So I didn’t watch Meghan and Harry and Oprah. From the Twitter reaction, I believe a bomb has been detonated in Buckingham Palace. I read the highlights and lowlights, and I’ve come to — jumped to — a couple of conclusions.
Conclusion No. 1: Meghan was never going to kill herself. Depression, sure, but she strikes me as a striving and ambitious woman. She could have exited her marriage if it were that bad, and honestly, I’m not sure I even believe she was denied help for her despair. Diana saw a therapist, and royals see medical professionals of all sorts. But saying one had “thoughts of suicide” is a neat way of getting the attention and sympathy without having to actually do it. Hell, probably all of us have at least had thoughts of suicide; what would I do if I were diagnosed with a terrible disease and all hope was gone? I’d think about suicide, yes I would.
Conclusion No. 2: The racism is offensive, and not surprising, although I really want to know who wondered idly about the skin color of the unborn Archie. Prince Philip came up in the Empire days, is a million years old, and racism is in his DNA. Charles I’d be more disappointed by, as it seemed he is, relatively speaking, the progressive of the family. But I guess we’ll have to wait for a follow-up special to see that.
Did we see Archie at all last night? Has anyone? Is he a cute baby? I expect so.
Of course this will reanimate the Diana Cult, but at this point, who really cares. The Firm will survive the way it always has: By keeping calm and carrying on.
And that’s as much attention as I plan to devote to this.
You could read my story about Detroit’s Covid anniversary, written oral history-style, which is one of my favorite ways to do pieces like this. (I submitted the transcripts to all the subjects for approval, and only one told me to fix his grammar, which was a matter of changing two adjectives to adverbs.) I was struck, again, by how little we knew a year ago, and this is why I cannot abide those who now complain “these doctors, they don’t know anything, they keep contradicting themselves.” Oh, fuck you.
My favorite single quote from that story: When the governor shut down everything, you know, I live at the top of Lafayette Tower and I looked down at the streets where no one was out, it just looked deserted. I told my wife, this must be what Passover was like.
OK, then. Monday. Let’s take this bull by the horns, but first: The crossword puzzle.
Alan Stamm said on March 8, 2021 at 10:10 am
Speaking of how little we knew a year ago, Michigan’s state government announced the number of confirmed cases in daily press releases during Week One — including a pair of same-day updates, a clue that it’d be unsustainable.
That stopped five days in with a switch to an online dashboard refreshed each afternoon.
Plus, the governor shut schools and public places for just a few weeks — though that may have been as much pol spin as naivete.
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Heather said on March 8, 2021 at 10:17 am
I did not watch the Harry/Meghan interview, but I was checking Twitter during it as well. The detail about Charles not returning Harry’s calls really hit a nerve, although anyone who watched The Crown should not be surprised at that. This is a family that has to schedule appointments to see their parents.
There is also a thread of British people who are horrified by the pharma ads on American TV, which–yeah.
I added this to the last post just before Nancy posted this AM, but I got a vaccination appointment! I was able to score one when a bunch of appointments opened at the United Center for group 1b+, which I seem to qualify for based on my asthma. I had to book through ZocDoc, which was really buggy and annoying–appointments appeared and disappeared, and then when you snagged one, by the time you finished filling out the form it would tell you that slot was gone. I’m in a Chicago vaccine group on FB and everyone was complaining about it. But I’m set for March 24 for the first one, which seems auspicious since it was my mom’s birthday. I’m excited.
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David C said on March 8, 2021 at 10:23 am
Yeah, I remember probably forty years ago Prince Phillip was touring a nuclear power plant under construction and said the wiring looked like it was done by an Indian. I also remember my grandfather calling black baseball players “little colored boys”. That’s the time they grew up in and I wouldn’t have thought of calling my grandfather out on it. He was dead within five years of that so what would have been the point. Same with Phillip.
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Deborah said on March 8, 2021 at 10:29 am
The funniest thing I’m seeing on Twitter this morning is how all the Brits are blown away by all the pharmaceutical ads during the Interview. They don’t have them over there, the Drs decide what medicines their patients should have. We have such a fucked up health system here. Pharma spends boatloads of money to market their products, that’s a big chunk of what we pay for when we buy them, not necessarily research and development. Just like when you buy a burger at McDonald’s you’re paying a big chunk for the marketing of burgers, not for the materials (meat etc) and labor to cook and serve it. It’s crazy how this stuff works.
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Deborah said on March 8, 2021 at 10:50 am
Nancy, that’s a terrific piece you wrote and linked to here.
Also, Heather Cox Richardson has a very good entry today for her sub-stack newsletter, sorry I don’t have a link, her piece today is a consice overview of the history of the civil rights movement. She’s an historian, teaches at Boston College and has written a few books on American History. I read her newsletter everyday.
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ROGirl said on March 8, 2021 at 11:17 am
Phillip was the first person I thought of for that comment.
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Dorothy said on March 8, 2021 at 11:24 am
Archie was seen in the final minutes of the program, but not ‘live’. It was a video shot from the beach with their dogs, with Harry holding the camera and Meghan launching a ball for one of the pups. It was kind of greyed out – black and white, not in color. Archie’s hair appeared very dark. It’s possible it’s actually a deep red color which came across as black on the short video.
