Narcissist or not, Meghan doesn’t deserve this Game of Thrones humiliation

What does it mean when an influential man hates a woman “on a cellular level”? It signals, presumably, a deep and visceral hate in one’s core. Something biological and unavoidable, something that overrides reason, without reason.

Which brings me to British broadcaster Jeremy Clarkson, who revealed this week that he has a particularly foul, fetid hatred of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. In a piece somehow published (though later retracted online) by a national tabloid newspaper in Britain, The Sun, Clarkson divulged that he feels sorry for Harry. But not so his wife: “I hate her. Not like I hate Nicola Sturgeon or Rose West. I hate her on a cellular level.”

Jeremy Clarkson, the Duchess of Sussex, and Piers Morgan.Credit:Amazon Prime/Getty/AP

These two examples are revealing – Clarkson’s greatest loathing is reserved for a popularly elected female prime minister and a female serial killer. A woman who holds power and a woman who slaughters innocents. A telling parallel.

Of Meghan, he continued: “At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her.”

And in a snap, just days after the final instalment of the Sussexes’ Netflix series was released, we see a prime example of how the British establishment gaslights Meghan. For the past couple of weeks, in reactions to Harry & Meghan, we have heard: “All this nonsense about hate and sexism and racism and suicidal thoughts blah blah, get over yourself! You’re just a whinger/ bitch.” “She’s making it up,” they cry, “lying and acting the part of a victim.”

I will be the first to decry the fact that this series is clearly one-sided. It is spin, verging on propaganda. And that’s leaving aside the saccharin parts. There are so many unanswered questions.

But Meghan is not fabricating the hate. It’s a daily torrent, waterboarding from a fire hydrant. The contempt for the actress has become so normalised that a piece saying a woman should be stripped bare and have shit thrown at her can be published in the mainstream press. As though it’s entirely acceptable to advocate violent, sexualised fantasies designed to put a woman of colour in her place.

The question is not: how much do you like Meghan, but how much do we expect a human being to suffer or tolerate when it comes to public abuse? And why haven’t the royals done more to stop it? Just a couple of days before this piece was published, Clarkson was at a fancy pre-Christmas lunch in Mayfair attended by the Queen Consort, Camilla, along with Piers Morgan.

Why would the King’s wife fraternise with men who have made a sport of endlessly slagging off her daughter-in-law? Why give them legitimacy?

Morgan has been one of the most consistently unhinged critics of Meghan. When she told Oprah she’d had suicidal thoughts, he blithely stated on Good Morning Britain that he did not believe “a word she says”. When he stormed out, it looked like he had lost control of himself, possessed by rage – what was he so furious about? Was it cellular?

It should be noted Morgan once had a drink with Meghan, but claims she “ghosted him” thereafter. Can’t imagine why. He had gushed about her “beauty” and “brains”, saying she was “perfect princess” material, and he was “not surprised” Harry had “fallen for her”. He also asked to be invited to the wedding. He wasn’t, and his tone quickly changed.

Morgan later said he had received messages from “upper level” members of the royal family after his Good Morning Britain remarks, showing “gratitude that someone was standing up”. Just a few days before the pre-Christmas lunch, Morgan had called the Sussexes “repulsive hypocrites”. It goes on and on.

I have been researching and analysing the media’s portrayal of powerful women for almost three decades now. And the singular truth many observers fail to recognise is that a gender, or racial, bias does not mean the central character is flawless, exemplary or even likeable. It does not mean this character should avoid or deflect judgment. At the core of it is amplification and consequences. In other words, how loud and nasty and visceral and ongoing that criticism might be – and what the fallout is.

Will they lose their job? Their minds? Leave the country? Where do we want it to end? Why do so many trolls tell women to kill themselves? Why do we so quickly forget those women who do get trolled into suicide?

The fallout continues from the Netflix series Harry & Meghan.Credit:Netflix

Just compare Meghan with her husband’s uncle, Prince Andrew, who befriended a paedophile and sex trafficker and paid a woman who accused him of raping her when she was a teenager, a “princely” sum of millions. Helicopters aren’t circling his house daily. It’s Meghan who is salivated and frothed over, dissected, slammed, pursued, judged.

Meghan has some strengths, but is unquestionably narcissistic and entitled. Her remarks about Nottingham Cottage being too small – a house on palace grounds in central London – were tone-deaf, as was her insistence that a baby shower thrown for her by her friend Serena Williams, reportedly costing hundreds of millions of dollars, was simply an act of love, without an acknowledgment that we simple folk can’t show love in quite the same way.

But she is right to point to the overdue reckoning the monarchy is facing for the excesses and ugliness of Empire – recent trips to the Caribbean have been awkward, as local leaders have asked for help in securing reparations, and recognition of atrocities committed. However small a contribution, surely Meghan’s presence could have prompted the monarchy to better understand racism, to be part of the modern world.

What has surprised me is how many people are staunchly polarised in their response to her – many argue she is all bad, without redemption. White people have repeatedly told me race has played no part in the avalanche of hate heaped on her, despite the evidence and powerful arguments from prominent people of colour.

What the Sussexes have challenged is silence – or complicity – in the face of abuse.

Clarkson’s apology in the face of global condemnation was paltry, saying he had “rather put [his] foot in it”, and said he was merely making “a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones”. There was no mention of, or apology to, Meghan. And the fact that the scene had been fictionalised is no excuse – why draw on that scene at all? Imagine if I wrote that I’d like to see, say, Scott Morrison or Anthony Albanese shot point-blank in the throat and forehead while eating a plate of veal and spaghetti, and said: “But that’s a scene from The Godfather!”

I know, after writing this, people will rush me with a host of reasons they “can’t stand” Meghan. So what? It doesn’t matter whether you disagree with or dislike her. It does matter if we allow threats of violence to air unchecked, and the idea that disliking someone is sufficient justification to stalk, needle, slander and threaten them.

Meghan may have felt entitled to a larger house, but that pales next to the entitlement of her critics, who think her life, her children and her sanity are theirs to harangue, and hatred a natural response.

It’s a cellular thing.

Julia Baird is a journalist and author. She hosts The Drum on ABC TV. Her latest book is Phosphorescence: on awe, wonder and things that sustain you when the world goes dark.

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