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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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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.

Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.

So it is non apology. Of course the mob is not appeased. At least he didn't try to be more apologetic afterwards.

Meghan derangement syndrome is well known to afflict a number of prominent British commentators, see also Piers Morgan.

The only deranged people are the ones defending her. She's blatantly a social climber, acts like a typical WAG, and worse than all that, she's American. She refused to engage with the duties of her position, has been by all accounts an absolute nightmare diva to be around, and tried to commercialise their titles. It would be stranger for anyone not to despise her. She's almost as unpopular among Brits as Prince Andrew, who is widely believed to be a paedophile.

Contrast with Kate, who also had her time as a media punching bag, but got her head down, did the work and got on with it, and now she's beloved.

When called on all of this, she retreated to stereotypically-American accusations of racism. Despite looking no darker than a typical fake tanned slag you'd see on high streets up and down the country on a Friday night. Not a single person I know pegged her as non-white before being told. It has nothing to do with her race and everything to do with her being a thoroughly reprehensible breed of human.

Being a social climber doesn't make her reprehensible though. The Monarchy are the very definition of social climbers, they just did it a long time ago. I don't think she is a very nice person, but given my work in the civil service I had some exposure to the palace, and I can believe pretty much all of the claims about what went on.

The joke was: "If the establishment wants advice on having someone bullied and buried in a passive-aggressive deniable way they come to the civil service. When we want that advice we go to the Royal Household."

It's a hive of backbiters, status seekers, social climbers, hangers on and rent extractors. Markle's only crime that I can see is that she wasn't subtle enough about it, so the knives could easily be turned upon her. She's no different aside from that than half the household.

The image of the Royal Family is carefully crafted, looking behind the curtain is an eye-opening experience.

Markle's only crime that I can see is that she wasn't subtle enough about it

Yes, face and appearances are like 90% of the game. She waded in with... typical American subtlety.