A disclaimer is in order: I’m not Piers Morgan’s greatest fan. This though he lives in my general neighbourhood.
But today I celebrate Piers as a martyr to a noble cause. Responding to the Sussexes’ emetic TV stunt, he called Meghan a liar, almost in as many words. Specifically, he called her the “Pinocchio Princess”, making me have another look at recent photos to make sure Meghan’s nose isn’t growing pari passu with her stomach.
Piers refused to believe any of Meghan’s claims, including the tearjerker about her getting a cold shoulder from a senior royal whom she had asked for help with her “mental problems.”
A tip to Meghan: next time you have a medical problem, consult a doctor, not a royal. Horses for courses and all that.
Then I suspect Meghan’s problem wasn’t medical but existential, of the kind that keeps almost 150,000 American shrinks in business. Encouraged by the deafening din of psychobabble, modern people, especially Americans, delve deep into their own psyche.
Everything they find there has to be medicalised or, to be more exact, psychobabbled. Hence Americans, especially those in big cities, fluently pepper their speech with terms borrowed from the Fraud & Junk jargon. Everybody is supposed to have at least one complex (Oedipal for preference), sublimate his libido, and wonder how his id relates to his ego and super-ego.
Meghan didn’t divulge the name of the insensitive royal, but I can just hear how, say, Prince Philip would have reacted to such nonsense: “Nothing a stiff whisky won’t fix, dear, what?”
Then of course Piers may be right in refusing to believe such a conflict even took place. “I’m sorry, I don’t believe a word she said, Meghan Markle,” he fumed. “I wouldn’t believe it if she read me a weather report.”
This brings to mind what the writer Mary McCarthy said of another writer, Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” This was obviously a hyperbole if taken literally. But the point was valid nonetheless: Hellman was a communist and therefore a liar.
Meghan is a woke round peg who found herself in a square conservative hole and set out to file away its angles by hook or, preferably, by crook. In addition, being a leftie B-actress rising like scum to the top of the Hollywood mire, I’m sure Meghan’s concept of truth is anything that fits her immediate purpose.
I agree with Piers, for once in my life: Meghan lied in everything she said about the royals – even in things that may be factually correct. One can lie in all sorts of ways: by omission, deception, spin, intonation, gesture, even facial expression.
For example, I could say that John washed his three-year-old daughter in the bathtub. Then I could wink and add: “Know what I mean?” That way I’ve just lied about John being a paedophile without uttering a single word that wasn’t factually true.
Naturally, our woke majority couldn’t let the offensive hack get away with such an affront to one of its heroines. ITV received 41,000 indignant complaints, and Piers Morgan lost his lucrative job as host of the chat show Good Morning Britain.
If such unimpeachable remarks caused a wave of vitriol in a generally royalist Britain, you can imagine the pukestorm stirred up in America where a republic cum democracy run riot is an article of fervent faith – especially among those who are unaware of the difference between a democracy and a republic.
Thus Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, praised Meghan unreservedly: “For anyone to come forward and speak about their own struggles with mental health and tell their own personal story, that takes courage,” she said. “That’s certainly something the president believes.”
Of course he does, dear girl, of course he does. As he doubtless believes in following a singular antecedent with a plural pronoun. Why, he even believes that Neil Kinnock is an orator worth plagiarising.
And Hilary Clinton found the interview “heart-rending to watch”, adding that “every institution has got to make more space and acceptance for young people coming up, particularly young women, who should not be forced into a mould that is no longer relevant, not only for them, but for our society.”
You understand that people like Hilary speak not semantically, but semiotically. They don’t say things that must somehow add up – they send signals of woke virtue. Hence it doesn’t matter to Hilary that what she said is utter gibberish.
For example, if by “our society” she means the US, then yes, the British monarchy is indeed “no longer relevant”. But Meghan married not a corrupt Arkansas governor, but a silly British prince, a member of the institution not only relevant in his country, but vital to it.
Hilary’s heart wasn’t only rent, but also broken. She found it “heart-breaking” that Meghan wasn’t “fully embraced” by “the permanent bureaucracy that surrounds the royal family…”. Takes two to tango, I’d say. Surely even Hilary can’t possibly think that Meghan “fully embraced” the royal family?
My sympathies to Piers Morgan. I hope he’ll find another job soon – certainly sooner than whoever accused him will find another brain.
Mr. Boot,
You are sadly behind the times. One is not supposed to support “freedom of speech” for those one disagrees with! That is the whole point of the culture wars, and especially “cancel culture”.
For those who enjoy a good war, this is the best so far, as it has widely defined and ever-changing rules. At some point we must hit a tipping point, where the “canceled” vastly outnumber the “cancelers” and can begin to set things right. Mr. Morgan has been on the other side of the war countless times. I wonder if now he sees the error of his ways? Somehow, I doubt it. When this war devours its own, I think the newly “canceled” do not join the opposition – they form a third side, not fully for the opposition nor completely against the “cancelers”. I would be willing to bet that “cancelers” who get canceled themselves would readily rejoin the fight if given half a chance.
I wonder if conservatives realize that all verbal argument is futile with the woke left. In short, I wonder if conservatives realize that if they want to continue living as conservatives, they will very likely have to sock the bully in the eye. And I certainly don’t mean it metaphorically.
Socking in the eye doesn’t come naturally to conservatives, although I agree that arguing with the woke left is futile.
Morgan is a broken clock, and this may push him more to right, unless he issues the token grovelling apology. As for Psaki, a more airheaded spokesperson would be hard to find. She’s like a cultist drone repeating mantras.