Sunday, May 23, 2021

The British royal "firm" still refuses to learn any lessons from the past about how to handle "issues"

 

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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