Tom & Lorenzo think it’s Phillip too, but I dunno. We’ll never know because Harry said he will never reveal it. He DID say it would badly damage the reputation of the one who said it (or words to that effect) which makes me think it was Charles, and to a lesser extent, William. Both are likely to be king one day so it seems likelier that it was one of them. My vote is that it was Chuck. We all know what a shit he was to Diana. I think he’d have no compunction whatsoever to hold back with that kind of thought process.
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LAMary said on March 8, 2021 at 11:36 am
I think it was Phil the Greek. He’s said rude, racist things pubicly and he’s getting a little mentally feeble.
My ex was white, Multiple Mayflower ancestors. He had brown eyes and dark brown hair, sort of olive skin. When I had my now thirty year old son his grandmother and one of my aunts both asked if the child was fair and blue eyed. There seemed to be concern from both of them that the other parent had somehow tainted the family bloodline. My father, born in 1912, regularly said very racist things, some of them colloquialisms from his past. The use of racist epithets for Blacks, Latinx, Jews, Italians, Polish and Irish was frequent and unsurprising.
Edit: Oprah just said that ie was neither Phil or Brenda who asked the rude question. Maybe Andrew? He’s an ass. He could say something like that. But then, his reputation is terrible already so it couldn’t get much worse. Ok, I’m going with Chuck.
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Watson said on March 8, 2021 at 11:42 am
This morning Oprah said that M&H told her the concerns about Archie’s skin tone were not voiced by Phil the Greek or Lilibet … so the list of suspects has narrowed considerably.
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LAMary said on March 8, 2021 at 12:02 pm
I she was still alive I think Princess Margaret would say something like that.
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Julie Robinson said on March 8, 2021 at 12:05 pm
Didn’t watch, partly because I can’t stand the idea of two hours of live TV with commercials, but I think I’ve caught the gist. My bet for the skin color discussion is also Phillip, but I’d put a side wager on Camilla.
(We did watch The Report, on Amazon Prime, which we missed when it came out in 2019. It’s about the investigation on torture after 9/11, how many evil people were in the Bush/Cheney administration, and how difficult it was to get any portion of the findings out. Well worth the time but gets you mad all over again.)
Anyway, as you all know, the skin color test is one that’s very personal for me. When I learned that my great great grandmother was African I went on a journey of discovery and learning. For example, my mom told me her parents wouldn’t have let her marry Dad if they had known his racial heritage. I found that quite disturbing, since without the two of them there wouldn’t have been any Julie!
In no way do I look Black and my curly hair could have come from my Irish ancestors. But in places that follow the one drop rule, even today, I would still be considered Black. So I do sympathize with Meghan and Harry for having to experience such nonsense.
Deborah, I also think highly of Heather Cox Richardson and follow her on Facebook. She posts her daily summary there too.
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Scout said on March 8, 2021 at 12:12 pm
I wasn’t at all interested in the Oprah interview, but now I am curious to see it after reading all the hoopla. My money is on Chuck for the racist uttering. He has always been a cold fish.
I got my first Covid vaccine last night at 10:56pm at the Cardinals football stadium. Easy peasy and I feel fine. I just read a WaPo article about the new CDC guidelines. I’ll be able to reunite with my grandies in about 5 weeks; three weeks til the next jab, then two weeks longer for it all to take effect. On the downside, I’ll probably soon have to resume going to the office every day. I’ll miss working from home.
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Sherri said on March 8, 2021 at 12:17 pm
Jeff(tmmo), what is your defense of a system that weights the vote of a person in state with few residents so much heavier than the vote of a person in a more populated state? What is it about living in a less populated state that makes their vote more worthy?
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brian stouder said on March 8, 2021 at 12:22 pm
Nancy’s ‘oral history’ piece about Detroit versus COVID is (as usual) superb. Thanks for sharing it
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Suzanne said on March 8, 2021 at 12:52 pm
Asking about Archie’s coloring could have been any of them. It’s not an uncommon thing to say among white people. One of my very light skinned white cousin’s daughter married a very dark skinned black from, I think, Panama. When they had a baby, my mother and half the rest of my family felt the need to comment on the color of the baby’s skin.
The royals live in such a bubble, I can’t see how they have a clue what normal people do or say and what those normal people would find offensive. That doesn’t excuse them, just explains.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 8, 2021 at 1:05 pm
Re the EC, it just makes sense to me to have a counterweight to sheer majoritarian rule that spreads out the voting impact across as broad a span of places and people as we have. My mind could change, but I’m still seeing the point of not letting a national candidate just campaign in a couple of urban centers. Trump obviously has shown the weakness of the current system in his win last round; I’m more intrigued by weighted choice voting (voting for a first, second, and third choice) than I am the likelihood of a better series of outcomes with no electoral college, but I’m not going to be terribly bothered if there’s sufficient push to change the Constitution on the college . . . I’m just not convinced of its innate injustice enough to campaign to remove it. Very interested in some of the proposals the Ohio Democratic Party is floating to change how redistricting is done, but the new Ohio Redistricting Commission is a step in a better direction.
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Jeff Borden said on March 8, 2021 at 1:18 pm
I’ve never understood the interest in people whose claim to fame is the family into which they were born. There are other monarchies. . .when we were in Seville a few years ago we visited the presidential palace, which is still used when King Felipe VI visits that part of Spain. . .but few nations make such a fuss about them as the British.
