Tabloids try to rekindle royal scandalmania
Uplifting messages. Written on bananas. To sex trade workers.
OK, maybe not the best optics. Ripe for mockery.
Although it’s entirely possible the Duchess of Sussex was slyly in on the joke. Nobody has ever accused Meghan Markle of denseness — not “thick as a plank” as her late mother-inlaw, Diana, once described herself whilst visiting hospital patients. Meghan initiated the banana-branding — “You are brave,” “You are strong” — as she helped package goody-bags for the clients.
But of course the six-monthspreggers duchess was viciously mocked for her impromptu gesture a week ago during a visit to One25, a Bristol charity that aims to get sex trade workers off the street.
Piers Morgan, who really is a pill — and a notorious Meghanhater, for the apparent sin of dumping him as a social-climbing Sherpa, “like a sack of spuds,” after hooking up with Prince Harry — brought out the rhetorical shiv on Good Morning Britain, characterizing the gesture as patronizing. “Hand me my Sharpie, my moment has come to empower sex workers.”
This was the topic of a TV panel discussion. Seriously. Because Brexy isn’t so sexy.
The poor girl, still a nouveauroyal, can do nothing right, it seems. Less than a year into her marriage, the tabloidworm has turned. Doubtless striving to resurrect palace scandalmania of yore — when the Merry Wives of Windsor, Diana and Fergie, drove newspaper sales off the charts — the red-tops have gone to town, gleefully chronicling Meghan’s purported missteps: eschewing nylons during royal engagements; failing to cross her legs at the knees at a charity function in the de rigueur “duchess slant” with the gams; hatless on a visit to Cheshire with the Queen, as expressly directed as per courtier memo; executing a wobbly curtsy to QEII outside church on Christmas Day.
And, oh, breathlessly reported long after the alleged fact, making sister-in-law Kate cry over her “strict demands” about little Princess Charlotte’s flower-girl dress at a fitting before the wedding.
Nothing sends Fleet Street (that was) into spasms of delight than a cat-fight between royal wives, with scarce basis. But look: Kate didn’t invite Meghan to her 37th birthday luncheon last month. Or maybe the snubbing went the other way — Meghan a regrets-noshow.
There might be some ballast to the reputed feud, of course. No reason why these two commoners-turned-purple should like each other. They appear to have little in common. The former Kate Middleton is destined to be queen some day and mother of a future king. Meghan’s bundle of joy — and she’s been snidely criticized for holding her hand against her baby bump altogether too much — will be an earl at birth, if a boy, perhaps with a “Prince” before his name, if the Queen chooses to bestow that title, “Her Royal Highness Princess (something) of Sussex,” if a girl.
Kate worked — for about a minute and a half — for her parents’ online party supply company and, briefly, as an assistant accessories buyer for a fashion chain after graduat- ing with an arts history degree from the University of St. Andrews. Meghan majored in theatre and international relations at Northwestern University, was a “suitcase girl” on the game show Deal or No Deal and spent seven seasons on the cable drama Suits, shot in Toronto. Koo Stark, decades ago romantically entwined with Prince Andrew, was sent packing for a “soft-porn” movie scene that pales in comparison to some of the steamy Suits stuff.
Pretty ladies in pretty boxes — that’s about the sum total of the kindred spirit between Meghan and Kate, doing the royal ops thing. Not long ago, however, Kate and William and Meghan and Harry were dubbed the Fab Four — the future of the monarchy. That narrative has lost traction in a what-have-you-done-for-melately mass media world. Cue the “Duchess Diva” and “Duchess Difficult” trope.
Borrowing a page from the Diana Chronicles, because she can’t defend herself — royals rarely give interviews, the Queen never — “Meg,” as her close friends call her, is now fighting back against the gossip and slagging via People magazine. The current issue trumpets a front-page story — “The Truth About Meghan” — built around five close (anonymous) friends who “BREAK THEIR SILENCE” to set the record straight, waxing unctuously about the duchess.
She is no bossy, uppity neo harridan but still the sweet girl as ever was, they insist. “Meg has silently sat back and endured the lies and untruths,” says a former co-star. “It’s wrong to put anyone under this level of emotional trauma, let alone when they’re pregnant.”
They deplore the “global bullying” to which Meghan has been subjected.
It’s obvious none of these BFFs would have spoken on the record without Meghan’s consent, a replay of the pushback tactic employed by Diana when her girl-pals were interviewed by biographer Andrew Morton for his tell-a-lot book, Diana: Her True Story, which blew the lid off the Diana-Charles marriage, revealing the princess’s unhappiness, her suicide attempt and dismay over the prince’s resumed affair with Camilla Parker Bowles. When, pre-publication, Her True Story was serialized by the Sunday Times — the palace reeling — Diana tacitly endorsed the book by very publicly visiting one of the friends quoted.
That, of course, was in Diana’s nascent days as a media maestro, before she started phoning reporters directly to spill her guts.
Diana: Her True Story was a publishing sensation with some 7 million copies sold in 80 countries. But it ultimately backfired on the princess, causing irreparable damage to her marriage — which was doomed anyway — and her relations with The Firm, as the royal family is known.
Similar blowback is unlikely for Meghan because the People article doesn’t pull back the curtain on any secrets. Harry isn’t having a leg-over with a rival from the past. Meghan isn’t a screaming banshee of a neglected wife throwing herself down the stairs. She is most assuredly not bonkers, as the needy young Diana was depicted by her husband’s coterie of sycophants.
Meaghan does, unfortunately, have a screwy and mediawhorish family on her paternal side, what with pops Thomas Markle trying to make a buck exploitatively, telling everyone who will lend an ear that his daughter has cut him out of her life, and half-sister Samantha popping up all over the place to dump on her sibling as phoney jumped-up shrew.
It’s Thomas Markle who won’t take his daughter’s calls, the friends counter, and Meghan who’s tried valiantly to repair the relationship, to which dad responded in a letter that concluded with a request for a photo-op with her.
At least her father, unlike her husband’s, never wished himself a tampon for the purpose of exploring his mistress’s nether regions.
Of course, those are ancient tales and the palace has been busy rehabbing Charles as a fit sovereign, come the mournful day when mummy shuffles off this mortal coil.
So American outsider Meghan will have to fill the tattle ‘n’ prattle gap, at least until the kiddie generation of princes and princes come of paparazzi stalking age.
Assuming the monarchy survives as a dirty-dishing gift that keeps on giving headlines and hearsay.