Meghan Markle has issued a statement saying she is prepared “to forgive” the Royal family for its beastly racism towards her son Archie. “Ego te absolvo,” as she put it in her impeccable Latin (no Hollywood bimbo, she).
Yet a source close to the Palace says it was all a terrible misunderstanding. Apparently, on hearing that Harry and Meghan were expecting their first child, Prince Philip exclaimed: “Golly!”
Alas, the Sussexes mistook that expression of pleasant surprise for a question and were deeply offended. However, now that Prince Philip has died, Meghan is ready to exercise the Christian virtue of forgiveness.
That’s big of her. (I almost wrote “white of her”, but then got so ashamed of the incipient racism of that idiom that I almost denounced myself to the authorities.) Anyway, if Alexander Pope is to be believed, to err is human; to forgive, divine.
However, someone who forgives is by implication the wronged party. If the forgiver is more sinning than sinned against (I can’t stop quoting, or rather misquoting, English classics today), then that act stops being divine and becomes not only human but also irritatingly frivolous.
However, Meghan’s magnanimity has set off a chain of imitations. In parallel developments:
- The surviving Nazis have forgiven the Jews for being sore losers.
- Every rapist has forgiven his victims for wearing revealing clothes.
- Bob Welsh, the only surviving Great Train Robber, has forgiven the train driver Jack Mills for putting his head in the way of that cosh.
- Bernie Madoff has forgiven all subscribers to his pyramid schemes for their credulity.
- Jeremy Corbyn has forgiven all Yids for being oversensitive. (See Item 1 above).
- Mike Tyson has forgiven Frank Bruno for having a glass jaw.
- Vlad Putin has forgiven the Skripals for their strong resistance to Novichok.
- He has also forgiven Alexander Litvinenko for his weak resistance to polonium.
I’ll keep you posted on any new absolutions as they become known. Meanwhile, I’m sorry about my levity in this little vignette. I hope you can forgive me.
This is why satire is dead.