Section:OBS 2N PaGe:43 Edition Date:190804 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 3/8/2019 17:40 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Observer
Comment & Analysis 04.08.19 43
Meghan seems to
mix with all the
‘wrong’ people.
So unlike the
other royals...
Surely the outrage
over the duchess’s Vogue
cover had nothing to
do with race, did it?Since it’s a good few weeks
since Meghan, Duchess of Sussex,
has worn jeans to Wimbledon,
carried her baby the wrong way or
used a shawl made by impoverished
workers, her mentors have been
on the alert for further evidence
that their continual inspection of
this member of the royal family is
not racist bullying but a series of
pedagogic opportunities. They wish
only to help her improve.
But her worst enemies, with
which the UK press is strangely well
supplied, could not have anticipated
that Meghan’s next gift to them
would be something so lavish, so rich
in opportunities for point-by-point
demolition, as an entire edition of
Vogue, guest-edited while she was on
maternity leave. That’s around the
same time, Piers Morgan has pointed
out , as she was not meeting his racist
and sexist friend Donald Trump. A
learning moment, then: see how theother royals dressed up for Trump
and what a boon that has proved for
Anglo-US relations?
Even her supporters may wonder
if there is something marginally
more inspirational a famous
gifted person might choose to do
than help shift copies of Condé
Nast’s September money-spinner,
notwithstanding Vogue’s tradition
of cover princesses. If it’s quite
refreshing to discover a Q&A with
Michelle Obama, a charity project
and – least royal of all – a poem, this
is still Vogue and in the business of
urging women to (a) subscribe to its
culture of eating-disordered ageism
and (b) buy more useless shit.
If anything, a socially responsible,
duchess-edited September issue
fulfi ls, as never before, Vogue’s
editorial challenge: to temper
conspicuous consumption with
occasional glints of awareness
without frightening the advertisers.
Right now, for instance, as well as
being super-excited about featuring
the non-models Chimamanda
Ngozi Adichie , Greta Thunberg and
Jacinda Ardern among Markle’s
“Forces For Change” cover women,
the magazine is thrilled to report, in
forces for obsolescence news, that
Victoria Beckham , one of its favourite
heads on a stick , has been posing, all
sciency, in a lab coat: a chance for it
to help generate, with some verbatim
marketing copy, interest in her new
range of women-focused detritus:
“VB Beauty as a digital-native brand”.
If she can’t eradicate these
blots on her vision, Meghan does
address them in an obligatory “you
may say I’m a dreamer” section
of her introduction : “There willbe advertising sections that are
requisite for every issue, so while
I feel confi dent that you’ll feel my
thumbprint on most pages, please
know that there are elements
that just come with the territory.”
Moreover, she might have added,
her father-in-law has twice guest-
edited Country Life, regardless of the
incompatibility between its property
porn and princely jeremiads about
unfettered materialism.
But the collision of Meghan’s
“great fear of shallow living” with
Vogue’s incitement to insatiable
acquisition (“anklets are back
to make bare legs the centre of
attention”!) is not what troubles
critics. Rather, the UK’s fi nest
Meghan-assassins have alighted on
her most striking advance on the
Vogue norm: the cover women. They
are variously too BAME , too famous ,
not famous enough , too political ,
too unpolitical and not, it’s generally
agreed, the Queen.
Morgan, the UK’s Meghanfi nder
general, complains that onlyfi ve of the women were British
and none w as male. “So it’s not
actually inclusive at all.” Jameela
Jamil particularly distresses this
loyal Trumpian, on account of her
incivility. Elsewhere, Sarah Vine
draws on personal experience of
state-funded decor and the careful
choice of friends to counsel “dear
Meghan”, as she calls this outsider, on
“proper royalty”. “Ask the Queen.”It’s not a bad idea. The
Queen’s success in protecting her
reputation from less impressive
friendships, such as with the
troubled ruler of Dubai, does
contrast favourably with the damage
to Meghan’s of fashionable allies
whose names have never, unlike the
sheikh’s, featured in UK courts in
connection with feared abduction
and forced marriage.Meghan might further benefi t, at
this wobbly stage on her learning
curve, from instruction by another
fully inducted royal, Prince Andrew,
formerly a close friend and house-
guest of Jeffrey Epstein , the US
sex offender currently jailed and
accused of traffi cking and sexually
assaulting young girls. In 2015,
one alleged that she had been
coerced into sex with Andrew, an
allegation he denied. While massed
commenters expose the threat to the
royal reputation posed by Meghan’s
lamentable female associates,
Andrew’s name has featured only
occasionally in connection with the
latest revelations about Epstein,
which include the latter’s plans to
populate the world with his own
gene pool and have his head and
penis frozen for perpetuity.
Proper royalness, in such
situations, possibly explains why
HRH, as an unapologetic pervert’s
companion, is still deputising for his
mother, if not the Foreign Offi ce, and
largely untroubled by the same press
moralists who argue that Meghan
doesn’t understand the traditional
role of the monarchy. On the
other hand, given the comparative
expressions of disquiet, perhaps
Meghan’s recent offences really do
exceed Fergie’s, in 2011, when she
welcomed a £15,000 loan (organised
by Prince Andrew’s offi ce) from the
recently released Epstein. Was it ever
repaid?
Next, as part of the supplementary
training now widely proposed for
our clumsy royal apprentice, she
could study how Prince Charles’s
reputation survived devoted
friendships with – to date – three
paedophiles: Laurens van der
Post, Jimmy Savile and an already
cautioned offender, Peter Ball.
Meghan’s Instagram account alone
has generated more hostile press
than the recent conclusion of the
independent inquiry into child sexual
abuse that the prince’s support for
Ball was “misguided”.
How have the above royals avoided
relentless Meghan-style bollockings
on account of, variously, execrable
judgment, bad taste, susceptibility to
wealth and/or fl attery? There must,
surely, be something more to it than
having white skin.The September issue of
Vogue, guest-edited by the
Duchess of Sussex.
Peter Lindbergh/PACatherine
Bennett1697
1913
2,000
4,000
8
The Audit
St Paul’s
cathedral
Last week marked the
350th anniversary of
Christopher Wren being
assigned the rebuildThe year of the
fi rst service held
in the rebuilt
cathedral, a
thanksgiving for
the peace between
England and
FranceThe year that
suffragettes tried to
blow up the bishop’s
throne. Their device
was detected before
it explodedThe weight, in kilos, of a
German bomb that landed
in front of the cathedral’s
west end in September- It took three days to
remove it for detonation at
a safe distance
The number
of people in
attendance on
6 December 1964
when Martin
Luther King
Jr delivered a
sermon entitled
‘The Three
Dimensions of a
Complete Life’The number of arches
that support the dome,
which is 365 feet high^ @Bennett_C_РЕЛИЗ
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