MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Buy your ticket to see Harry's wounded inner child

2023-03-05

MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Hurry, hurry… buy your ticket to gawk at the petulant Prince’s wounded inner child. But Harry, don’t get mad at being diagnosed LIVE on-air. That’s what we paid $37.15 to see

In his Saturday fireside online chat, Prince Harry said he regards his book as ‘an act of service.’ Yet to access said chat, I had to spend $37.15 on a ticket and a copy of ‘Spare,’ whether I wanted the book or not.

How greedy and cynical can you get? The book is already a gonzo bestseller. Chances are anyone who joined this chat already has their copy. But Harry has to make more money and guarantee more time on the bestseller list, shame be damned.

This set the tone for the discussion to follow: Myopically narcissistic, intellectually vapid, and, above all, hypocritical. This is Harry’s true brand — not as a mental health leader or a humanitarian or as a warrior against institutional racism in the royal family — whoops, he walked that back a few weeks ago after scooping up a Kennedy honor — but Grade-A hypocrite.

Harry claimed to have been in the mental health field for two decades, but his actual experience with therapy seems sporadic: His regular schedule, he said, was once every other week, then once every few months.

That’s hardly in-depth therapy, and it hardly makes him an expert. But this is Harry’s post-royal identity, a for-profit mental health expert speaking Oprah-ese while endlessly flaying his blood relatives.

Can you be a victim while also being a hero? Can you be a paragon of kindness and virtue while insulting your family and baring their private pain? Can you spill their secrets yet demand privacy for yourself and your wife?

Prince Harry, master of cogent thought.

Dr. Gabor Maté, who led this talk, was sure to make a good portion about himself. He noted that he was none too impressed with all things royal and dismissed the huge chunk of Harry’s memoir as ‘royal melodrama’ that held no interest for him.

Along with Dr Gabor Maté, the ‘trauma expert’ and supporter of both Hamas and hallucinogenic drugs, the whole thing felt like a session on the adult subscription site OnlyFans.

Please. Even Harry’s harshest critics, and I count myself among them, have to admit: His royal life and recent apostasy is the most interesting thing about him. It seems Maté is fluent in the very H&M tactic of denigrating others to elevate oneself.

There was a lot of talk of ‘unpacking’ here — unpacking one’s emotions, life experiences, boxes and luggage when one has been evicted from one’s cottage (just kidding). Living authentically was another big theme, as was a kind of Mad-Libs philosophizing: ‘strength in vulnerability’ and ‘vulnerability in strength’ or some such gobbledygook.

I’ll give Harry this: He did give us an authentic moment, bristling as Dr. Maté went off-script, diagnosing Harry with multiple disorders. Helpfully, the good doctor had written them all down and presented a list.

Harry was mad — rightly so. This was a total violation of psychiatric ethics, diagnosing a stranger, a public figure at that, based on his book. Harry’s anger, barely masked by politesse — that royal training does have its advantages, it seems — was satisfying.

‘I can see this long list of how you’ve diagnosed me,’ Harry said. ‘Free session. Wonderful.’

Oh, was it elegantly bitchy. Just perfect deadpan delivery.

That said, what did Harry expect? This is the natural byproduct of commodifying your innermost thoughts and feelings, of making your wounded inner child and familial rage Topic #1 across all available platforms — streaming, publishing, public speaking engagements, TV interviews, and yes, online money grabs to sell more books.

Anyway, back to Harry the depressed, Harry the neglected, Harry the emotional waif. ‘When I read your book,’ Maté said, ‘it’s a story of deprivation.’

Ha! Yes, ‘Waaagh,’ as it will forever be known, is the story of a prince who had everything handed to him, who was given access to a top-tier education that he threw away, who had access to anything and anyone he wanted, was aided by the best PR and crisis managers in the Western hemisphere, but who was deprived of so much he had to run for his safety and privacy.

Isn’t that what these public tantrums are all about? Safety and privacy?

Back to some other well-trod topics: Charles wasn’t much of a hugger.

‘The father,’ Maté continued, ‘who clearly loves his kids, can’t help but be emotionally distant . . .’

‘We only know what we know,’ Harry said. A tautology for the ages. ‘We do the best we can as parents.’

Of the memoir we were forced to buy: ‘I want this to be an act of service,’ Harry said. ‘It needs to be . . . how you can save a life.’

‘Waaagh’: saving lives, one petulant complaint at a time.

Maté didn’t get into the crueler parts of Harry’s book: the mocking of the disabled schoolteacher. The bragging about his ‘kills’ in Afghanistan. The sheer lack of gratitude for a life of privilege few throughout history have ever known.

Instead, Maté offered this bit of advice: ‘None of us are a victim if we choose not to be.’

Excuse me? Does Maté know who he’s talking to?

Harry bested that hilarity with his thoughts about therapy. ‘I would always encourage people,’ he said, ‘to not wait until they’re in the fetal position on the kitchen floor.’

Like his wife? Harry wrote that after Meghan had a text-message fight with Kate over bridesmaids dresses, he came home to find his wife ‘sobbing on the floor.’

About Meghan: ‘People have said my wife saved me,’ Harry said. ‘She’s an extraordinary human being.’ He spoke of once losing his temper while they were dating, and Meghan asking him if ‘that’s how he grew up’ — men speaking to women that way, thinking it acceptable.

It was, Harry said, ‘a lightbulb moment.’

Well, Harry’s given King Charles and Prince William another lightbulb moment of their own — he’s now fine with implying that the men in his family verbally abuse their wives.

Surely that coronation invite is in the mail.

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