Would you not think that it is
the smart thing to do when “issues” arise is to address them—rather than covering
them up—before they become a problem you can’t control? The British Royal “Firm”
clearly has not learned from past experience on how to handle “issues,” and now
we are seeing it becoming increasingly desperate to do the same old wrong thing
by putting a lid on bad publicity, which it is utterly failing to do, and has
only itself to blame.
It is being claimed that Martin
Bashir, when he was working for the BBC in 1995, had somehow “tricked” Princess
Diana into giving a controversial interview by playing on her paranoia about
the “firm” being out to “get” her, which she already believed anyways. Diana’s
brother, Earl Spencer, served as her “gatekeeper,” and it was he who needed to
be convinced to give the interview the go ahead; however, Spencer was probably
not entirely opposed to the interview in any case, since Prince Charles had
already admitted to adultery in a previous interview.
Bashir was nevertheless accused
of conjuring a forged bank statement that appeared to show that royal staffers
were being paid to spy on Diana and leak negative information about her to the
press; given the fact that Diana had few friends in the “firm,” this was likely
occurring, with or without such “evidence.” This didn’t stop Prince William
from putting out a statement condemning Bashir, claiming that he put things in
her head that were not true, making her “paranoid” and indirectly causing her
death. We should take his statement for what it is: a desperate attempt to
rewrite history and another pail of water on a fire that just refuses to be put
out. The prince’s statement was an obvious attempt to throw shade over another “controversial”
interview by his brother, Prince Harry, which aired on Apple TV+ a few days
ago.
As pointed out, the “firm” didn’t
learn anything from that experience with Princess Diana. Meghan Markle’s complaints
about living with the “firm” in fact closely resembles that of Diana, who in
that controversial interview claimed that “firm” was jealous of her being the “center
of attention” of the media, and fed stories to the media that she was “unstable”
and “mentally unbalanced”—enough to be considered a suitable candidate for a “rest
home” so that she wouldn’t interfere with Prince Charles resuming a
relationship with his now wife Camilla Parker-Bowles. None of this was actually
“news”; much the same ground had been covered a few years earlier in Andrew
Morton’s book on her life—the difference being that here Diana was on
television speaking for herself in front of millions of viewers.
This interview was an entirely
different circumstance than the book. Diana claimed that she had not been
personally interviewed by Morton, and that the book’s content was all from “friends”
and “intimates,” so that there was a smidgeon of “plausible deniability.” In
fact, Morton admitted after her death that she was indeed—through an “intermediary”—responsible
for most of the book’s content, and had even made an audio recording that more
or less reiterated the same claims she made in the Bashir interview. The “shock”
was that people were actually seeing her make those claims in person, which
made them even more “shocking.” The “firm” wasn’t just appalled by the sympathy
she received and how bad it made them look, but by what they felt was the “false”
image the media had of her, at odds with the “emotionally unbalanced” princess
they “knew”—and refused to help.
Meghan Markle seems to have had a
similar (in some ways) experience as Diana. In her 2019 ITV interview, she
claimed to have tried “hard” to “adopt” this “British sensibility of a stiff
upper lip” and just block out the attacks on her by the British tabloid press.
She admitted to being “naïve” about marrying into the British royal family, but
more disturbing was that behind the scenes she was getting almost no support
from the “firm.” In her Oprah interview earlier this year, she went further,
claiming to have suicidal thoughts, and requests for therapy were denied. It
was almost as if the rest of the royal family enjoyed seeing her suffer because
of jealousy of all the attention she was getting as someone who was a literal “outsider”
who had somehow gained admittance into the hallowed, guilded halls of the royal
family.
For his part, Prince Harry has also
chosen to “stray” from expectations, in order to protect himself and his family.
He first brought up the accusation of “concern” by a member of the “firm” about
the “race” of his firstborn son. In one of their first outings in the quest of
being financially independent, on the Apple TV docueseries The Me You Can’t See, Harry admitted it took a little convincing to
accept that he had “issues” since his mother’s death and needed to seek help.
Perhaps indicative of the fact that during his return to the UK to attend his
grandfather’s funeral, his meeting with his father and brother did not go well,
and thus Harry felt under no further obligation to stay silent. He accused his
father, Prince Charles, of being a “cold” parent and having been informed by
him that since he “suffered” under the “system,” then Harry should expect to
suffer too. Harry stated that he found it perplexing that his father cared so
little about his and his brother William’s wellbeing, that they should not be
“protected” from “trauma,” particularly of the tabloid press variety.
None of this went down well with
the “firm” or the British press. Note that the “firm” used the Bashir “expose” the
same way it did the smear campaign against Meghan Markle just prior to the
Oprah interview, accusing her of bullying members of her staff and forcing them
to quit. Of course, Mehgan is of a different sort from Princess Diana
altogether—not just a self-assured career woman, but also not willing to play
the game for the game’s sake: when it was clear that it wasn’t “working” for
her, she pulled up stakes and Harry was more than willing to follow her,
because he wanted a “break” from the bullshit too, and this was a perfect
excuse for him to do so. Left to his own devices, as in his most recent
interview, he has burned a few more bridges, leaving his father reportedly “boiling
with anger” that he just won’t shut up about how bad things were. Prince Charles
wants to “defend” himself, but he and the rest of the “firm” should have
thought about that long ago before allowing things to reach this point. Harry
and Meghan are in America now, are financially independent, and there are no
gatekeepers to keep them quiet any longer.
But for Diana, behind the “glamour”
was insecurity and temper tantrums, eating disorders and self-inflicted wounds
to her arms and legs. She blamed this on the lack of emotional support from the
family, and postnatal depression. She claimed that she sought “motherly” help
from the Queen, who was apparently incapable of maternal affection, even for
her own birth children, much like her husband Phillip was a “cold” parent. The
Queen was also reportedly “disturbed” that Diana was more interested in
mingling with people on the “outside,” especially in her charity work. In the
Bashir interview, she accused the “firm” of being “uncaring”; after the
interview—which again was merely a restatement of what was in the Morton book,
but now with all “plausible deniability” gone—the Queen had enough and demanded
the Charles and Diana divorce and get her out of the house.
What makes all this so bad is
that the “buck” is supposed to stop with the person at the tippy top, but the
Queen seems unable or unwilling to protect those under her wings from threat. The
tabloid media stays a “respectful” distance from her, and she seems satisfied
with that. But while the hypocritical media fauns on her, it is not
sufficiently in “awe” or respectful of her enough to treat certain members of
her own family with a modicum of dignity, instead with shameless lies and
juvenilia as they did with Meghan.
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