By Madeleine Kearns
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Apparently 41,000 complaints have been filed against
Piers Morgan to Ofcom, the U.K.’s communications regulator, which is now
investigating the British pundit for recent comments made on Good
Morning Britain about Meghan Markle. Reportedly among the
complainants was Markle herself. I would be willing to bet that millions more
Brits — were it not for the pandemic — would gladly shake Morgan’s hand. I know
I would.
But Morgan’s valiance goes even further. After Morgan
sparred with his woke GMB co-host on air and stormed off set, the broadcasting
company announced that: “Following discussions with ITV, Piers Morgan has
decided now is the time to leave Good Morning Britain. ITV has accepted this
decision and has nothing further to add.”
Morgan has been sounding the alarm against Markle’s
ruthless streak for years now. Markle had initially befriended Morgan only to
ditch him once her social climbing reached new — i.e., Royal — heights. So,
Morgan was only being consistent then, when, this week, after the would-be
American Princess claimed to Oprah that a senior member of the Royal family had
expressed concerns about the skin color of her child (whatever was said, it was
said to Harry, not Meghan) then refused to specify who, what, or how it had
been said; claimed that it had been on account of his skin color that her son
Archie had not received the title of Prince; and then suggested that she had
found the ordeal (exacerbated by tabloid criticism) so upsetting that she had
contemplated suicide, the broadcaster, as he has done before, called B.S.
Morgan argued that if there truly is a racist member of
the Royal family going around saying racist things, then that is truly
appalling and we ought to hear about it. Details, please! But Morgan noted
that, as it stands, we have not heard the facts or context and, besides, the
second half of what Markle has claimed is unsupportable. It was on this second
point — her accusation that Archie had been deprived of a title on account of
his potential skin color — that Morgan butted heads with his woke costar Alex
Beresford:
MORGAN: Meghan just got it wrong.
Archie hasn’t been prevented from being a prince because of his skin color. And
that’s now been believed by Americans on national television there and that is
damaging.
BERESFORD: But again, do you know
what? It’s their lived experience.
MORGAN: No. It’s not true.
BERESFORD: Look, Piers, it’s their
lived experience. And again, this is where the confusion comes in. How do you
sometimes identify covert racism? It’s actually quite hard because it’s not
there for you in black and white.
MORGAN: But Alex, it’s not true. The
allegations are not true. There’s no covert racism.
As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “Everyone is
entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” And the facts here are
with Morgan. The Times of London explains that “the rules
dictating who gets to be a prince or princess were laid down by George V in
1917 in a regal announcement known as Letters Patent. . . . Archie was never
going to be a prince at birth. However, when the Queen dies, he and his sister
will be grandchildren of the monarch and will therefore — in theory — become a
prince and princess.”
Moreover, who has proven themselves to possess greater
integrity over the years, the Queen or Meghan Markle? The answer to this
question is relevant given that in response to the first part of the allegation
— about the comment made by a senior royal — the Queen stated that “some
recollections vary.” (Which might be read as Royal for “lies!”) This is
commendable dignity and restraint in the face of tremendous adversity. The
Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, has been in the hospital.
Morgan won’t be cowed by any woke mob. Upon being
confronted by reporters outside his home, he said:
I don’t believe almost anything
that comes out of [Markle’s] mouth. And I think that the damage that she’s done
to the British monarchy, and to the Queen, at a time when Prince Philip is
lying in hospital is enormous and, frankly, contemptible. So if I have to fall
on my sword for expressing an honestly held opinion about Meghan Markle, and
that diatribe of bilge that she came out with in that interview, so be it.
Again, I find myself in complete sympathy with Morgan.
Even I have noticed that possibly no subject I write about — and to be fair, I
write about a fair few hot topics — garners as much backlash as criticism of
Meghan Markle. “Now why is this?” I ask myself. I, like most people, prefer to
hope that I am a self-reflective sort, open to criticism, honing my craft,
being fairer and more charitable, and aiming only to criticize someone
personally when it is truly warranted. Why, then, do I think it necessary to
put it to you that Markle behaves as someone who is manipulative,
self-aggrandizing, and an all-round bad egg? In short, because she is a person
who wields enormous and destructive cultural influence that is only going to
get worse. And also, because she is attempting to do this while shielding
herself from all criticism, and by silencing all those who disagree with her
antics and agenda in the most dastardly and ruthless of ways, crying “racist!”
and by weaponizing suicide. (To be clear, it is not for me to say whether
Meghan Markle really did want to end her own life or whether she was unable to
get access to the help that she needed. But still, to use suicidal ideation as
a personal and political cover while leveling grave and unsubstantiated
accusations of wrongdoing is not indicative of strong moral leadership.) You
might say that the Meghan Markle way of behaving is not a trend that I want to
see catch on.
Here’s another reason why I don’t have much time for
Markle: In Britain, where I come from, the vast majority of us don’t pay any
attention (or at least we didn’t use to) to what race you are or what color
your skin is. That is not our foundational cultural malaise in the same way
that it is in America. Rather, to us, the original sin of privilege is all
bound up in class. Thus, Meghan Markle found herself to be a fair target for
the British press because she revealed herself to be unacknowledging of and
ungrateful for her massive privilege (she literally occupies the highest level
of class possible) and, worse, she was self-aggrandizing and transparently
insincere, which does not endear one to the British public.
Yesterday, on The Editors’ podcast, my colleague Michael
Brendan Dougherty wondered whether Markle is a problem that the British foisted
on Americans or vice versa. Clearly the latter!
After denigrating one of the oldest and most culturally
significant British institutions — whatever else we might think of it, we can
at least agree on that — this shameless social climber (seriously, how can you
climb any higher than the palace?) then has the audacity to rile up the
American public by projecting insulting and irrelevant pathologies (i.e., institutionalized,
“covert” racism, etc.) undergirded with a particularly insidious collectivist
woke ideology on a monarch and a country that don’t deserve it. Well, we won’t
stand for it! Piers Morgan won’t stand for it! The Queen won’t stand for it!
And I suggest that you shouldn’t either.
No comments:
Post a Comment