Fairytales for fuckwits: Meghan, a children's book, and the school bully tactics of the British tabloids...
Piers Morgan's obsession with Meghan Markle continues, while Mike Graham appears worried there may be too many big words for him to understand.
On May the 4th, there was a great disturbance in the force, as if thousands of tabloid reporters and talk radio pundits cried out at once: The Duchess of Sussex had announced she was writing a children’s book.
Since the earth-shattering news that Meghan has written a story about the relationship between father’s and their sons — apparently based on a poem she wrote for Prince Harry — the tabloid press and talk radio stations have gone into meltdown.
The Sun has managed to crank out seven hysterically-pitched stories on the announcement since it dropped — the book isn’t out until June 8th — with each more unhinged than the last:
You’ll notice that Piers Morgan — a man who has turned one drink with Meghan after which he claims she “ghosted him”, which took place in 2016, into a five year and counting obsession — gets his own story there. That’s The Sun filleting Morgan’s spittle-flecked Daily Mail column on the book for its own news piece.
Morgan, who trails his columns on Twitter like they are exciting new releases rather than the tabloid equivalent of a letter scrawled in faeces forced through your letterbox, dashed out his thoughts on The Bench with the indecent haste of a man running along while his trousers fall down.
Beneath a typically screaming Mail headline — How the hell can Meghan 'I hate royalty but call me Duchess' Markle preach about father-child relationships when she's disowned her own Dad, and wrecked her husband's relationship with his? — Morgan howled:
… she continues to cynically exploit her royal titles because she knows that's the only reason anyone is paying her vast sums of money to spew her uniquely unctuous brand of pious hectoring gibberish in Netflix documentaries, Spotify podcasts or children's books.
Of course, her equally cynical publishers don't give a damn about any of this shocking double standard.
Forget the fact that Meghan had a good degree of personal fame before she ever met Prince Harry, Piers Morgan accusing anyone else of being a cynical fame chaser is beyond parody. From his earliest days as a gossip hack, Morgan has muscled into pictures with the rich and famous, desperate to be someone.
When Meghan was willing to indulge him, he showered her with praise, but once she stopped taking his calls, he turned into the Tinder match from hell. That he has been married to his second wife, fellow controversialist columnist Celia Walden since 2010 seemingly did nothing to dampen his obsession.
Having repeatedly interviewed Meghan’s estranged father Thomas Markle — another man aggrieved because a woman would rather not spend time with him — Morgan sneers:
If she really cared about father-child relationships, she'd take a chauffeur-driven limousine on the hour-long trip to see her own father who's never even met either Harry or Archie.
It’s projection again: Piers Morgan’s ego is so egg-shell thin that after Meghan decided that one drink was more than enough, he’s spent 5 years seeking revenge and convinced that he’s been wronged, just like her ‘poor old dad’. That’s the ‘poor old dad’ that insists on talking about his daughter to journalists at every possible occasion.
At the end of an article that implies Harry and Meghan contributed to the death of Prince Philip — he died of natural causes — and rants on about “the woke”, Morgan ends with this:
But then as we've seen from her gruesomely self-interested behaviour during a pandemic that's caused so much devastation and pain to billions around the world, Meghan Markle doesn't really care about anyone but herself.
Remember, the Duchess of Sussex’s only ‘crime’ here is to write a children’s book which people will be free to buy or ignore with equal ease. But, as ever, Piers Morgan treats the news with all the proportionality of a US drone strike.
The real story here is about how Morgan — the bittiest of bit-part players in the narrative of Meghan and Harry’s lives — is so desperate to upgrade his place in the cast list that he will rant and rave to stay relevant. His departure from Good Morning Britain came after his last stream of invective about Meghan and he knows this schtick gets him the attention and money he craves.
Aside from Morgan’s column, MailOnline has published 9 other news stories on or related to the book announcement. The most telling of them is one that links the Duchess of Sussex’s book to another one… by the Duchess of Cambridge.
