Thursday, March 11, 2021

Piers Morgan’s Valiant Stand

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.

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