Piers Morgan’s wife Celia Walden has a new Telegraph column this week. Surprise, it’s about Prince Harry and Meghan. It’s a real shame that the Telegraph’s columnists can’t focus on their own left-behind Windsors and summon the courage to perhaps ask why no one in the royal family has condemned the white nationalist violence and rioting in England. Instead, Walden has decided to mock the Sussexes, bash America and offer Harry and Meghan a “five point plan” to win back their popularity in America. These pathetic people are so obsessed with America, you’d think they would bother to learn something, anything about American culture or how Americans actually view the left-behinds versus how we view the Sussexes. Walden’s piece is long and stupid but here are some lowlights:
Americans hated the Sussexes’ wildly successful projects: Then began the couple’s Tour of Discontent. Although the Oprah interview was received more favourably in the US than it was in the UK, stepping down as working royals ultimately chipped away at their popularity, as did the repeated attacks waged on the King and the Prince and Princess of Wales in both their Netflix whineumentary and Harry’s ill-advised 2023 memoir, Spare.
Americans also hated Harry’s ESPY Award: But perhaps the biggest mistake to date was the Prince’s acceptance of the ESPY Pat Tillman Award, last month. This triggered an angry backlash not just from the public, but the mother of the heroic late veteran the annual service award was set up to honour – and sparked a series of “why the US has fallen out of love with the Sussexes” op-eds.
Walden’s plan for the Sussexes: First: stop whining. Put away that violin. Embracing victim culture is effective and lucrative… to a point. But if 15 years in the US has taught me anything it’s that Americans are uniquely forward-facing, forward-thinking, snap-yourself-out-of-it people. When Spare was published, my LA neighbour’s reaction was: “Why would you choose to live in that space?” Nothing could have summed up US thinking better. Bad things happen, and you can visit “that space”, you can share what you learnt – but don’t, for pity’s sake, set up home there.
They must praise the monarchy: Say one or two things, publicly – even if through gritted teeth – in favour of the British monarchy. You can still loathe everything about the institution in private, and Meghan can still keep her voodoo dolls down in the cellar, but next time either of you do an interview, why not throw in an appreciative word about Princess Anne, the beauty of royal pomp or the importance of some of our royal rituals. They may have felt suffocating to you, but Americans would like to keep the myths and illusions they were raised on intact.
They must make peace with their horrible families: Make up with your father. Make up with William and Kate. Release a bedtime story about the triumph of familial love and dedicate it to Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. As Olympic-level empaths, surely you can find a way to hug it all out (and have that healing moment caught on camera)? Family estrangements are a bit like divorces, you see: you can get away with one, maybe two, but at a certain point, it’s embarrassingly obvious where the problem lies.
This is something consistently hilarious to me: watching British royalists Britsplain American culture to a British audience. This column is not meant for me or meant for Americans. Walden clearly believes that Americans are big dumb babies who are obsessed with all things royal. She clearly believes that Americans believe that Harry and Meghan are terrible because they cut off their toxic family members. She is desperate to convince her domestic audience that Harry receiving the Pat Tillman Award – with Tillman’s brother and widow in the audience, supporting him – was some kind of bad moment for Harry’s image. Anyway, this is just an update – Piers and his wife are still on their bullsh-t.
Screenshots courtesy of CBS and ESPN.