Headlined Bookshelf battle royale! Kate Middleton shares a glimpse inside her Hold Still photobook just a day after Meghan Markle unveiled her own £12.99 children's story, the story unsurprisingly treats Kate with kid gloves while continuing to imply that Meghan is the kind of person who would make gloves out of kids if it suited her devilish schemes.
There’s no shade thrown at the Duchess of Cambridge for revealing further details of her book just hours after Meghan’s announcement. Instead, the story — lavishly illustrated with images from the book — gushes:
The Duchess of Cambridge has shared a glimpse of her photography book Hold Still ahead of its release on Friday…
… Kate, 39, a keen photographer, launched a campaign during the first lockdown last year to ask the public to submit images which captured the period.
It even includes a mention of an image of a BLM protestor saying:
Over the course of the project, the Duchess shared a number of her favourite images on the Kensington Royal Instagram page, including a Black Lives Matter protester holding a sign reading: 'Be on the right side of history.'
If Meghan had done the same she would have been decried for “supporting extremists”. Remember the contrasting way their mutual taste for avocado was covered?
Over at The Daily Telegraph, Spiked alumna Ella Whelan offered her thoughts on a book that isn’t released until next month under the headline Meghan Markle’s fun-free children’s book may put an entire generation off reading, which makes it sound like a grimoire full of dark magic rather than a gentle children’s book about kids and their dads.
Just as with the Mail’s story on Kate’s book, it’s worth imagining what Whelan would say if the Duchess of Cambridge had written The Bench. Look at the following section…
It reveals something of the political superficiality of Harry and Meghan’s activism that an “inclusive” book would use the military father as its promotional message. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing, but if my kids have to read about soldiers, I’d prefer Hans Christian Andersen’s tin version rather than the woke posturing of a former royal.
… and notice that because Meghan is the author including a father who is in the military is “political superficiality”. If Kate had written a story that featured an analogue for Prince William — who also spent time in uniform, though in less dangerous circumstances than his ‘spare’ brother — Whelan would likely deem it a ‘touching tribute to their love’.
Similarly, Sarah Ferguson — the ex-wife of Prince Andrew, top Yelp! reviewer for Jeffrey Epstein’s houses and noted avoider of FBI questioning — uses the title Duchess of York on her many execrable children’s books.
Now that Meghan is the tabloid’s new monster in the monarchy, Fergie’s antics are pointed to as a positive with her books flattered even as Meghan’s as-yet-unpublished book is panned.
Over on talkRADIO, Mike Graham — a melting mass of expired meat — ranted about a children’s book, worried perhaps that it will contain too many long words. Speaking to his colleague, Mark Dolan — Dennis Pennis without the charm — Graham crowed:
It’s so juvenile. This is somebody who acts like she’s still in high school… I don’t have anything against her for any particular reason, other than she’s a bit too American, you know. She thinks everything is just great and cheesy. Rhyming the words ‘joy’ and ‘boy’. It’s not exactly Tennyson, is it?
Ah yes, that famous children’s author, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, known for such devastating rhymes as this one from The Lady of Shallot: “She left the web/ She left the loom/ She made three paces through the room.”
I’m not saying The Lady of Shalott is rubbish — though I do still hold a grudge against Tennyson after some very tedious teaching in high school — but that focusing on one rhyme in a poem is an easy trick if you want to say its shit. That Graham cannot see the irony in decrying writing a children’s book as “juvenile” is just one of the reasons he’s employed by a station with less than 1% reach.
There’ll be a new round of these columns, stories, and talk radio segments when the book is released, particularly as The Mail on Sunday just lost the second part of Meghan’s copyright claim against it.
There’s nothing that either Meghan or Harry could do that wouldn’t drive these rats in a sack rabid. If they did nothing, they’d be called lazy. When they make things, take jobs, or really say anything the very media that benefits hugely from stories about them scream that it’s a cry for attention. And yet Piers Morgan regularly pissing himself in public is “commentary”.