I’m already fed up with the Dr. Seuss kerfluffle. It was the author’s estate that decided to discontinue a few of his books, not the guvmint or the woke liberals are the cancel culturists. It was a clever marketing ploy, too, as sales of his books have gone up substantially. Conservatives are always yammering about the power of the free market and capitalism. Well, folks, the Seuss estate understands how business works much better than you.
Not that racism doesn’t sell. The country artist caught on video using the ‘N’ word was dropped by his label and his management company lickety split, but the fucker’s latest release has been topping the charts since he was outed. Haw. Haw. Haw.
Annnnnd, that’s my rant for the day.
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Sherri said on March 8, 2021 at 1:24 pm
I don’t see why an arbitrary set of states which tend not to be very representative of the country as a whole is a good counterweight to sheer majoritarian rule. I’m not sure why campaigning in a few urban centers is somehow worse than campaigning in a few states, many of which have less population than those urban centers. You haven’t answered the question of what makes those votes the important ones.
I do believe there is innate injustice in selecting the president with a system that privileges the voice of a predominantly white electorate, and that’s what the EC tends to do.
I’m not going to be very receptive to arguments of tradition, either, since tradition would deny me a vote.
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Jakash said on March 8, 2021 at 1:44 pm
David C. was the victim of the “last comment on the old thread” syndrome this morning. I’ll just note this sentence from his post, which I thought was a fine one: “The Electoral College right now isn’t protecting the rights of an oppressed minority. It’s protecting the grievances of a powerful minority.”
Seems to me that the founders were so concerned about a tyranny of the majority that they didn’t give enough consideration to the possibility of a tyranny of the minority, which has come to pass. 80,000 voters in Pa., Wisc. and Mich. in 2016 essentially deciding the make-up of the Supreme Court for perhaps a generation, e.g.
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Deggjr said on March 8, 2021 at 1:57 pm
Jeff Borden #17, I agree, I think Dr. Seuss Enterprises dropped a ‘New Coke’ campaign. Dr. Seuss wrote 40 something books. DSE dropped 6 books and bumped their sales of the rest.
The first Dr. Seuss book was published 84 years ago. My guess is grandparents are the current main market for Dr. Seuss books.
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Julie Robinson said on March 8, 2021 at 1:58 pm
Give it up Jefftmmo. There are no longer any legitimate reasons for the Electoral College.
I’m listening to a book about a woman who grew up in a foundling hospital and have just learned that England had no provisions for adoption until 1926. The main objection was that an illegitimate child would taint the family bloodline. Apparently this attitude still prevails in the Royal Family.
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beb said on March 8, 2021 at 2:01 pm
The senator from West Virginia seems to be getting full of himself. Vowing to torpedo President Biden’s infrastructure bill if there are no Republicans willing to sign off on it. Since we can be sure that no Republican will vote for anything a Dem proposes Manchin is giving a big FU to his own party. I guess he’s PO that most of the Dems want to kill the filibuster so they can get some work done. A political writer named Ornstein (?) had a couple ideas to reform the filibuster. He mentioned that originally the filibuster required 2/3 of present senators to end he suggested that it be set to 3/5th of present senators. That would mean in a senate of 100 members 40 members of the filibusting party would have to be in the senate at all times to prevent cloture.
It’s hard to justify the Electoral College since currently the 50 Democratic Senators represent 45 million more citizens than the 50 Republican senators do.
I’m not sure who else is distributing the Covid vaccine in the Detroit area. Henry Ford Healthcare is doing some. When I got my invitation for the vaccine I was offered a number of locations, in Sterling Heights, Jackson, Dearborn and one in Detroit. I couldn’t help thinking that Detroit ought to have two locations simple because of its size. But also in general I was dismayed by how few vaccination sites there were for all of Southeast Michigan.
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Sherri said on March 8, 2021 at 2:41 pm
The EC means that we spend presidential campaigns still talking about coal and steel jobs in the Rust Belt like they’re a significant part of the economy, and spend no time talking about anything happening west of the Rockies.
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Suzanne said on March 8, 2021 at 3:07 pm
The whole Dr Seuss debacle made me thing of this as an illustration of how books ebb and flow in popularity. Look at the top bestsellers from 60, 70, 80 years ago. How many are books by authors that are now unknown? Quite a few.
https://lithub.com/here-are-the-biggest-fiction-bestsellers-of-the-last-100-years/
I tracked down a few old ones that were hard to find even in libraries. One was Victorine by Frances Parkinson Keyes. Not hard to understand why it’s no longer a best seller. Same with Taylor Caldwell’s Bright Flows the River.
Books fall out of favor all the time. Dr Seuss is no different.
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Bruce Fields said on March 8, 2021 at 3:24 pm
Courts are an example of an institution that can counter the tyranny of the majority–you’re not supposed to be able to put somebody away on a majority vote, and that’s great.
If all you’re effectively doing is weighting votes by location, you’re not countering the tyranny of the majority, you’re just changing your definition of “the majority”.
“I’m still seeing the point of not letting a national candidate just campaign in a couple of urban centers.”
Let’s watch the hyperbole–New York and LA get you, what, maybe 10% of voters in a presidential campaign? And size falls off pretty quickly after that, so you’re going to have to go pretty far down the list before you reach even a majority of the electorate.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 8, 2021 at 3:41 pm
West of the Missouri, even — I’d say nothing much gets discussed west of the Mississippi, but there’s those Iowa methanol subsidies that seem to get a burst of DC interest every four winters or so . . .
