Meghan Markle has an odd definition of privacy

There are some sights that nobody should ever be forced to see, lest they be forced into a lifetime of therapy-intensive PTSD. To this list should be added a video of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, twerking. For some unfathomable reason, Meghan and Harry decided to mark their daughter Lilibet’s fourth birthday by posting a video on Instagram that featured the heavily pregnant expectant mother gyrating wildly in a hospital room to a song called “Baby Mama,” in apparent recreation of a (checks notes) TikTok trend. 

I assumed at first that it was an AI-created spoof, and that litigation from this never knowingly under-lawyered couple would be coming soon. But no. It appeared on Meghan’s Instagram, with the caption that:

Both of our children were a week past their due dates… so when spicy food, all that walking, and acupuncture didn’t work – there was only one thing left to do!

Clearly. Yet even leaving aside the cringeworthiness of the video (in which, perhaps as a reflection of their marriage in miniature, Harry has a walk-on part but Meghan remains the main attraction), it is yet another example of Sussex hypocrisy at its most naked. They complain and complain about publicity-seeking media and a lack of privacy, and then gaily release something as flummoxing as this into the public domain. I would say that it constitutes a new low, even by their standards, but for veteran observers of the dynamic duo, it’s simply another thing that you wish they hadn’t done. 

A more interesting, and potentially consequential, story that concerned the pair this week was about a potential change of last name. The Guardian reported the interesting and not all that surprising nugget that Harry, vexed by the British government’s tardiness in issuing passports to his children, considered changing his family’s name to Spencer, his mother’s maiden name. Had it happened, it would have been yet another exercise in tie-severing with the royals. 

The well-briefed (and sympathetic) source told the newspaper that:

Harry was at a point where British passports for his children with their updated Sussex surnames (since the death of Queen Elizabeth II) were being blocked with a string of excuses over the course of five months. Out of sheer exasperation he went to his uncle to effectively say: “My family are supposed to have the same name and they’re stopping that from happening because the kids are legally HRH, so if push comes to shove, if this blows up and they won’t let the kids be called Sussex, then can we use Spencer as a surname?

Obviously, anyone who has ever been waiting for a passport will sympathize with Harry. The idea that there was some dark obstruction taking place on the orders of his estranged family will also neatly tie into the Duke’s perpetual sense of victimhood. Yet amid all this name-changing and video-twerking, there is the feeling that the wheels have come off the bus. Every piece of publicity or news that is being released – and this sympathetic story was clearly briefed by sources within the Sussex camp – has an ever-growing feeling of desperation behind it.

Twerk if you want to, Meghan, but know that such minor things as dignity, integrity and respect have long since left the building. But I hope that Lilibet had a nice birthday, nonetheless.