Royal family says racism charges from Harry and Meghan are ‘concerning’
The Panthers shook off their recent scoring woes and vaulted into a tie with the Lightning for first place in the Central Division. Goalie Sergei Bobrovsky made 38 saves in his return to Columbus.
Buckingham Palace said Tuesday that allegations of racism made by Prince Harry and Meghan were “concerning” and would be addressed privately by the royal family.
The comments, made in a statement issued on behalf Queen Elizabeth II, are the first from the palace since the two-hour television interview with Meghan and Harry rocked the royal family. Meghan, who is biracial, said the palace had failed to help her when she had suicidal thoughts and that an unipeople dentified member of the royal family had raised “concerns” about the color of her baby’s skin when she was pregnant with her son, Archie.
“The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan,” the palace said. “The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.”
The interview, conducted by Oprah Winfrey and which aired Sunday night in the U.S. and a day later in Britain, has divided around the world. While many say the allegations demonstrate the need for change inside a palace that hasn’t kept pace with the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, others have criticized Harry and Meghan for dropping their bombshell while Harry’s 99year-old grandfather, Prince Philip, remains hospitalized in London after a heart procedure.
Anna Whitelock, a professor of history and director of the Centre for the Study of Modern Monarchy at Royal Holloway, University of London, said the palace’s brief message was an effort to quiet the controversy.
“It’s not very long, but it’s very precise and it has a clear intent — and that is to close this down as a family matter; to make clear that this is clearly a family in crisis, that there’s family issues to sort out, but to separate this very clearly from any criticism or discussion about the institution of the monarchy itself,” she told The Associated Press. “And I think time will tell whether that’s a distinction that the public will accept.”
Harry and Meghan married in May 2018 in a ceremony at Windsor Castle that ended with a ride around the town in a horse-drawn carriage. In the early days of their marriage, the couple were seen as the fresh young face of the monarchy for an increasingly multicultural nation.
But the story quickly turned sour. The couple stepped away from royal duties last year and moved to California, saying they wanted to escape racist coverage and unwanted intrusions on their privacy by the British media.
Re the Feb. 24 story, “Byron Carlyle not for sale: Miami Beach scraps plan to build apartment at theater:” North Beach residents were successful in “nixing this sale”, but some clarifications are needed.
I do property valuation opinions as the managing director of a property tax company. Based on recent sales, the Byron Carlyle is worth $12 to $15 million, not $2 million. The city used an appraisal with no comparable sales and would be worthless to county magistrates.
The developer paid
$448 per square foot for property across the street, yet the city was trying to sell him the Byron at $64 per square foot.
Worst of all, Commissioner David Richardson kept repeating that a nearby piece of property had sold for $6 million. That property sold in 2016.
Would you allow your home to be valued based on a five year old sale?
Two words best describe Commissioners Ricky Arriola and Richardson for supporting this attempted giveaway of public land: ineptitude and malfeasance.
– Rick Kendle, Miami Beach
MARCH 10
My brother-inlaw died of hogwash. Another brother-in-law, a sister-inlaw, two daughters-in-law, two cousins and several grandchildren are all recovering from hogwash. My wife spent a week in the hospital with hogwash. I tested positive for hogwash, but had few symptoms.
“Hogwash,” you may recall, was the word a grocery-store owner in
Naples, Florida, used last month in dismissing the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic. This, after a viral video showing his patrons and employees going about their business without facial coverings, as if they had time-traveled here from 2019. “I know that the masks don’t work,” Alfie Oaks told NBC News with the serene confidence of the profoundly ignorant.
As we observe our first — and, Lord willing, our last — anniversary of life in a pandemic, many of us are taking stock of the various ways we have been impacted. The most obvious, of course, is the human toll: One American in every 11 has tested positive, one in every 628 has died. But even those who’ve escaped that fate haven’t escaped the virus’ touch. It has transformed virtually every field of endeavor: sports, education, entertainment, the environment, the economy, eldercare, worship, justice, journalism, protest and politics, to name a few.
Its effects have also been felt in an arena you may not have considered, though here it has not so much changed something as revealed it. Meaning: it has shown us the high cost of living in a facts-optional — indeed, an anti-fact — society.
Actually, two events have done that. One was the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by a zealot army drunk on conspiracy theories as laughable as they were deadly. The other is this pandemic, which, though it has killed 525,000 Americans, is still regarded by some as “hogwash.” That apparently includes the governors of Texas and Mississippi, who just lifted mask mandates.
