IF THERE‘ S A WORD THAT SUMS UP MEGHAN, IT’S CHUTZPAH (THE OLD DEFINITION)
A pertinent question considering the world we’re living in
Ihave an abiding fondness for a good Yiddish word. Who can top chutzpah for a bullseye rendering of meaning? Pronounced with a nice guttural soft “g ” , as if you are spitting the word out, chutzpah has had a bit of an evolution from its Aramaic roots since its original coining somewhere in the Latvian hinterland. Originally it was an insult. It spoke to insolence, cheek, straight-up shameless self-servicing of the highest order and topped off with a strong dose of audacity. As in “can you believe her chutzpah?”
Leo Rosten, author of the The Joys of Yiddish, a book I thoroughly recommend for those inclined to embroider their sentences with little gems of apposite wit, defined it as “gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible ‘guts’, presumption plus arrogance, such as no other word and no other language can do justice to ... that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan”.
Quite!
This definition springs to mind when I try to understand the phenomenon that is Meghan Markle. Having manhandled, sideeyed and knowingly implicated the golden goose that laid her egg — a rather golden egg I might add — she is throwing herself at the mercy of public opinion by claiming superstar victimhood. Because, as she tells it, and we lap it up, she was just an ambitious girl who saw her opportunity and grabbed it with both hands and she has been radically misunderstood, mischaracterised and punished for just being herself.
Meanwhile, the self-exiled prince and Meg are now spreading their roots and leaves like the twin trees, which their offspring call Mama and Papa, in their palatial garden in Montecito. I see another Meghan-penned children’s book coming on.
There they are sitting behind their huge desk on twin thrones plotting to save the world one podcast and Netflix deal at a time as she hands out a prepacked lunch to the local homeless on the school run in California.
I’m not making this up — the details come from her recent 6,999-word interview in the New Yorker’s Cut magazine, where Meg channels Princess Diana. They were both really burnt by the media (except when they were collaborating by giving very long interviews).
Just last week Meg was styled in a pareddown polo neck — just like the ex-princess, the one in that famous Demarchalier Vogue photograph that covered Di’s bean-spilling tome in which she trashed the palace and Charles, before she met her fate that dreadful day 25 years ago.
Meghan, too, has suffered at the hands of the palace. They made her do it. But it was all alright because here in SA, apparently, we all stood in the streets and ululated in unbounded joyful unison on the frabjous day she married Harry. According to Meghan, an actual South African told her so. Apparently her nuptials immediately transported us poor, troubled South African souls back to that halcyon day we saw the end of apartheid. And so spontaneously erupted into the streets in our masses cheering in the same way as when Nelson Mandela walked free. I, for one, missed that glorious moment. I don’t know about you.
This all begs the question: are the Prince and Princess of California entirely and worryingly delusional or are they suffering from plutonium grade chutzpah?
Speaking of chutzpah, somewhere along the line — and let’s be clear, this is an American line — the meaning of the word shifted to something that could be interpreted as more positive. Now the word can also reference courage, ardour and sheer determination. Gumption if you like, a kind of Wild West, riding roughshod over scruples, impediments and objective reality to get what you want.
In a good way.