Harry, Duke of Montecito, sallied forth to the parley of the United Nations on the feast of St. Nelson the Mandela, his fair Lady Meghan at his side, their train of retainers, stylists, and PR flunkies in tow. He wore a suit not of armor but of a light wool mix, for the Isle of Manhattan is distempered with malarial airs in the summer, and the prince, a youth of choleric humour, hath a tendency to sweat. Lady Meghan was richly caparisoned, and the drabs and slatterns of Manhattan did sorely envy her three changes of outfit in one day. When the Duke had read his proclamation and united the nations, he and Lady Meghan did dine on fine viands at the caravansary of the Italian minstrel Robert De Niro. Thus, it is recorded in the Chronicles of Netflix.
There was a time when Prince Harry would have been within his rights to slit me from gizzard to codlings for such knavish impertinence. But the world turned upside down in the days of George III, and the peasants have been revolting ever since. The democracy of the masterless Americans shines like a beacon of freedom much as Robin Hood’s campfires once beckoned the oppressed of Nottingham. No one tells the Americans what to do, and that is how they rolleth. No one, that is, except an entitled dimwit.
Prince Harry did not address the U.N. like Khrushchev or Kennedy. He addressed a near-empty chamber during the General Assembly’s annual Nelson Mandela International Day festivities. The GA is where democracy goes to die: a den of hereditary freeloaders who don’t pay their parking tickets. Harry fits right in.
“Our world is on fire,” says the prince of the private jets. “The few [are] weaponizing lies and disinformation at the expense of the many.” This, from the child of privilege who sold lies about his family to Oprah for cash and who used Britain’s antique libel laws to stifle a free press. This is bravura hypocrisy, even for the United Nations. But it gets better, or rather, worse.
“And from a horrific war in Ukraine, to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States,” Harry said, “we are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom, the cause of Mandela’s life.”
This is a triple insult to the American intelligence. Harry’s equivalence between Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine and the peaceful operation of the Supreme Court is absurd. His ignorance about the working of the American system is typical of most Europeans, and, it must be said, quite a few Democrats in Congress. And no one tried harder to resist the rolling forward of constitutional rights than Harry’s forebears in Europe’s royal families.
None of this is any of Harry’s business. No one elected him. If he wants to tell Americans how to live, he should apply for citizenship as Mr. Meghan Markle and then run for office. He won’t do it. He won’t even apply for a green card: That would mean putting his money where his mouth is and paying global tax. He seems to be here on an O visa. These are reserved for temporary guests of “exceptional ability,” and also Justin Bieber. Say what you like about Bieber, but at least the Canadian crooner spares us his politics.
Harry has no exceptional abilities. He has an empty title and a mercenary willingness to trade on it. He uses this position of unearned privilege to attack America, yet the U.S. beats the U.K. and the EU when it comes to constitutional rights and democracy. And if lax abortion laws are an index of freedom, Harry should look to his homeland and to Nelson Mandela’s. In Northern Ireland, abortion was illegal until 2019, and even now is only legal up to 12 weeks. South Africa, the country whose U.N. ambassador brought Meghan and Harry to the GA, has similar laws. They were passed under the presidency of Harry’s hero Nelson Mandela.
The last time a British royal told Americans to behave themselves, it went down like a crate of tea in Boston Harbor. George III was not insane — that came later — but he was deeply misguided. He understood the constitutional issues but did not understand who he was dealing with. Prince Harry understands neither. He seems not to understand anything, or to know himself at all.
The crass prince of Bel Air cadges rides in private jets, then bleats about the climate. He profits from living in the U.S. but dodges the IRS. He preaches democracy, but he is unelected and patronizes us from the unaccountable heights of the U.N. and the NGO complex. He talks of freedom but attacks a free press. He is a witless relic of the authoritarian past — and an unwitting pitchman for our age of oligarchy. The clown prince may have the last laugh.
