MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Prince Harry is a spoiled megalomaniac marinating in spite reduced to selling royal secrets to the highest bidder. So, as he bleats about family reconciliation – why the hell would they?
At least we got a break over the holidays, right?
Fresh off that six-hour Netflix whinge-a-thon — which began streaming just three weeks ago — Prince Harry is back with yet another round of interviews, the trailers for both dropping Monday morning.
Care to guess the subject matter?
You know, right before Harry and Meghan’s sit-down with Oprah Winfrey — two years ago this March — the couple stated that that interview would be their ‘last word.’ They would have nothing else to say, and would everyone, please, just respect their privacy?
Then they wonder why the public at large has trouble believing anything they say.
Their pals in the media, however — that’s another story, as we’re seeing with Tom Bradby, a friend of H&M, and Anderson Cooper.
The UK’s ITV and CBS News’ 60 Minutes are breathlessly promoting new, ostensibly bombshell interviews.
Finally — this time, really, promise and pinky swear — will Harry tell ‘his’ truth? Will he spill all the gruesome, gory details — you know, stuff we hadn’t heard in their six episodes on Netflix, the Oprah interview, Meghan’s podcast, ‘Finding Freedom,’ Meghan’s cover stories in The Cut and Variety, or any of their numerous leaks to the media?
If past is prologue, that’s highly unlikely.
Now Harry’s out flogging his forthcoming memoir, and like everything else the Sussexes have tried to sell us, it looks to be light on substance, heavy on victimhood, devoid of personal accountability, and, worse than any of that — hackneyed, trite, and unoriginal.
Finally — this time, really, promise and pinky swear — will Harry tell ‘his’ truth? If past is prologue, that’s highly unlikely.
The UK’s ITV (above) and CBS News’ 60 Minutes are breathlessly promoting new, ostensibly bombshell interviews.
In other words: In keeping with Brand Sussex, it’s an overall disappointment.
When your publisher is slashing your book’s price by 30 percent as a pre-sale promotion before it hits the stands, it seems like your book is in trouble. When no major print outlet is running an extract ahead of publication — well, that’s a clue there’s nothing really in it.
Harry should have been on the cover of People this week, a four-page sampling inside.
Instead: Nothing.
Harry seems unfamiliar with the concept of diminishing returns. He also seems unfamiliar with the inanity of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
‘I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back.’
This is the headline from Harry’s interview with Tom Bradby, a snippet that also contains more vitriol towards — whom else? — his father and brother.
‘They feel as though it is better to keep us somehow as the villains,’ he said. ‘They have shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile.’
Harry and Meghan need absolutely no help in looking like the villains here. They’re doing a great job of that all on their own. It actually may be their only real measurable success.
Once upon a time, these two had so much goodwill. Harry was once the favored prince, considered more charismatic, down-to-earth, freewheeling. Now we see what a great job the palace did in managing his image.
And we see just how much gratitude Harry has for all that hard work: None.
As the Netflix reality show made clear, these two are spoiled megalomaniacs marinating in spite and jealousy, attempting to slither up the greasy poles of fame (Beyoncé texted me!), laughable awards (a humanitarian honor hosted by a celebrity who accidentally shot his coworker to death), and hypocritical virtue-signaling (‘Be kind!’) while selling out Harry’s entire family.
Hypocrisy at its most breathtaking.
When your publisher is slashing your book’s price by 30 percent as a pre-sale promotion before it hits the stands, it seems like your book is in trouble.
Right before Harry and Meghan’s sit-down with Oprah Winfrey — two years ago this March — the couple stated that that interview would be their ‘last word.’
The moment Meghan mocked the late Queen with her theatrical curtsy — well, it’s hard to see how one comes back from that. A beloved Queen who, by Meghan’s own account, treated her with nothing but warmth and maternal guidance, recognizing the obvious: Meghan’s success in the family would only add to Harry’s happiness.
Oh, and Harry implying that his brother had not been permitted to marry for love. That was a particularly ugly thing to say.
It all begs the obvious question: Why on earth would King Charles or Prince William — or any member of the royal family — trust that a private conversation with either of these two would stay private? It’s clear that Harry and Meghan have no other commodity than royal secrets and no shame in selling them to the highest bidder.
So what makes more sense, in the interest of emotional and reputational preservation, than for the royals to keep their distance from the very two people hell bent on destroying the family and the institution?
That’s clearly what’s going on here. Harry and Meghan won’t be satisfied till they burn the monarchy down, dragging every family member they envy to their subterranean level.
Really — for all his proselytizing about mental health, doesn’t Harry seem full of rage? He’s trying to sell his newfound life in California as some kind of self-actualized nirvana, a ‘live, laugh, love’ existence unavailable to him as a working royal, yet he’s never seemed angrier, unhappier, or more adrift.
He perseverates on the very family he has, by his own words and actions, lost. He and Meghan take no responsibility whatsoever for their role in these fractures. They engage in petty scorekeeping, sure to release a photo or a piece of gossip whenever Kate and William have a major event or a win. They tell blatant lies, big and small. Recall Meghan bemoaning her choice not to wear bright colors, so as to dim her light against the future Queen, and shed a tear, won’t you?
Oh, and Harry implying that his brother had not been permitted to marry for love. That was a particularly ugly thing to say.
Will he spill all the gruesome, gory details — you know, stuff we hadn’t heard in their six episodes on Netflix, the Oprah interview, Meghan’s podcast, ‘Finding Freedom,’ Meghan’s cover stories in The Cut and Variety, or any of their numerous leaks to the media?
It’s intellectual dishonesty and emotional immaturity at its most unbearable, and a weary public has heard enough.
Yet here’s Anderson Cooper, scion of another famous, wealthy family, entertaining Prince Harry in a trailer for this Sunday’s ’60 Minutes’ interview. Let’s look as these two stroll through a large, sun-dappled garden, Harry spilling out his tale of woe like the dull, droning-on wind-up doll he’s become.
The palace leaked against him and Meghan, he tells Cooper. They were used as red meat for the tabloid media, and when they asked for help were coldly denied.
If it’s really true, as Harry says, that his father and brother have been ‘leaking and planting’ stories against Harry and Meghan — why would he ever trust them? Why would he want to reconcile?
‘When we’re being told for the last six years, ‘We can’t put out a statement to protect you,’ but you do it for other members of the family, there becomes a point when silence is betrayal,’ Harry says.
Does anyone else recall whispers of Meghan bullying palace staff, of an internal HR investigation, of Prince William and the late Queen reprimanding her for such behavior? If the palace really wanted to hurt Harry and Meghan, one gets the sense they could.
But they do not. Their silence, in actuality, seems a kindness here. A kindness Harry will no doubt repay with future betrayals.
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