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Okay. Let's move into some light culture war. So Jeremy Clarkson seems to be going soft in his old age - he apologized for a column in the Sun newspaper in which he is less than gentle on Meghan Markle. The column is taken down but wayback machine remembers.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221217031028/https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/20782114/harry-meghan-netflix-series-truth/
Imo - it is pretty tame even if colorful stuff. And if you are a British citizen with attachment to the monarchy - I think the sentiment is understandable.
And his apology is here.
So it is non apology. Of course the mob is not appeased. At least he didn't try to be more apologetic afterwards.
"At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, “Shame!�? and throw lumps of excrement at her.!
I sincerely cannot understand what can make a grown person have such an intensity of emotion for someone who isnt a murderer or rapist og war criminal or the like. Meghan Markle is very annoying, sure, but this is beyond unhinged. I realize brits love their royal family, but surely after all the Diana/Charles escapades and then recently with prince Andrew, they learned to temper their emotions just a bit?
There's two things going on. First, the Royal Family is a real-life soap opera. Victoria, once she ascended the throne at the age of eighteen, worked very hard (especially when she got married, in concert with her husband) to rehabilitate the image of the royal family:
So the tabloids love the royals as fodder for scandal stories which can be whipped up out of nothing. As remarked elsewhere, they were picking on Kate (William's wife) because that is how the media treats the celebrities: build them up, then bring them down. Kate is a commoner, so there were plenty of critics to provide mean-spirited little snippets to the press. Then Meghan came along, and it was a dream come true for the gossip mags: two royal wives who could be pitted against one another in a struggle for popularity! Half the stuff churned out about "sources close to" and "a close friend" and "palace insiders" was invented out of nothing. Like having body language experts watching TV coverage of the couple so they could analyse what Meghan and Harry were really feeling, it's all headline-grabbing nonsense that is the equivalent of the latest plot line in the soaps. Or if you prefer, DOUBLE CLAW GRABBING.
Second, there is indeed insider backstabbing, jostling for influence, and all the rest of it inside the palace. Meghan rocked the boat, and after Diana the monarchy had adapted to make sure they would not be caught out again by someone who cleverly used public opinion to elevate herself above the institution. Meghan didn't realise that there are duties as well that go along with being a royal, and that there is an order of precedence, and that a lot of it is dull, boring "go and shake hands and meet the ordinary people" trips. Her move to the US was a big step in the struggle for influence, and played to where her real base and strength lies: being a celeb on the chat-show circuit and being known in America. She can't do anything like that in Britain (and certainly not after Diana's interview with Martin Bashir) and doesn't have the same insider status.
As said, Kate put her head down and ploughed through the criticism and carping and got on with the job. Meghan behaved like a stereotypical Hollywood celeb.
Third, the kind of thing Clarkson said wasn't really meant to be taken seriously. He has a public image as being, well, a bit of a prick. He is not going to write a love-note to Meghan, and he is going to do something over the top (like the Game of Thrones reference). So it's to be read as being tongue-in-cheek, while also tapping into what irritates people about Meghan. If you honestly think he cares about Meghan Markle to the extent of "lying awake at night grinding [his] teeth", you mistake what he is writing, his persona, and why he is writing it. Like Piers Morgan (whom I utterly detest), he jumps aboard any bandwagon to snatch at popularity. The current bandwagon is "Meghan is an unutterable pain" so that's what he dishes up, with his trademark offensiveness. That's his persona: the guy who makes your blood boil because he doesn't give a fig for the liberal pieties and tells it like it is. But it is also intended to be just that bit over the top, so you shouldn't take him literally and you are certainly not meant to believe he really feels that strongly about Meghan.
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As a Brit, the level of hate Markle is getting seems appropriate and actually reassuring. I'm slightly disappointed (if not surprised) that Americans of the relevant political stripe aren't on board (although I suppose they are Republicans after all). I'll do my best at explaining this although you'll need to start with the understanding that the symbolic is Important (I expect a materialist will not understand this, or anything else outside the material).
The Crown is to symbolism in the UK as the constitution is to law in the USA. More important, in fact; in the UK, the Crown is (almost literally) the constitution, and literally the head of state, and literally the head of the church. What's more, Markle was invited to join the royal family as a princess. This is a formal position of very high rank which has responsibilities. In America, the gravity of that office would be somewhere below President but above Ambassador. Another point of reference is that the armed services swear their allegiance to the crown. Joining the royal family at that level is much like joining the military - you swear an oath, and you have strict codes of conduct you have to follow.
The closest analogue I can think of to attacking the royal family in public as a princess would be a newly sworn general publicly handing military secrets to an enemy. The enemies of the crown will use what Markle said against it politically just as sure as the enemies of the state would use troop deployments (or whatever) against the state militarily.
Historically, the political substructure of the English especially is based around the lessons learned from the civil war. Although the reasons were numerous, at least one cause of the war was Puritans drumming religious animosity against the crown for minor aesthetic heresies. Although few would be thinking of the connection consciously, the cultural memory that this must never happen again is bedded deep. So it's not surprising that Markle, through her words and deeds, is perceived not merely as an irritant but an enemy.
Uh, the rank and file republicans in the USA don’t generally like Meghan Markle very much. She’s viewed as an annoying woke harridan who should stop claiming all of her problems are from anti-black racism when she is a non-central example of being black, to put it mildly.
Do they have the level of hate for her that British people do? No. That’s in large part because she’s less relevant to anything they care about.
I totally agree, and I'll just say it: she isn't black. So she's not only being that girl who claims all the problems she faces are due to evil people oppressing her, she isn't even a member of the group she claims to be oppressed as. So, she's a charlatan, basically.
