Meghan groupie-think amid our liberal luvvies
BILLED as a dry run for their upcoming Antipodean tour, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s whistlestop Dublin visit went off without a hitch in many respects. The new royal couple’s itinerary ran like clockwork, while the new Duchess showing herself as something of an Olympian athlete in the speed of her many outfit changes.
Indeed, if there was a mishap, it was at our end and the ridiculously fawning reception the great and the good showered on the former Suits actress.
Their giddy and deliriously over-the-top behaviour in front of the British royal family’s newest member, did not just cause the nation to cringe in embarrassment, it also perhaps raised the bar unfairly on poor Meghan’s expectations for subsequent royal tours.
For, no matter how much the charismatic couple might dazzle in Sydney or Brizzy, it is highly unlikely that laidback Australians, unafflicted like us by a national subservient streak, will transmogrify into Meghan Markle groupies like our worthies at the British ambassador’s garden party.
During the glamorous occasion, the new Duchess of Sussex was swooned over by a star-struck audience, most of whom had probably never heard of her a year ago.
Right-on journalists queued to press the royal flesh, praising Meghan on social media for her ‘feminist activism’. Courageous campaigners and disability activists were lined up to meet a woman whose greatest claim to global fame is bagging a prince of the royal blood.
One attention-seeking politician was in such an unseemly dash to hang on to the Duchess’s starry coattails that she misinterpreted her politeness as approval for the result of the abortion referendum.
Given that the Royal wedding occurred just days before the Repeal vote, it’s highly unlikely that the Duch- ess gave two bags of confetti for a referendum across the Irish Sea – yet that didn’t stop Catherine Noone posting to the contrary.
BUT Noone was not the only public representative to embarrass themselves. Kate O’Connell posted a luvvie photograph of some leading Fine Gael repealers and media types beside themselves at being present at a red carpet event.
Later Fine Gael Senator Neale Richmond declared on TV3 that Markle was a massive figure on the world stage, occupying the ‘same platform as Mary Robinson’.
Meghan Markle may be a feminist and a humanitarian but so are most celebrities it’s usually the case that their eagerness to trumpet their convictions is in direct proportion to their appetite for fame and approval.
Only time will tell whether she can parlay her compassion for the underdog into genuine good deeds like her late mother-in-law.
It can’t be easy being Meghan Markle today, with every move being scrutinised, ‘bump-watch’ on overdrive for early signs of pregnancy and, aside from her mother, no family to turn to for chats about her rarefied in-laws.
What she lacks in familial support she seems to make up for in admirable reserves of self-confidence and a readiness to burn the royal credit cards on haute couture and designer gear.
If she is not clever that bill will eventually be totted up in public and earn her, like Fergie, the hateful soubriquet of the Duchess of Spending.
The current heady reforming promise of the first mixed-race member of the royal family may turn to dust and the Meghan Markle fan club in Dublin sink without a trace.