Frankly, I couldn’t care less about this wedding. In fact, you couldn’t have paid me enough to get up at 8 this morning, let alone at 4, to watch this royal spectacle.
I have vented antipathy to royalty and all its appurtenances in many commentaries, including in “Homage to Royal Wedding,” April 28, 2011, when Will married Kate, and “Australia Bans British Honours. Other Commonwealth Countries Should Too,” November 3, 2015.
This is why the only positive thing I can say about this occasion is that Meghan Markle will make the British monarchy more relevant to the times; in fact, more so than anyone who married into this anachronistic institution since Victoria married Albert in 1840. Sorry, Fergie.
But erstwhile liberated women did her no favors with their cooing all over TV in recent days, especially because they came across like Kardashian groupies previewing Kylie’s latest pop-up shop. I found them particularly oxymoronic when they began hailing Meghan as a feminist icon for deciding to walk down the aisle partly by herself.
After all, the only reason she decided to do so is that her father became too humiliated to show his face after he was caught selling out his royal connections to the tabloids. This, even before his daughter had sealed the deal.
Mind you, no self-respecting feminist would ever marry/buy into this old-fashioned, Cinderella-style fairy tale. After all, it’s a patent affront to the very concept of not just gender equality but liberal democracy to propagate the fantasy that any little girl can grow up to marry a white prince. A fantasy that, notwithstanding Meghan, seems a cruel joke where little black and brown girls are concerned. But I digress …
I just hope Meghan has better coping skills than Diana. But I have grave misgivings. Not least because she seems more interested in straddling racial lines than in acknowledging that she’s black. I duly decried her preening delusions in “Like Barack Obama, Meghan Markle Is Black. So Why Is She Passing,” November 28 2017.
The “swirl” is easily the most interesting thing about Harry and Meghan’s marriage. Too bad it’s the thing everybody, including Meghan, wants to highlight the least. Only this explains reporters and commentators dutifully referring to her as biracial/mixed race. Do you recall any of them ever referring to Obama as such?
It also puts a different light on her declared distress over the epic failure of her white father to show up. Because this meant that the only evidence of her racial makeup on display for the world to see was the proud black face of her devoted mother, Doria Ragland.
Incidentally, don’t let the black bishop and black choir Meghan enlisted to perform at the church fool you. Because, of the hundreds invited to the reception, you could probably count the blacks (like Serena Williams and Idris Elba) on the fingers of one hand. And I know Harry invited at least two of them.
Actually, not since George Clooney married Amal Alamuddin has a purportedly cosmopolitan celebrity wedding been so provincially lily white. And yes, I heaped scorn on their wedding too in “Clooney Nuptials Show Saturday Weddings as Segregated as Sunday Services…?” September 27, 2014.
While I’m at it, let’s get this straight also: The few Hollywood A-listers (like Clooney) who showed up were there because of the royal family. Trust me, before she started dating Harry, B-lister Meghan couldn’t get an invitation to the Academy Awards, let alone the famed post-Oscar parties where A-listers schmooze and unwind. Go ahead, search the Red-Carpet archives. You’ll see she’s nowhere to be found. A latter-day Grace Kelly she is not.
In other words, Meghan earned her professional and social status the old-fashioned way: she married it. How feminist is that?
In any event, here’s to the married couple. May they live happily ever after … despite the odds.
Good luck, Meghan.
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* This commentary was originally published on Saturday, May 19, at 8:38 a.m.
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