Because of them, people will die. But when facts cease to matter, consequences do, too. Troublingly, the power of antifact will soon increase exponentially, as more so-called “deepfakes” come online: seamless, utterly convincing videos that show people doing things they never did and saying things they never said.
Think about it: If some of us are willing to throw out our masks in defiance of stern warnings from respected epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, what happens when a false video seems to show Fauci himself ripping off his mask and declaring it time to party? Now extrapolate that beyond the current
crisis. The picture that emerges is terrifying.
When everybody has their own truth, and no two truths look alike, we will become — as we are becoming — a society unable to effectively mobilize itself, even to save its own life. If we are to avoid that fate, journalists must disenthrall themselves from false equivalence and stop signal boosting entertaining liars, voters must extract a penalty at the ballot box from politicians who embrace the anti-fact ethos, social media must be more aggressive
in denying platforms to anti-fact super spreaders and educators must make a priority of teaching critical thinking, civics and media literacy.
Or else, be ready for more of this: Over half a million Americans dead. “Hogwash,” the man says.
The pandemic has changed many things. But it has also given us a harsh gift, showing us what it means to live in an antifact nation. Let’s hope we absorb the lesson. Because in the absence of common truths, our future is chaos.
Believe it or not.
The Panthers insisted that their outing Sunday — an offensive debacle against the Carolina Hurricanes — was nothing more than an aberration, perhaps the result of too many games in too few days or a clearly tricky matchup against a newfound division rival. It was, Jonathan Huberdeau said, the sort of game to forget about quickly and move on from a few days later.
For two periods, he was right and it was enough for the Panthers to beat the host Columbus
Blue Jackets 4-2 on Tuesday.
Florida bounced back from its 23-shot loss to the Hurricanes with something of a return to form at Nationwide Arena. The Panthers scored twice on the power play and piled up 29 shots in the first two periods before hanging on to beat the the Blue Jackets in the opener of a two-game series in Ohio.
The win, for the moment, vaulted Florida (16-5-4) into a tie with the Tampa Bay Lightning for first place in the Central Division, one point ahead
of Carolina. The Panthers’ 16 wins are tied for third most in the NHL and their five regulation losses are tied for second fewest.
A day off Monday rejuvenated Florida early.
The Panthers piled up four shots in the opening five minutes, nearly scored on a power play, then went up 1-0 in just 4:59 when forward Juho Lammikko scored off an assist by MacKenzie Weegar.
They stretched the lead to 2-0 early in the second period on a power play when right wing Patric Hornqvist deflected in a slap shot by defenseman Aaron Ekblad. By the midpoint of the second period, Florida already surpassed the 23-shot mark from two days earlier and was wearing down Columbus goaltender Joonas Korpisalo.
The Panthers, who still lead the league with
more than 34 shots on goal per game, added another power-play goal late in the second when right wing Owen Tippett beat Korpisalo with a wrist shot from the top of the right faceoff circle with 1:48 left in the period.
Korpisalo made a handful of the best saves of the season in the second period — including a stick save, reaching back behind to deny an opennet opportunity for defenseman Gustav Forsling — and still Florida grew its lead against the Blue Jackets (10-12-5) through its persistence with 29 shots on goal through two periods.
In the third, it took nearly nine minutes for Florida to put a shot on goal, as goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and the Panthers weathered an early flurry from Columbus. Florida dodged one neardisaster when Blue Jackets winger Nick Foligno fanned against an open net after a perfect cross past Bobrovsky.
With 8:22 remaining,
Columbus cut the Panthers’ lead to 3-2 when winger Oliver Bjorkstrand capitalized on a Florida giveaway to beat Bobrovksy while the Panthers’ offense struggled to put anything together. Florida didn’t put a second shot on goal until 5:16 remained and the Blue Jackets spent nearly the entire third period on the Panthers’ end of the ice.
A Florida penalty with 3:01 left gave Columbus one final chance to tie the game, pulling Korpisalo with 2:30 left to create a 6-on-4 advantage.
Defenseman Radko Gudas blocked a shot by Blue Jackets star Patrick Laine. Forward Noel Acciari blocked one by Columbus star Nick Werenski. Bobrovsky didn’t face a single shot on the power play, then stopped two good looks by Laine when the advantage ended before an emptynet goal sealed the victory.