This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/09/the-red-tops-obsession-with-meghan-markles-father-is-a-warning-of-the-abuse-to-come
The article has changed 8 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 3 | Version 4 |
|---|---|
| The red tops' obsession with Meghan Markle’s father is a warning of the abuse to come | The red tops' obsession with Meghan Markle’s father is a warning of the abuse to come |
| (12 days later) | |
| Meghan Markle’s father is the unexpected paparazzi gift of the season; here’s a picture of him in Starbucks, looking up the castles of Great Britain. Here’s one where he’s power-walking with a resistance band for his triceps. Here he is having his not-insignificant waist measured (perhaps for some kind of special-occasion wear). Now he’s in an internet cafe, looking up Prince Harry and Meghan on Wikipedia. His whole life is unfolding like a standup routine about a regular dad in an incongruous situation. Every morning, the red tops wake up with a greater thirst for his regular-dad behaviour. They want a picture of him poring over a thesaurus, looking for a synonym for “Doesn’t she look lovely?” Or maybe finding a cocktail sausage in his pocket and popping it into his mouth. Come on: anyone would watch that as a gif. | Meghan Markle’s father is the unexpected paparazzi gift of the season; here’s a picture of him in Starbucks, looking up the castles of Great Britain. Here’s one where he’s power-walking with a resistance band for his triceps. Here he is having his not-insignificant waist measured (perhaps for some kind of special-occasion wear). Now he’s in an internet cafe, looking up Prince Harry and Meghan on Wikipedia. His whole life is unfolding like a standup routine about a regular dad in an incongruous situation. Every morning, the red tops wake up with a greater thirst for his regular-dad behaviour. They want a picture of him poring over a thesaurus, looking for a synonym for “Doesn’t she look lovely?” Or maybe finding a cocktail sausage in his pocket and popping it into his mouth. Come on: anyone would watch that as a gif. |
| The Leveson inquiry could have drawn all its conclusions about the overweening power of the press from the treatment of this one man. The underpinning counter-privacy argument – that if you’ve got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear – is flamboyantly shot down in the bald reality of microscopic press scrutiny. Thomas Markle has nothing to hide: which of us wouldn’t Wiki our daughter in the week she was the most famous woman in the world? Who doesn’t want better triceps definition? Who wouldn’t at least wonder about the difference between Balmoral and Kensington Palace? But guys, it’s still private! Nobody wants their thought processes played out in real time, with photographs. Or maybe some people, by a quirk, do want that, but that should be up to them. There is space between a shameful activity and one you would want to perform for an audience, and in that space exists almost all human life, from trying on a sleeveless polo neck to daydreaming about a super-obedient horse. None of us should have to explain this to anyone else, still less watch the curtains of our interior lives torn down by strangers while we’re Googling support tights or trying to close harmonise with John Legend. | The Leveson inquiry could have drawn all its conclusions about the overweening power of the press from the treatment of this one man. The underpinning counter-privacy argument – that if you’ve got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear – is flamboyantly shot down in the bald reality of microscopic press scrutiny. Thomas Markle has nothing to hide: which of us wouldn’t Wiki our daughter in the week she was the most famous woman in the world? Who doesn’t want better triceps definition? Who wouldn’t at least wonder about the difference between Balmoral and Kensington Palace? But guys, it’s still private! Nobody wants their thought processes played out in real time, with photographs. Or maybe some people, by a quirk, do want that, but that should be up to them. There is space between a shameful activity and one you would want to perform for an audience, and in that space exists almost all human life, from trying on a sleeveless polo neck to daydreaming about a super-obedient horse. None of us should have to explain this to anyone else, still less watch the curtains of our interior lives torn down by strangers while we’re Googling support tights or trying to close harmonise with John Legend. |
| For Meghan herself, this is like the honeymoon period of an abusive relationship. At the moment, she is princess of all hearts and can do no wrong; nobody would be so coarse as to print a picture of her at the gym, or reading a how-to on the correct usage of British titles. Yet the terms have been set: everything you do, they know about it. Everything they know, they can prove. Everything your relatives do, they have caught on camera. It’s rosy now, sunshine, but wait until they’re bored five years down the line and they find out that you once shouted at a maid; or were spotted in John Lewis looking at buggies; or went to a club without your husband and didn’t get home till five past 12; or look as though you’ve gained weight and yet were clearly seen ordering mozzarella; or look as though you’ve lost weight and have some anonymous “friends” who are worried about you. | For Meghan herself, this is like the honeymoon period of an abusive relationship. At the moment, she is princess of all hearts and can do no wrong; nobody would be so coarse as to print a picture of her at the gym, or reading a how-to on the correct usage of British titles. Yet the terms have been set: everything you do, they know about it. Everything they know, they can prove. Everything your relatives do, they have caught on camera. It’s rosy now, sunshine, but wait until they’re bored five years down the line and they find out that you once shouted at a maid; or were spotted in John Lewis looking at buggies; or went to a club without your husband and didn’t get home till five past 12; or look as though you’ve gained weight and yet were clearly seen ordering mozzarella; or look as though you’ve lost weight and have some anonymous “friends” who are worried about you. |