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Mark P said on March 8, 2021 at 4:42 pm
Talking about the tyranny of the majority is just a way to justify the tyranny of a minority. That’s great if you happen to be a member of that minority, but don’t bother talking about democracy if that’s your viewpoint.
If you are concerned about protecting the minority, what about people whose votes are thrown away in a state where they are a minority? The only way to protect those voters is to count their votes along with everyone else’s around the country.
There is simply no justification whatsoever for a system that allows for a candidate to win an election with fewer votes than another candidate.
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Deborah said on March 8, 2021 at 5:16 pm
Do any of you oldsters out there remember the Booth Tarkington “Penrod” books? My goodness talk about racist, whew. When I was a kid we used to go to the public library every Friday and check out a stack of books. My mother thought the Tarkington books were hilarious and suggested my sister and I read them. We did, I thought nothing about them at the time except that I thought they were funny, this was the 1950s, I was maybe 8 or 9. But wow, looking back on it, my lord but those books were racist. This just made me realize that I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with my right wing sister about whether she remembers reading them and what she thought of them. I should ask her.
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David C said on March 8, 2021 at 5:55 pm
In 2061, 70 years after Theodore Geisel’s death, Dr. Suess books go into public domain. They can then publish any of them they want. They just have to learn patience and copyright law.
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LAMary said on March 8, 2021 at 6:38 pm
Deborah, I remember those books. I had an ancient teacher in the third grade and she liked those books. That was 1961-62. I don’t remember anything about them except the name Penrod and the teacher, Myrtle Peetry.No one is named Myrtle anymore. No was ever named Penrod.
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Deborah said on March 8, 2021 at 7:49 pm
Myrtle Peetry is a classic name. I love names like that. I have a Facebook friend, a young woman in my department the last place I worked before I retired who has a young daughter they named Pearl and her brother had a daughter named Mabel. Those names have been coming back for a while.
I emailed my sister asking her what she remembered of the Penrod books and her response was all about cancel culture and Dr. Seuss, she says his books weren’t racist.
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Dexter Friend said on March 8, 2021 at 7:58 pm
LA Mary, not Penrod, but the horribly obese real estate inspector, “Mister Pencock”, was jokingly dubbed “Mister Pencilcock” by Mister Lahey in the wonderful longtime series “Trailer Park Boys”.
I have commented before about Prince Charles and how our lives parallel only in chronology, as he is just 14 months my senior and I have followed his life since Look and Life Magazines photo shoots when he was in knickers or kilts. He promotes green causes , has vegetable gardens , andhas a real sense of humor I read. https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/5273460/billy-connolly-kevin-bloody-wilson-prince-charles-comedy-stand-up/
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alex said on March 8, 2021 at 9:05 pm
My poor old mother, a progressive, got pulled down some right-wing rabbit hole by the Dr. Seuss bullshit. She thinks they’re out to ban Mark Twain and all kinds of other literature she grew up with. I’m becoming exhausted with the Information Age and the propaganda mills thriving in it.
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LAMary said on March 8, 2021 at 9:29 pm
All true, Dexter but he also screwed around with Camilla during his entire marriage and her entire marriage. Aside from that he was kinda dickish.
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Mark P said on March 8, 2021 at 10:16 pm
We were watching CNN tonight. There was a report about a bunch of Republican idiots (but I repeat myself) blaming the Democrats for canceling Dr.Seuss. FI’s can’t be bothered to actually look up the facts.
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Charlotte said on March 8, 2021 at 11:07 pm
Suicidal ideation can come at you out of the blue, and it’s a bitch. It worms into your head and sets up shop. It’s surprising the effort it can take not to kill yourself when you look just fine from the outside.
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Brandon said on March 8, 2021 at 11:11 pm
@Deborah: Paul Fussell takes issue with what he saw as an unannounced bowdlerization in a paperback reprint. See “The Purging of Penrod,” rpt. in The Boy Scout Handbook and Other Observations (1982).
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beb said on March 9, 2021 at 12:19 am
Dr. Seuss is hardky the only author to be impacted by charges of racist language and imagery. The Dr. Doolitle books were edited to remove his habit of call people of color the N-word. Hucklebeery Finn has become a difficult book because the second main character is “N****r Jim” and just removing the first part of his name –ahem — whitewashes Twain’s story, that a white boy and a black man can become friends. And of course Dr. Seuss. I’ve seen some of his WWII propaganda stuff and his characterization of Asians was pretty over-the-top. I can well imagine that some of his books made horrible racist images. But the Right’s objection to the decision stop reprinting those books has everything to do with their desire to promote racism and hatred of non-white people. Republicans have stopped being a party of policies and become a party of social grievances.
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Sherri said on March 9, 2021 at 12:44 am
What Charlotte said.
You can appear normal to the outside world, but inside, your brain is trying to kill you. Even worse, it tells you you don’t deserve help, there is no help, and nothing will ever change.
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Dorothy said on March 9, 2021 at 5:30 am
I’m not prone to doubt someone if they say they were feeling suicidal. Having seen my husband’s experience with depression up close almost 20 years ago, I’ve learned to keep an open mind and accept what someone tells me about what they are thinking and going through. Just seeing him in tears at the mall while we were together, shopping for a garment I needed for a play I was in, was the shocker for me. It seemed like it just came out of nowhere; he had not told me what had been rising up inside him for weeks. I learned a lot and am still learning.
