Meghan McCain is a columnist for the Daily Mail, and I try to never read her crap. I’m aware that she wrote something bonkers about the Duchess of Sussex’s Archetypes podcast, but I’d just like to avoid it completely? Like, Meghan McCain is awful, don’t make me read that sh-t. However, I did end up reading Jan Moir’s column this week, also in the Mail. It seems like the Mail activated all of their columnists this week to pontificate on Archetypes. Moir – who is white, old and terrible – latches on to Meghan’s story about the fire in Archie’s South African nursery and Moir makes the kind of unhinged leap you can never see coming. Moir’s argument highlights an undercurrent in the coverage about Meghan’s story too, which is that Meghan should have been grateful, uncomplaining and eager to be used as an inclusivity prop by the crown, even as her own child was under mortal threat. Oh, and if you read the first highlighted excerpt carefully, Moir refers to Meghan as a “mutt.” Some truly appalling highlights from Moir’s column:

On the Sussexes adopting a beagle: Oh dear. It is charming that the duchess believes herself to be a no-introduction-needed, one-name ultra-celebrity in the same league as Oprah, Adele, Beyonce and Kermit, but the truth is that for many Americans, she stubbornly remains anonymous rather than mononymous. Still, how lovely to open up her home to another dumb mutt with barking issues. Just imagine poor Mamma Mia, whimpering around the Montecito mansion, paws over her silky ears, as Meghan recounts one more bloody time how she wrote to Procter & Gamble about its sexist washing-up advert.

Archetypes is the #1 podcast in at least six countries: After the podcast was launched, the Duchess could have been forgiven for thinking: ‘Why do I bother?’ All she got for her efforts was a giant raspberry and a torrent of abuse from reviewers who called her podcast everything from ‘preposterous’ to ‘a parade of banalities’.

No fire: Even unofficial royal sources discreetly weighed in, insisting that, although recollections may vary, they did not recall a nursery actually being on fire. Wait, what? There was a nursery on fire?! Meghan told Serena the terrifying tale of ‘a fire in the baby’s room’ during their South African tour in 2019, and how appalled she was at having to carry on with their royal schedule instead of cancelling everything in order to comfort Archie, who wasn’t in the room that may not have been on fire anyway. Yes, there was an incident. Perhaps someone left their smalls out to dry on a radiator and a bit of a singe ensued? This left Meghan not with a smoking gun but with a smoking sock instead, although one can understand her initial fear and reaction.

How dare a new mother be upset about a deadly threat to her child: Yet her horror at being expected to keep calm and carry on when no emergency occurred perfectly illustrates how Meghan fatally confused being royal with being famous. If you are a rock star or a film star, you are very much the sun in your own orbit; everything revolves around you. Being a royal is almost the exact opposite. You represent the monarchy, not yourself. You are a cipher, an emissary of the crown, serving your country and not your own needs. You facilitate diplomatic and trade links while fostering investment opportunities. You also comfort the oppressed and recognise their suffering at every opportunity — because that is what duchesses do.

Meghan should be grateful she’s not the victim of Apartheid: If Meghan had got her way, the Sussexes’ trip to Cape Town’s historic District Six neighbourhood would have been axed following the fire scare. The couple went to meet people who were forcibly relocated from there to the townships during the Apartheid era — black South Africans who were stripped of their land and homes, then dumped in racially segregated developments far from the city. Many still live in these areas, in houses made of corrugated tin and cardboard. Imagine these people, who had lost and suffered so much, waiting with dignity in the afternoon heat for this long-planned meeting with the royal couple — only to be told at short notice that they weren’t coming after all because Meghan needed some post-stress me-time.

[From The Daily Mail]

The Apartheid conversation was what shocked me the most, because these racist a–holes literally have no idea what they’re really saying, nor have they absorbed what Meghan was saying. Meghan and Serena’s conversation was about ambition, of course, but it was also about how they were dehumanized as Black women. They were talking about the lack of care, the lack of understanding, the lack of grace they have been given in life and in motherhood. Meghan was saying: my child could have died and I was expected to just carry on like nothing happened, no acknowledgement for the baby, or me or Harry. At the same time, Moir is saying, look, here are Black people who have been dehumanized for decades, why are you complaining? Moir is saying blatantly that this “mutt” should have been grateful to be used as a prop by the crown. In South Africa. The fact that Moir flatly calls her a mutt too… holy f–k. These people are repulsive.

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