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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?
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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