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Jim said on March 9, 2021 at 6:58 am
From what I`ve read in other articles, Charles had a tantrum after watching the interview . Being a UK Citizen, I have to say that Charles IS a bit of a d1ck .
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alex said on March 9, 2021 at 7:15 am
I’m not one to doubt a woman who’s had a miscarriage when she says she felt suicidal. But what I recall from the interview is that Meghan didn’t have possession of her driver’s license, passport, car keys or anything. She wasn’t free to come and go as she might. Any visit to a psychotherapist had to be approved by the palace and when she asked for help it was ignored or denied.
She also clarified why there was no photo of her immediately following the birth of Archie as there was for Kate Middleton after her children were born, fully coiffed and made up and dressed to the nines just minutes after delivery. The palace said Meghan refused to participate in such a photo, which is believable but makes her out to be cranky and uncooperative. Meghan said the palace never even planned to do a photo.
I found her believable. One of her main gripes was that the palace would push back against malicious rumors in the tabloids about the other family members but never rose to her defense and she was receiving much worse press than anyone else.
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nancy said on March 9, 2021 at 8:07 am
Does anyone allow for the possibility that Meghan is lying? I do. This girl wasn’t born yesterday.
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Deborah said on March 9, 2021 at 8:35 am
I’ll admit I’m not following the royals closely, I’m asking this question out of ignorance: what does she have to gain by lying? Pity? Power? Revenge?
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Suzanne said on March 9, 2021 at 8:37 am
I don’t doubt that Meghan is sincere but what did she expect from the royal family? She’s not only a “commoner”, but not British, not uppercrust, not 100% white. The monarchy is an insular institution of which she is not a part. She had to see what entrance into that society did to Harry’s mum, a woman who grew up part of that world, so I don’t what she expected. Maybe the eternal hope of a younger person, maybe being in love, maybe it all blinded her to the reality of how she would or would not fit in and led her to think that she could bring change to the system. I am also well aware that by leaving the royal umbrella, it’s not like they have get jobs at the Amazon warehouse making $10 an hour. They will live well off the money Harry inherited from the system they decry. So, I wish Harry & Meghan well, but they’ve said their piece and now they need to go live their lives.
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nancy said on March 9, 2021 at 10:04 am
Deborah, all of those things. As for Harry’s $10-$15M inheritance, I’m reminded of an exchange from “Succession,” where one character is gambling being disinherited, but says it’s OK because at he’ll get $5 million from another relative. All the super-rich people say that sucks, because “you’re the poorest rich person at the party,” and everybody else lives at a much higher level. $15 million is a fortune, but to a person accustomed to private everything, super-luxurious everything else, it’s just middling.
Here’s what I think Meghan wants: To win. She wants the prestige of a royal, the respect due a woman of color moving at a very high level on a global scale, love from a world who sees her Good Works, and, of course, fabulous clothes, houses, conveyances, AND the freedom to do whatever she wants, when she wants to. That’s what I think her play was here.
Also, while she should have known what sort of outfit she was joining, she perhaps overestimated her ability to change it from the inside.
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Suzanne said on March 9, 2021 at 10:11 am
The Irish Times weighs in with this headline
Harry and Meghan: The union of two great houses, the Windsors and the Celebrities, is complete https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/harry-and-meghan-the-union-of-two-great-houses-the-windsors-and-the-celebrities-is-complete-1.4504502
A few gems-
“Bees have queens, but the queen bee lays all of the eggs in the hive. The queen of the Britons has laid just four British eggs, and one of those is the sweatless creep Prince Andrew, so it’s hardly deserving of applause.”
“We cut sporadically to the couple’s own property, where Oprah and the pair wander in hoodies, jeans and anoraks among rescue dogs and chickens, as if to say, “We’re just regular rich folk, Oprah, no different from you or Tom Hanks or Jeff Bezos.” Arch-royalists will of course, claim these dogs and chickens are crisis actors.”
“…Harry and Meghan are also pregnant with a nascent media empire and lucrative Spotify and Netflix contracts. Of course, their critics accuse them of being money-hungry careerists for this, but that’s hilarious coming from sycophants to hereditary tax-suckling grifters. Arranging a Netflix deal that the couple actually have to work for is pretty benign royal behaviour when you compare it with conquest and general parasitism.”
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jcburns said on March 9, 2021 at 10:42 am
Nancy, I don’t think Meghan’s a character in an HBO or Netflix drama. Yeah, I watched the interview, pretty much the whole thing.
I found her easy to believe!
I do think she probably thought she could change more from the inside than she could—but to me, that’s the optimism of the young.
I’m happy for them and their chickens and Netflix deal.
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basset said on March 9, 2021 at 11:06 am
Agree with Nancy@46. And, as we would expect, the royal conversation drew quite an audience. NY Times quote below:
“Oprah Winfrey’s explosive two-hour interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, who had largely kept their silence after announcing last year that they would give up their duties as members of Britain’s royal family, attracted 17.1 million viewers on CBS, according to preliminary Nielsen figures.
The number of viewers climbed as the show went on. It drew 16.9 million in the first hour and 17.3 in the second, Nielsen reported. That audience was about twice the size of the viewership for the prime-time ratings winner in a given week.”
