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The recent fires in California have had many tragic effects. Many have lost their homes, possessions and livelihoods, and it has been a stark reminder that even the wealthy and privileged are not immune from a truly awful, life-changing event. Regrettably, however, the disaster has attracted a small but vocal number of people who ostensibly have offered their time and resources to provide much-needed assistance — but in reality seem more interested in creating #content to share on their social media.
It is easier, for the sake of our collective mental health, to think as little about Meghan Markle as possible
Meghan Markle, predictably enough, belongs to that category. There is, of course, her new reality television show With Love, Meghan — which, at least in a small gesture of mercy, has had its release date delayed by a few weeks until early March. This was because it was felt that releasing an ersatz lifestyle program was somehow at odds with the efforts to clean up after the fires. But as if the prospect of that show weren’t terrifying enough, she has now decided to use her recently relaunched Instagram account to share videos of her helping her community. Or, to put it more accurately, reminding her 1.6 million followers that she has a wide assortment of famous friends, as befits her A-list status.
In the latest tone-deaf offering, the Duchess of Sussex posted an apparently candid video (jeans, minimal make-up) in which she details a tortuous odyssey by which a young Billie Eilish fan, who lost her favorite T-shirt in the fires, has been gifted a stack of merchandise signed by Eilish. Although even Meghan’s celebrity-stuffed contact list does not extend to her knowing Eilish personally, there are others that she knows who do, and therefore there is a shout-out to “Adam Levine and Behati,” who “helped me get this over the line.” She ends by announcing that she is going to email the fortunate Eilish fan’s mother now, and says, “I just wanted to share this with you guys.”
As with so many other things that Meghan has been responsible for in recent years, the initial feeling that many viewers might have is either to feel heart-warmed by an apparently generous gesture or, more likely, to shrug and think of this as a fundamentally harmless moment barely worth considering. It is easier, for the sake of our collective mental health, to think as little about Meghan Markle as possible, and even an article such as this gives her antics an unwelcome degree of publicity and exposure.
Yet there is something so nauseatingly contrived, so fake — so actressy — about the little smiles to camera, the faux-excitement, the casual name-dropping of famous friends (for the uninitiated, Levine is the heavily tattooed lead singer of Maroon 5 and “Behati” is Behati Prinsloo, his model wife) and, finally, the idea that some signed trinkets can in some way compensate for a truly epochal disaster. It screams of consumerism and fakery: both things, by now, that the Duchess has intimately associated herself with.
Meghan and Harry have already been accused of being “disaster tourists,” adding another epithet to the others that have been flung at them. Whether they are making quasi-state visits to other countries or, in the case of the Duke, launching court case after court case, there is a grandiosity — you might almost say a regality — to how they conduct themselves that is no less repellent for its familiarity. We sigh, and await the advent of With Love, Meghan, and wonder if the end of days will intervene before then. It would, on balance, be a relief if it did.
