Long before Harry and Meghan released their self-produced documentary series I was planning to write a column saying they were probably everything that was wrong with humanity.
But before rushing to judgment I thought I should at least watch the first episode on Thursday night.
Having done so, I have now changed my position. They are definitely everything that is wrong with humanity.
In a lifetime spent consuming and producing literally every form of media known to man, I have never seen such jaw-dropping, gobsmacking, breathtaking, stomach-turning, self-indulgent horseshit ever placed on the public record.
And the fact that they themselves placed it on the public record only speaks even more innumerable volumes to their infinite and unworldly capacity for self-love and self-pity, both bound together in an unbreakable helix that spirals heroically up the anus of the 21st century.
This is, by any measure, a remarkable feat. So let’s just take a moment to savour everything so nauseating about Harry and Meghan’s crusade for … well, Harry and Meghan.
But let’s not be unkind. After all, right at the beginning of the documentary Harry and Meghan said it wasn’t just about them. In fact it was much bigger than them.
The only problem was that even after a soul-consuming 60 minutes, in which time not only stopped but threatened to asphyxiate anyone but Oprah, they hadn’t actually articulated who else it was about.
But perhaps this is also unkind. Harry did complain about the repeated photography of his parents and children, so perhaps these vague others were simply his own lineage.
This seems a strange take for someone seemingly repelled by the concept of heredity but I’m just a poor boy from the suburbs so what would I know about the pressures of being a break-glass monarch – as the upcoming memoir Spare will no doubt document in harrowing detail.
It is also true that Harry’s mother Diana was photographed a lot, one of the burdens of marrying into the most famous family on the planet.
And who could not be scarred by the documentary footage of Diana politely asking if a photographer could stop taking photos of her family on a skiing trip and the photographer politely asking if he could take one more before he went on his way.
There are children in Ethiopia who will never know such suffering. We can only hope they are counting their blessings tonight.
And of course we know that Diana was hounded to death by the media. It wasn’t like she just got into a car with a drunk driver and wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.
Harry also complains about the tabloid media documenting or – quelle horreur! – exaggerating his various misadventures. Like, say, getting pissed, dressing up as a Nazi and playing nude pool.
Frankly he seemed like more fun back then. More to the point, this is nothing that every two-bit Hollywood actor, reality star, TV host or Instagram influencer hasn’t had to deal with every other day. Maybe “H” can ask Andrew O’Keefe for some tips on crisis management.
But of course it’s unfair that Harry was simply born into this role and never had the chance to choose for himself the life that he would lead.
Good point. After all, reality TV stars seek their fame and influencers seek their, er, influence. These lowborn scabs deserve everything they get for chasing a dollar, right?
Meanwhile our film and television performers are just doing their jobs and shouldn’t have to be photographed while off duty – except on the red carpet of course. Let the art do the talking, I say!
But even then, they have chosen their profession. If fame is the curse of their talent then that is surely more just than the fate that has befallen poor Harry, whose only curse was to be born to a stratospherically high-profile and wealthy family.
The only minor caveat to this is that Prince Harry decided to marry a Hollywood actress, who is apparently outraged that the media devotes more attention to her choice of husband than her body of work in Suits.
And so when will this symphony of suffering end? When will Harry and Meghan finally be free of the oppressive public gaze?
One way to pursue such freedom might be to buy a remote farm in Canada or perhaps live in a village in Botswana, where we are earnestly told Harry felt most at home.
Or they could just rent out a San Fran flat or a Soho loft and peer into each other’s eyes over ever-escalating wellness juices. Both options would be very on brand.
But the best way to avoid media attention would surely be to buy a giant mansion in California and commission a TV series by the planet’s biggest streaming service in order to broadcast to the world how upset you are about media attention.
And yet it seems even that hasn’t worked. Honestly, what more do they have to do to finally get some privacy?
More importantly, at what other moment in history, in what possible universe and in what deranged culture and ideology, could two such people ever be considered victims?
This is the ultimate horrorshow of what we are witnessing in Harry and Meghan: that the most overprivileged people in the world can claim to be oppressed simply because they identify as such. And that some people will actually believe them.
This madness must end now. Or we will.
