch with Jeremy Clarkson and Piers Morgan sure makes it look like she is endorsing them and their attacks on Meghan.
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Yes, and I have even less respect for the royals and this archaic institution then before the Netflix series. Learning about the unspoken media agreement and their comps team throwing stories at media, then the royals not standing up for each other. Disgraceful.
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I don’t have a clue about these people either.
On the other hand, this is from the Insider, not a tabloid.
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I read that elsewhere, too. It does seem like they did that on purpose. It was petty. I think it was actually smart, and nice, for Meghan to just wear neutrals. I don’t think they look that great on her, so always wondered why she wore so much beige and black.
I’m light olived skin toned and they don’t look great on me, either. As Gabriella from Desperate Housewives whined once when she had to attend a funeral…”black isn’t my color”.
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This whole thing has gone far beyond a question of whether specific criticisms of Meghan are true or not true, and whether her recollections of past events are accurate or misleading. Regardless of all those issues, the treatment of her has just been vile. The things Jeremy Clarkson said are sadly representative of much of the social media attacks on her, and there’s a lot worse out there too. The palace has never accepted that their failure to intervene with the tabloids on her behalf (and alleged efforts to feed them negative stories) has given permission to everyone who wants to unleash racist misogynistic hate against her.
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I listened to a few of the British press reviews (not sure if they were clips from shows, video casts or what) and their views of what happened with Meghan. They were a lot kinder than you might expect. Some said Meghan had a rough introduction but really no worse than Diana, Fergie, and even Kate to some extent. She had Harry to help her while Diana had very little support from anyone. Some of the reporters laughed at the idea that the Palace was trying to deflect bad press from other royals by feeding them stuff about Harry and Meghan, and said if that had been done they would have printed BOTH stories. I believe that.
One thing they did talk about was that Meghan was a hard worker and wanted things done HER way, which wasn’t the ROYAL way, and that she needed to bend a little too. An example was that she wanted to start her day at 5 am and expected all her assistants to be ready to go then too, work all day, and then do it all again the next day. However, they said that if she’d slept till noon she would have been criticized for that too, which is true.
I had to laugh at Harry saying they were so protected for those first weeks on Vancouver Island because it was an ISLAND and there were no reporters chasing them. Um, isn’t England an Island? And it’s not like people can’t get to Vancouver Island, including reporter people. Then he said that they were so lucky to escape from that island sanctuary when covid hit because they would have been stuck there for who knows how long! Well, I thought that’s what they wanted, a lovely retreat where the press would leave them be, at least for a little while. Nope, off to Tyler Perry’s home in LA so they wouldn’t be isolated on Vancouver Island during covid.
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I finished watching the series. It actually felt to me that Harry and Meghan were trying to take the high road. There is little slamming of other royals for petty things and much of their sorrow at the broken relationships. There is a lot of trying to separate the family as a family and the Family as a business. Like everyone on this thread, I don’t know what actually happened in any particular instance. It seems to me like things quickly spiraled out of control when they asked to step back. If the proposal that they move to South Africa and continue to work on behalf of the Commonwealth had been approved things might look totally different now. I think that was a missed opportunity for everyone. I love the relationship with Tyler Perry. What a great guy! They keep restating their desire to be philanthropists and work for the causes they care about. I hope it works out for them and they find a place in the world where they can serve others. Perhaps in time some of the relationships will be mended.
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And yet, the fact that Harry is standing with his wife is what is causing a lot of uproar.
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Who needs Harry and Meghan?!? I’m grabbing my popcorn for the new conversation above.
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I finished watching the documentary last night. From all the talk, I had expected there to be a lot more said about members of the royal family than there actually was. They clearly were still trying to protect his brother by avoiding several topics. For instance, while H&M had always been told nothing could be done to address rumors and attacks on Meghan, this was not the case when rumors circulated about William and his family–William’s legal teams quickly got ahead of stories that claimed he had an affair with one of Kate’s close friends a few years back by threatening legal action and stopping UK press from going further with the story after In Touch published an article on it. Many believe that stories about Meghan were fed to the press as a distraction from this, as well. For all the criticism H&M are getting about airing family grievances, they actually stayed quiet on quite a bit to protect family members.
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Doesn’t matter what backgrounds H&M come from. They are both tone deaf. But now they’re $10M richer. They’re in their late 30s & early 40s. We’re not talking about young, naive people who are in their early 20s with no life experience.
Honestly, one of them needs to go and get a job. DO something worthwhile with your rich people free time. Do something to try to make the world a better place. Make a positive impact in the community you life in.
But they want a spectacle to be made around them. Plenty of celebrities do charitable work in a “roll up your sleeves and get into it” sort of way…and I’m not talking about the sort of charitable work that involves hiring a party planner to put on some multi-thousand $$ a plate event at a fancy hotel where you take fancy photos in front of a fancy backdrop and you hire paparrazi to cover it. I’m talking about stuff like Jon Bon Jovi quietly working in his JBJ Soul Kitchen.
Listen, is it hard when all of your extended family is up in your personal business all the time? YES, OF COURSE IT IS! If you want to extricate yourself from it, GO AHEAD AND DO THAT! Nobody’s stopping you, Harry. Nobody’s stopping you, Meghan.
But you don’t WANT the attention to stop. You keep seeking it out.
That opinion does not automatically make one a racist.
I just kind of wish the 2 of them would shut up. And I don’t understand why all of this is such a big deal. The whole thing is dumb.
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I’m very late in reading this thread but I wanted to extend my heartfelt thanks to @Sweetgum for linking this article. It’s long amused me that so many Americans (seems that most are middle aged or older white women, which includes me) have been literally fawning over British royalty for longer than I’ve been alive.
It takes a special kind of willful cluelessness to have continued to do so since the mid-nineties.
Jeremy Clarkson is a very well known and popular British broadcaster and journalist who was the original host of the automotive show “Top Gear”. He was fired and the show was canceled after he finally went too far with homophobic jokes, glorifying drunk driving and other disgusting behavior.
Frankly, that he’s a guest at the palace tells me all I would ever need to know about the new king and queen consort (although none of this is surprising). As for Judy Densch, who I used to admire, this is a pathetic end to what was a highly respected career. Apparently, she’s always been a royal suck up.
I finished watching the documentary last night. From all the talk, I had expected there to be a lot more said about members of the royal family than there actually was. They clearly were still trying to protect his brother by avoiding several topics. For instance, while H&M had always been told nothing could be done to address rumors and attacks on Meghan, this was not the case when rumors circulated about William and his family–William’s legal teams quickly got ahead of stories that claimed he had an affair with one of Kate’s close friends a few years back by threatening legal action and stopping UK press from going further with the story after In Touch published an article on it. Many believe that stories about Meghan were fed to the press as a distraction from this, as well. For all the criticism H&M are getting about airing family grievances, they actually stayed quiet on quite a bit to protect family members.
I was wondering if anyone was going to mention this story which was rapidly and firmly suppressed. It’s also suggested that negative stories about Meghan were fed to the press to quash the involvement of Prince Andrew with the Jeffery Epstein case but unfortunately for him, the fact that he was implicated in American courts meant the British royal family was unable to hush that story up worldwide. Anyone thinking of the royal family is an actual “family” as most of us think of it is just beyond naive, IMO. Prince William has been stabbing his brother in the back since long before Meghan Markle came on the scene. The most heartbreaking part of this whole sad saga is that Harry has only recently realized that his brother couldn’t care less about him, nor does his father.
I can’t see any healing of this rift but I’m glad they finally escaped. It really was Harry’s only hope.
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