In Defense of Meghan and Harry. Yes, THAT Meghan and Harry.

All that nitpicking feels like much ado about nothing. I can't for the life of me see bad people. They just seem...human.

Source: Hindustan Times

Fair warning: This is not anything you’ll have to think deeply about. I won’t be asking you for solutions to a major problem or to help me find the answers to a personal dilemma. 😏🙄😊 It’s tabloid stuff. It’s the mood I’m in. Not sorry.

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I’ll admit I have a soft spot for Meghan Markle, the woman so many others love to hate. I don’t get the animosity. I really don’t. I’ve loved her as an actress in “Suits”, I followed her wedding to Prince Harry and their subsequent departure from their Royal duties, I’ve watched her at home and being interviewed on many occasions, I’ve listened to her own interviews with others, I’ve read their love story and the harsh after-wedding realities in Harry’s book, “Spare”, and I’ve come away from all of it wanting nothing but peace for her. And for him.

She seems real. She seems genuine. She seems like a normal woman who happened to fall in love with a prince and probably thought she might just beat the odds and actually live happily ever after.

No such luck. They’re called ‘fairy tales’ for a reason. Those happy endings are far from real life. We want to believe in them, especially where princesses are concerned. Princesses are ethereal, other worldly, pure of soul, guileless, innocent. They deserve those happy endings and when they get them, we can breathe easy. It is as it should be.

Except for the villains. There are always villains.

I grew up believing in fairy tales, and I went on believing in them long after I’d begun to lead my own adult life, which was probably better than I expected, but was not exactly a fairy tale. Still, I go on believing that dreams do come true. Just not the dreams of childhood or Snow White or Cinderella or even Meghan Markle. No, we revise those dreams down to fit real life, and when they mostly come true, we’re grateful. We can live with them.

In Meghan and Harry’s case, there is a saving grace among their seeming foibles and tragedies: They seem to genuinely love each other. That has to make their enemies furious. How dare they! They are terrible! They need to suffer!

My “Mom” hackles rise every time I see a new ‘scandal’ that amounts to the same old nothing—an unearthed ‘quarrel’ between Meghan and Katherine, a complaint from an employee that she was ‘mean’, bad manners in front of the Queen, a ‘well-deserved’ cancellation of her shows, a headline that makes her look trite or tacky or phony or less than…

The latest is a story about Meghan’s new cooking show being a rip-off of Pamela Anderson’s new cooking show. Oh, no! The headline read, Pamela Anderson responds to claims that Meghan Markle copied her cooking show.

When Anderson was asked this question by Andy Cohen, "On a scale from one to 10, how much of a rip-off did you feel like With Love, Meghan was of your show, Pamela's Cooking with Love?", this is what happened:

Looking taken aback by the inquiry, Anderson responded: "One – I didn't". When Cohen persisted with the topic, asking: "One? On a scale from one to 10, you did not see any similarities?".

Pamela replied with laughter: "No, I didn't really look, but I didn't invent cooking shows. She's just doing her thing."

So much for that ‘scandal’. Yet there it is, another misstep by Meghan Markle. A misstep that— wait, what? —wasn’t.

She was supposed to be as perfect as her looks. She was supposed to be ever mindful of her color. She needed to mind her Ps and Qs. No drama, no opinions, no personality beyond what the Royals invented. Harry, too. Except they weren’t the kind of people who could play that game.

On reading “Spare”, it’s clear Harry is his mother’s son. He cares about people outside his sphere, and most of his friends are friends he’s had forever. Most of them have no real ranking and are friends of his because they all work well together doing good works. Meghan fit that role. They work well together doing good works.

I like them both and I’ll go on defending them. They don’t really deserve any of this, no matter what their names are or who says what about them, or what mistakes they’ve made along the way. None of it is sinister. None of it is deserving of the same kind of brutal attention Harry’s mother, Diana, had to endure during her lifetime.

Are they attention-seekers? Sure. They’re celebrities. They’re doing a job and making a living. They’re still doing good works. So far, they haven’t hurt anyone. No real damage. But others work hard at trying to hurt them. They want them to suffer. Why? I don’t know. That’s the thing that keeps me coming back.

What’s in it for the haters?

This will no doubt be the first and last post I write about them, because, I mean, who really cares? But it doesn’t mean I won’t be paying attention. There are dozens of blogs devoted to attacking Harry and Meghan, including right here on Substack. They get their jollies from pointing out how human those two are, describing in snarky and excruciating detail the things that might also happen to everyday human beings in everyday life, only with no cameras or mics around.

I’ll end this now, but I’ll remind any of the Sussex-haters that I won’t respond to their hate. Take it to your own space. This is mine and—brace yourself—I think those two are adorable!

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