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Jeff Borden said on March 9, 2021 at 11:28 am
I can’t be the only one to find it hilarious that so many right-wingers who shout themselves hoarse yelling “freedom” are now siding with the royal family. Then again, the Windsors are whiter than white and two of the three people in the big Sunday extravaganza were women of color so perhaps that’s the reason.
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LAMary said on March 9, 2021 at 11:30 am
Meghan went to a pricey private school here in LA. I suspect she was at least partly on a scholarship. I had a trustfundy co-worker whose daughters went there, were a few years behind Meghan. I used to go to their fundraiser car washes. Who knows? I like what the Irish Times said. I also agree that Meghan wants the unlimited budget, the home in an incredibly pricey part of the world. Montecito? Phew. A tool shed would run at least a mil there. It’s also a very beautiful place, unfortunately prone to fires and subsequent mudslides, but beautiful places in California are disaster prone. I mostly believe her but I can’t imagine what she thought life would be like married to a royal. She had some first hand information on that from Harry. She also is an actress. If she was lying she did a good job acting, and that’s certainly possible. I completely believe the racist stuff. That she didn’t have to make up. And thank you Jim, for confirming that Charles is a dick.
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Jakash said on March 9, 2021 at 12:04 pm
Jeff B. @ 50,
“perhaps”? ; )
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Heather said on March 9, 2021 at 12:24 pm
I’m surprised at how naive Meghan was, but being an American perhaps she didn’t realize how much of a gilded prison royalty would be. I keep thinking of those scenes in The Crown where Diana is basically left alone at a palace with nothing to do and no one to talk to. It sounds like it was much the same for Meghan but with racism to boot. And unlike Diana, she had life experience, so she knew what was happening and how to address it.
I don’t believe her that she never Googled Harry, though. Come on!!
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Sherri said on March 9, 2021 at 1:15 pm
I think she had some idea of what she was getting into, but no idea of how bad it would be. I think Harry thought that because he would stand up for her, it would be different that it had been for his mother. He didn’t grasp that change constitutes an existential crisis for the royal family. Living in the past is their only reason for existence.
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David C said on March 9, 2021 at 2:58 pm
The royals only want enough new blood to keep hemophilia and prophyria at bay. Once you’ve contributed your DNA to the effort they don’t much care about anything else.
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Bitter Scribe said on March 9, 2021 at 3:44 pm
I’m as indifferent to the Royal Family as Nancy is—IMO a lot of brave men fought a war a long time ago so we wouldn’t have to pay attention to those ridiculous people. But Ben Shapiro and Megyn Kelly have weighed in on (i.e., slandered) Harry and Meghan, and that’s enough for me to be on Team H&M.
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Ann said on March 9, 2021 at 4:25 pm
Not particularly interested in the royals, but want to add to the kudos for the Deadline Detroit piece. Great choice on how to present it.
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Sherri said on March 9, 2021 at 5:40 pm
A look back at how despite being the initial epicenter of COVID in the US, King County managed one of the lowest incidence and mortality rates in the country.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/a-year-in-americas-first-covid-epicenter
There was a significant economic cost. Within a week of the first death, Microsoft and Amazon, with the strong encouragement of the county executive, sent everyone home. Their workers were able to keep working from home, but the rule of thumb is that every one of those jobs creates another 5 jobs in the area, and most of those jobs go away when people are working from home. A year later, and everybody is still working from home.
Schools went virtual a couple of weeks later, and it’s only this month that K-2 kids entered the classroom again, a couple of days a week, in a few districts. The hope is by the end of the month, elementary kids will be back a couple of days a week.
We’ve been through several rounds of more stringent shutdowns, mask-wearing is near universal in my area, but winter was really rough this year. I’m glad we took this pandemic seriously, glad that we kept the death rate down, but I’m really ready to be done with it.
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Susang said on March 9, 2021 at 6:04 pm
If you want to know how weird British aristocracy is, read this book. Also, it’s witty, funny and an easy read.
https://www.oprahmag.com/entertainment/a31213280/lady-in-waiting-book-excerpt-princess-margaret/
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Deborah said on March 10, 2021 at 7:12 am
Susang, the excerpt in that link is well worth the read.
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Dorothy said on March 10, 2021 at 7:27 am
The boomerang! What a great story. I learned something new so thanks, Susang. Part of me wants to read that book, but another part of me thinks I would not be able to handle all the referenced sadness about Lady Glenconner’s children.
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Julie Robinson said on March 10, 2021 at 8:48 am
Well, I immediately put the book in my library queue. I’m a sucker for insider stories as well as unhappy childhood stories, thanks to a melancholic strain running through me. I just finished The Bridesmaid’s Daughter, about one of Princess Grace’s bridesmaids who became homeless, and am currently reading The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames, about a woman who grew up in a London foundling hospital.
But sadness begone; today Dennis is 65 and ready to start sucking at the great government teat. Medicare and Social Security, here we come. He’s having his first Covid shot today, so has requested his celebration at lunchtime in case he feels crummy later. There are steaks and strawberries in the frig and I baked angel food cake. Time to party!
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basset said on March 10, 2021 at 10:11 am
I crossed that threshold last September, Mrs. B a couple years before me due to disability. Heard beforehand about how difficult the application process could be, but ours both went well. Private disability insurance, now, that was a different story.
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Sherri said on March 10, 2021 at 12:27 pm
Nineteen years sober today. One day at a time has been a useful tool for getting through the last year!
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Deborah said on March 10, 2021 at 1:00 pm
Congratulations Sherri, getting through this last year without drinking is amazing, and the 18 years before that too. Good for you.