On top of that she's a nobody who thinks she's super important (I never heard of her at all before the marriage), which is always grating.
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Clarkson is known for being outspoken and rude.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=yHUOAnG7UnA (the infamous Mexico comments)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=GxcyeFGOp2k (strikers should be shot in front of their families)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=GcwQcKIHqlQ (Americans are very fat, very stupid and very rude, bus drivers are little Hitlers and murderers, truck drivers murder prostitutes, Koreans eat dogs, giving the finger to a US police officer, Gordon Brown a one-eyed Scottish idiot, amongst many other things)
And then there's his columns!
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Clarkson is a funnyman first and a (political?) commentator a distant second. He sincerely dislikes Markle, but he's exaggerating the intensity of his antipathy for comic effect.
It's really fascinating when im reminded every couple years that Jeremy Clarkson is a political commentator and figure of scandal in the UK. As an American, Jeremy has never been anything other than "funny british car man" to me. He's a slightly out of touch but fundamentally good hearted glowing ball of dad energy.
And then I see some snarky political column of his and it seems so strange. Its like seeing a NYT op-ed by Homer Simpson.
I'd love to read op-eds from Homer Simpson so it does make some sense.
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I always find this itself pretty strange. American's can hardly even keep a culture of respect for their founding fathers who at least have the mysticism of time to lighten their dark marks but the brits are able to be unendingly in favor of a hereditary elite constantly involved in scandals. My most downvoted post on this site was comparing them to the Kardashians but I stand by it. If the Royal family was based in America it would be a very hated institution, we even hate the people who earned their billions here.
In the words of Arthur Fleck: "You wouldn't get it."
Royals are a connection to a deep tradition of organic government that has lasted for more than a thousand years. Elisabeth was with the Brits for most of their life, an anchor of stability and continuity in a chaotic world that connected centuries through unbroken tradition.
Americans being such a young and exuberant nation do not really have the ability to appreciate the value of this. The king is not a founding father, it goes much deeper than that.
The loss of such things can deeply scar a people. Take it from the guys who killed their King two centuries ago and still aren't really over it.
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Peterson of all people said it very well. There are actually four heads of government power: Judicial, Legislative, Executive, and Symbolic. In America, the last two are assigned to the POTUS, which causes a bunch of problems, but in England it keeps celebrity nonsense stuff safely contained and away from the formal power (and causes a different set of problems instead).
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And progressive Texans love their lone star culture markers even if they would be considered red tribe elsewhere in the country. Why? Because loving football, cowboy boots, pickup trucks, and the oil industry is a unifying cultural institution. Just because the USA doesn’t have unifying institutions, doesn’t mean they can’t exist somewhere- the monarchy is for Britain what soccer is for Argentina.
I was trying to explain this on reddit last week. Texas has state patriotism like no one else. Regardless of my opinions on the local government, I love being part of the state’s culture. That was not the case back when I lived in South Carolina.
You’ll see it to a lesser extent in Oklahoma and parts of Louisiana(particularly Cajuns- and the 10 or so white creoles who haven’t been folded into Cajun identity by now- are likely to identify with Louisiana or Cajun identity over a national or local identity). I do agree that other southern states don’t have the same level of state patriotism, much less northern or western states. And in any case both Oklahoma and southern Louisiana have absolutely enormous amounts of Texas influence, culturally speaking.
There's a fair amount of state patriotism in Wisconsin, in my experience. We love being macho about the cold, the Packers, wearing cheeseheads, how much we can drink compared to other states, etc. I left because in all honesty fuck the weather... but I do miss my home state and love it dearly. And my experience with other people from Wisconsin is that they are generally the same way.
I wouldn't say we're on the level of Texas, because who is really? But it's still significant.
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It's part of the ontology of what makes you British, like fish and chips or poor dental health. Rejecting monarchism causes an existential crisis in the British psyche - which would be bad enough on its own, but when one starts to think "OK, I'm No True Scotsman because I don't like the monarchy" then as a Western European this puts you dangerously close to being French, which the British (or post-British) psyche also recoils from.
If you don't yell God Save The King, are you really British? Or are you just some guy with a lame piece of paper signed by (chortle) Rishi Sunak that confers upon you legal citizenship on a rainy island?
But surely there is some giant set of seething academics who hate that their society idolizes literal colonizers? Or to look at it from the other way, where did all the people who transparently hate America and everything it stands for come from in the States and why doesn't this same process happen elsewhere? Where is the equivalent of the person who every thanks giving delights in shitting on the settlers? Isn't the UK one of the countries that sneers at the US for being backwards and unenlightened?
Sure. There has long been a minority of republicans in the UK. The problem is that they mostly come off as seething radicals, and though there are a good number of republican politicians, they mostly choose to downplay it or hide it, because they know how poorly it goes down with voters. And of course there are plenty of radicals on the left in papers like the Guardian who don't hide their contempt for the Royal Family (or for anything they judge as too white and too old).
This is good background but doesn't answer my question of why the 'republicans' of the UK as dismissed but the 'America is an irredeemable country' people in the states are not.
Aren't they dismissed in the US? Yeah there are people in academia or what have you that openly hate the country. But by and large, politicians (even Democrats) have to act patriotic if they want to have political success. That seems rather analogous to what @Mewis was saying about the UK.
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The USA doesn’t stand for anything. Certainly parts of the USA have unifying myths or culture based nationalism(and politicians in these places are quick to praise those myths or nationalism even when it’s aligning with the other team nationally), but a New Yorker, a Californian, a Texan, and a Floridian probably will not be able to agree amongst themselves which of them apply to the whole country.
What does the UK stand for then? They're certainly not without their regional troubles.
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