After hinting to struggling with their mental health, many criticised the pair saying they’re too privileged to have problems, Kerry Parnell explains why the bullying has to stop…
So let’s get this straight: Harry and Meghan can campaign about mental health, but can’t have any mental health problems themselves, because they are rich. And paid for by the British public.
Even when they say they do, they don’t, instead they are, ‘whining and sounding pathetic’. Have I got that right? We really have reached an extra-low point in our collective empathy. I have watched in sorrow at the mean-spirited response to Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s attempt to ‘open up’.
In the documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, Prince Harry said his wife has struggled with the ‘relentless propaganda’ and he is trying to protect his family.
Meghan also admitted she had suffered with the constant criticism while pregnant, then a new mum. Journalist Tom Bradby asked her if it’s fair to say she’s not OK, to which she replied, ‘Yes.’
Now as far as I know, R U OK Day doesn’t have a caveat that if a rich person says they are not, you should immediately shout insults at them along the lines of ‘I’m sure I’d be fine if I lived in a palace and scoffed foie gras all day,’ which is the response the pair has had from some quarters. It’s so unbelievably nasty – even if they are privileged, they are still human beings.
Ironically, the main complaint has been Harry and Meghan are too inaccessible – then when they do speak, they are told to shut up.
‘If Prince Harry and Meghan don’t like the limelight, stay out of it,’ wrote The Times. The Daily Mail said they had ‘first-world grievances’ and respect had to be ‘earned, not demanded.’
Piers Morgan laid into the pair tweeting, ‘Imagine being two staggeringly privileged royal multi-millionaires going to Africa to make a documentary that supposedly ‘shines a light’ on poverty, violence against women/girls and racial inequality - then in fact making it all about their own terrible struggle? I mean, FFS.’
The Guardian was recently vilified for their now infamous ‘privileged pain’ quote, which they levelled at David Cameron over his grief at losing his son Ivan. Their editorial maintained Cameron was too posh and too rich to feel the same anguish at the death of his child than someone with less money. A disgusting concept – and yet, isn’t this almost the same thing? Harry and Meghan can’t feel down, can’t feel stressed or sad, because they have money? Because they are titled, they are not entitled to pain?
They are obviously unhappy and making increasingly erratic decisions. But instead of ganging up and screaming even more abuse like some kind of virtual playground bullying, perhaps we could all call a truce, a cyber-ceasefire. Just stop.
Otherwise, maybe the suggestion is right that the pair cease being full-time royals and live as private citizens instead. Any fool knows money doesn’t equal happiness – and clearly being royal doesn’t either. And once we’ve driven her – and him – out of the royal family and possibly country, maybe, we’ll stop telling Meghan she’s doing everything wrong.