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basset said on March 10, 2021 at 2:06 pm
Second that. Sherri, if you’d be comfortable sharing something about your journey, I for one would listen – quit for a year myself awhile back, started up again though.
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Suzanne said on March 10, 2021 at 5:21 pm
I just learned today that Neil Diamond & Barbra Streisand went to high school together. Same class and everything. Go figure.
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LAMary said on March 10, 2021 at 6:33 pm
Speaking of babies. Alec Baldwin and his wife Hilaria who is actually Hillary but she likes to pretend she’s Spanish, had a baby six months after having the previous baby. Alec gets cranky when asked politely, “what the hell?” He thinks it’s rude to ask if it’s a surrogate’s kid or whatever. He also gets cranky when asked why his wife speaks with a fake Spanish accent. Is this all too bullshitty? I’m not criticizing his acting. Just the weirdness.
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Sherri said on March 10, 2021 at 7:18 pm
Basset, I was basically self-medicating depression for years. About 20 years ago, everything started falling apart; I was drinking more than I meant to and getting drunk inappropriately, and the depression had become crippling and I was suicidal. Fortunately, I decided that I did want to live, and found a therapist, and then a psychiatrist for meds.
Of course, the first thing the therapist told me was that I needed to stop drinking whether I had a problem with alcohol or not, because it was doing me no favors with my depression. So I did, for about 9 months or so. Then, with my depression more stable, and desperately wanting to drink, I was convinced that the easiest way to not drink was to drink a little bit. That did not go well.
A good friend had shared with me just a few months earlier that she was an alcoholic, so I contacted her and she took me to my first meeting. I got a sponsor within about a week who was so different from me in so many ways but also got me in very important ways, and she kicked my butt for a solid year, and we’re still in touch. I know she’ll always answer the phone if I call, and I’d do the same for her, even if we go years without hearing from one another.
It was about three years before I didn’t want to drink anymore, and years of therapy before I began to feel comfortable with myself, but it’s therapy that couldn’t have happened if I were still drinking.
There’s a lot to criticize about AA, and much of it is valid, but when it works, it’s pretty incredible.
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Lynn said on March 10, 2021 at 9:08 pm
Great to read the article. Love your intro paragraph! The stories are devastating.
Can’t wait to hear your thoughts about the Investigation ending!
Thank goodness for the music. It got me through.
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diane said on March 10, 2021 at 9:13 pm
Congratulations Sherri! That is an impressive achievement.
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Dexter Friend said on March 10, 2021 at 10:37 pm
I heard “meeting makers make it”, which means if you don’t go to meetings, you won’t make it, surely. I have shared here about my alcoholism, and I have been to zero meetings in a Covid19 year now, and due to painful arthritic conditions I had to stop daily meetings some time before that. Online meetings leave me frustrated, so I don’t sign in there either. I do read The Grapevine daily; it’s our monthly little magazine where we share stories. I have a phone and I talk to a few oldtimers but avoid AA Zooms. I Facebook members in AA frequently and that’s my contact, this keeps me sober, along with the fact I had had enough of myself making an ass of myself when I already was getting old, at 43 years of age. I quit alcohol 8 days before my first AA meeting, I interviewed at a hospital rehab center wanting to be admitted, but the man there said I already had the mindset they were trying to achieve there, and told me to carry on with AA, and if I found myself craving a drink, call and he’d have a bed for me. I never , yet, had to make that call. That was in January, 1993.
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Dorothy said on March 11, 2021 at 7:13 am
Dexter, Sherri – everyone – your stories are so impressive and I want too thank you for sharing such personal information. You don’t have to do that but I think the level of trust and respect we have for each other here allows you to do that. I’m grateful every day for the insight and intelligence that is shared here. Rarely does a day go by that I’m not saying out loud to my husband, or mulling over in my mind, something I read here. It is inspiring to know so many people who participate here are such amazing people. You all should be proud!
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Deborah said on March 11, 2021 at 10:02 am
That was fast, about 20 minutes after Prince William said they weren’t a racist family, a photo of him being carried on an elevated chair being hoisted by “natives” is circling the Internet. https://www.popsugar.com/celebrity/photo-gallery/25015522/image/25015781/Prince-William-carried-elevated-chair-Tuvalu. The photo is included in that older piece, I couldn’t figure out how to link to it here from Twitter. Ok maybe he had no choice, maybe that was what they did for dignitaries who visited in that part of the world but it’s still royally clueless for him to say their not racist when that photo exists and others with his wife in a similar position. I mean the optics of it are stunning.
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Suzanne said on March 11, 2021 at 10:29 am
I’d give William a pass on that photo. My guess is he had no choice and it is likely a cultural thing that the country does to honor visiting dignitaries. He looks very uncomfortable and guys carrying the chair don’t look too thrilled either.
I am sure he doesn’t think the royals are racist. Almost no one I know will admit to being so. It’s so hard to untangle. The British made huge amounts of money off colonialism as did the US off of slavery and we are still reaping the benefits of that but it’s difficult to agree on a resolution. I think reparations are in order for past sins but I know many who disagree. How do you ever make right a horrible past trauma? You can’t but that doesn’t mean you don’t try. The past is never really past but so many people don’t get that.