| People say – or Hugh Grant says, which is the same as “people” – that there are two problems with the press: one is that its victims have no power of redress unless they’re loaded, the other that newspapers don’t self-regulate. Yet the deeper flaw is revealed before anyone needs redress, before the press even tries to self-regulate: these publications are missing the chip that asks: “How would I like it, if someone did this to me?” | People say – or Hugh Grant says, which is the same as “people” – that there are two problems with the press: one is that its victims have no power of redress unless they’re loaded, the other that newspapers don’t self-regulate. Yet the deeper flaw is revealed before anyone needs redress, before the press even tries to self-regulate: these publications are missing the chip that asks: “How would I like it, if someone did this to me?” |
| Theresa May portrait row is all over the map | Theresa May portrait row is all over the map |
| The political removal of commemorative art is your classic modern hot potato. One minute it was Not a Thing, the next it was everywhere, and geography students at Oxford were taking down a photograph of Theresa May. Wait, what? We’re now erasing people from history for being a bit rubbish? | The political removal of commemorative art is your classic modern hot potato. One minute it was Not a Thing, the next it was everywhere, and geography students at Oxford were taking down a photograph of Theresa May. Wait, what? We’re now erasing people from history for being a bit rubbish? |
| The first I heard of the new iconoclasm, it was a plausible-sounding American saying that you can’t change history by erasing its artefacts. That sounded reasonable. Then Donald Trump agreed, so I had to ask: what artefacts? Ah, statues of slave traders in town squares, sometimes adorned with a grateful slave at their feet. Good sense directed me to the side of the iconoclasts, because I figured everyone on the other side would be wearing a white hood and carrying a tiki torch. Still, the principle of breaking stuffremained dicey; authentic remnants of a different age should be preserved, if only to marvel at the injustices of the past. Otherwise we’ll end up knocking down a load of pyramids.But hang on, though: how come those statues crumpled like the polystyrene box round a kebab? Ah. Now we hear about the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which remade history years after the event in the Confederates’ favour by throwing up crappy monuments bought as a package from the 1920s’ answer to Funkypigeon.com. Suddenly I thought: smash them all. History can cope with revision, and it can do without job lots. | The first I heard of the new iconoclasm, it was a plausible-sounding American saying that you can’t change history by erasing its artefacts. That sounded reasonable. Then Donald Trump agreed, so I had to ask: what artefacts? Ah, statues of slave traders in town squares, sometimes adorned with a grateful slave at their feet. Good sense directed me to the side of the iconoclasts, because I figured everyone on the other side would be wearing a white hood and carrying a tiki torch. Still, the principle of breaking stuffremained dicey; authentic remnants of a different age should be preserved, if only to marvel at the injustices of the past. Otherwise we’ll end up knocking down a load of pyramids.But hang on, though: how come those statues crumpled like the polystyrene box round a kebab? Ah. Now we hear about the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which remade history years after the event in the Confederates’ favour by throwing up crappy monuments bought as a package from the 1920s’ answer to Funkypigeon.com. Suddenly I thought: smash them all. History can cope with revision, and it can do without job lots. |
| The May debacle, likewise, was not as it seemed. It turned out the students didn’t remove the portrait: they festooned it with radical but – being geographers – quite neat annotations critiquing her policies; the university removed it, planning to replace it when the students became better behaved, which was five hours later. | The May debacle, likewise, was not as it seemed. It turned out the students didn’t remove the portrait: they festooned it with radical but – being geographers – quite neat annotations critiquing her policies; the university removed it, planning to replace it when the students became better behaved, which was five hours later. |
| Beware the story that unfolds backwards: like a well-constructed Elizabethan dance move, it will land you in precisely the opposite position to the one you were sure was right when it started. | Beware the story that unfolds backwards: like a well-constructed Elizabethan dance move, it will land you in precisely the opposite position to the one you were sure was right when it started. |
| Beware of kids wielding the sword of truth | Beware of kids wielding the sword of truth |
| One daughter will do a speech but won’t dance, the other will do a dance, but only for money. My son will cut the cake, but only with a sword. I said: “You’re way too old to make a demand like that, you’re 10.” And he said: “This is exactly the right age, any younger and you wouldn’t have let me have a sword.” I admired his logic. So now I’m getting married in three hours and I have to find a sword, then take it to the pub ahead of time, because I don’t even know if you’re allowed to take a sword into a register office. Ancient wisdom was right on this: you should get married before you have children. | One daughter will do a speech but won’t dance, the other will do a dance, but only for money. My son will cut the cake, but only with a sword. I said: “You’re way too old to make a demand like that, you’re 10.” And he said: “This is exactly the right age, any younger and you wouldn’t have let me have a sword.” I admired his logic. So now I’m getting married in three hours and I have to find a sword, then take it to the pub ahead of time, because I don’t even know if you’re allowed to take a sword into a register office. Ancient wisdom was right on this: you should get married before you have children. |
| Duchess of Sussex | |
| Opinion | Opinion |
| Press freedom | Press freedom |
| Newspapers | Newspapers |
| Newspapers & magazines | Newspapers & magazines |
| comment | comment |
| Share on Facebook | Share on Facebook |
| Share on Twitter | Share on Twitter |
| Share via Email | Share via Email |
| Share on LinkedIn | Share on LinkedIn |
| Share on Pinterest | Share on Pinterest |
| Share on Google+ | Share on Google+ |
| Share on WhatsApp | Share on WhatsApp |
| Share on Messenger | Share on Messenger |
| Reuse this content | Reuse this content |