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LAMary said on March 11, 2021 at 10:55 am
I don’t think William had any choice on that situation. It’s bad and he can’t erase the past, but I doubt very much that he chose to do that. Maybe the queen could refuse but not a prince. There was a lot of that in The Crown, not specifically that exact situation but plenty obligatory participation in ceremonies.
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Sherri said on March 11, 2021 at 11:31 am
More on Seattle’s and Washington’s response to the pandemic. Despite the more stringent lockdowns, no elected leaders face any political costs for imposing them. It helps that the governor, county executive, and mayor of Seattle are all aligned politically. The mayor of Seattle will not be running for a second term, but the pandemic is not her undoing, the police are. Their response to the BLM protests and the apparent lack of control that either the mayor or the police chief had over the police doomed her.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/us/coronavirus-seattle-success.html
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Deborah said on March 11, 2021 at 11:31 am
I agree that William may not have wanted to do it, my point was that the optics are horrible that a photo like that exists. And the fact that it’s going viral 20 minutes after he said they’re (in my previous comment I used their instead of they’re which is embarrassing) not a racist family is the part that’s clueless. He should have kept his mouth shut until they could have figured out a PR strategy. Not that I’m in favor of spin but it’s something people who live in such a public sphere usually have to keep in mind. It does not look good, even if it’s innocent was my point.
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Julie Robinson said on March 11, 2021 at 1:33 pm
William and the royals are in a pickle now. They’ll be pelted with questions every time they attend an event, and ALL the iffy photos from the past will be unearthed. Of course, Harry had a few of those too.
My kudos to Sherri, Dexter, and whoever else have overcome addiction. You did the work and got your lives back.
Rainy here and everyone has a headache. Ugh.
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LAMary said on March 11, 2021 at 3:59 pm
If you have an hour to spend listening to something, look for today’s Fresh Air. I’m reading resumes with that on and I had to stop and just listen a few times. Terry Gross’s guest was brilliant.
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Deborah said on March 11, 2021 at 4:21 pm
I made my 5th batch of no-knead bread today and I learned something I’m definitely going to do next time. The biggest headache for me is the step where you dump the contents of the dough out of the bowl after 18 hours of rising onto a well floured dish cloth that you use to wrap and let the dough sit for 2 more hours. Then when the 2 hours are up you put the dough in the preheated Dutch oven. Both of those tasks get flour all over my kitchen. You’re all probably less clumsy than me, so maybe this doesn’t happen for you. So here’s the trick I learned after googling to find a better way: use parchment, dump the dough on a large square of parchment, wrap it around it to form a ball, cover that with a dish towel. Then when the two hours are up you put the dough in the heated Dutch oven with the parchment still under and around the sides of it, but not over the top of it (you may have to trim the parchment down to get it to fit into the Dutch oven). Bake normally as the recipe instructs, with lid on and then with lid off as normal. This is brilliant. Note I haven’t tried this yet, I found out about it after I researched it while my bread was in the oven after I’d once again coated my tiny kitchen with flour. Plus every time I’ve made this bread so far I’ve had to throw the “wrapping” dish towel away because so much dough stuck to it I wasn’t about to try to clean off the hunks of gunk and launder it. Luckily I used my rattiest dish towels so throwing them away was no big deal. But I was out of ratty dish towels after this last batch of bread and I didn’t want to mess up good ones next time. I’ll let you know how it works after I try it next time. If any of you have used this technique before let me know how it worked for you, please.
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Dorothy said on March 11, 2021 at 5:04 pm
Deborah I tried doing sour dough bread when my daughter brought me some starter in July when she visited. She had used parchment paper in the Dutch oven so I just followed her instructions. (We just put the lid on the pot even though the paper stuck up a little – it smooshed down just fine without trimming.) This recipe also has you heat the Dutch oven in the hot oven for an hour at a really high heat – 450 I think. I did the bread two or three times and decided that was enough. It was good, but I didn’t want to keep doing it over and over again. Honestly when bread comes out of the oven, all I want to do is cut off the heels, slather them with butter and indulge myself.
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Jeff Borden said on March 11, 2021 at 5:07 pm
I’m sooooo tired of this shit. . .
Geraldo Rivera is talking out loud about running for the Senate seat in Ohio being vacated by human wind sock Rob Portman. And Matthew McConaughey is talking out loud about running for Texas governor.
Please, dog, no!
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Scout said on March 11, 2021 at 5:11 pm
Sherri and Dexter, thank you both for sharing your personal stories. As Dorothy said, it is a testament to the community here that the trust level is here for us to open up like that.
Yesterday was quite a momentous day for the Biden admin. Getting the Covid relief bill passed, plus Merrick Garland being confirmed were both BFDs. I just saw that POTUS signed the bill today instead of tomorrow. Now the Dems have to do the communications work to promote the hell out of POTUS’s accomplishments, because keeping them front and center in the public eye is how we continue to remind people what real leadership and caring looks like. It’s refreshing to have competent humans in charge after the horrors of the past four years, and especially the last year in particular.
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Julie Robinson said on March 11, 2021 at 5:43 pm
LAMary, I was over at my mom’s at 2, but will listen tomorrow. I love Jon Batiste. He’s incredibly talented yet humble, and he makes joy. Even when he protests, it’s in a positive and loving way. I think he’s about the same age as my son.
I listened to Matthew McConaughey’s book last month, and the one thing about Matthew McConaughey I learned: Matthew McConaughey really likes Matthew McConaughey.
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