South Park’s epic takedown of Harry and Meghan is a welcome relief after three years of the couple’s insufferable exploits during which these privileged two conspire with an adoring media to trash as many old-world values as possible while promoting every superficial cause. If there were a king and queen of the next new thing, and of craven ingratitude generally, they would qualify.
To see the absurdity, you can freeze a frame-out of almost any of their public appearances, such as in 2021 when they joined a “star studded” Global Citizen Live campaign in New York to promote “vaccine equity,” whatever that is, as a means of ending the pandemic. Neither knows anything about the subject at all (I’m quite certain they never followed the grim details of the vaccine trials) but of course it was the fashionable thing to do at the time so they did it.
Don’t expect either to show the slightest interest in those harmed by the vaccines, much less the complete failure of the shot to live up its promise. Millions experienced job displacement and termination from failure to comply with jab mandates but they cannot be bothered. The plight of the peasants is of no interest to them. Their only job is to be mouthpieces for whatever the ruling class tells them to say at the time, if only to keep viewership of their show and sales of their books as high as possible.
Thanks to South Park, we get a more honest look: here we have a man, born as third in line to the English throne, who followed a Hollywood airhead to his personal doom and family disgrace. Born to wealth and privilege the rest of us cannot imagine, they parade as victims on the world stage while trashing the dignity of family and tradition.
It’s a pathetic tale, but one certainly worthy of comedy more than sympathy.
The episode is called “Worldwide Privacy Tour” and features the “Prince of Canada” and his wife running from place to place demanding their privacy and right to live as normal people as loudly as possible. It’s their only shtick and it only works so long as people do not comply with their demand for privacy. Their undoing comes when people stop caring, which does indeed seem to be happening, if we are to judge from the bins at Barnes & Noble.
The book tour takes them all over the world in their private jet while campaigning against climate change and racism from which the wife is supposedly harmed in her relationship with the Prince’s family. When they finally settle down, they find that they have no raison d’être but for their tedious demand to be left alone to which they insist everyone listen. Better yet, buy the book. It becomes obvious that privacy is the last thing they want; quite the opposite, they only build their bank accounts by maximizing the number of gawkers.
The subplot of the episode is where we find the substantive import. There is a consultancy business in town that will give you a personal brand for a fee and train you how to use it. Locals are all lined up to hear the manager explain that it doesn’t really matter what’s on the inside of a person. Not at all: “People can only tell what drink you are drinking.”
And so a main character, Kyle Broflovski, signs up for a brand, which consists of three descriptors followed by the word victim. The message here is that you cannot be anyone meaningful in the modern world without parading your plight, real or made up, to the public. This of course is a key element of woke ideology: your main social and political obligation is to get back at the people who did you wrong and undo all the structures of supposed oppression around you. Even princes can run this racket if they have the right consultants.
After cycling through several brands, Kyle finally settles on one in which he is unflappable and unbothered by anything that should come his way. When his across-the-street neighbors the Prince and his wife try to rattle him with their incessant demands for privacy, he stops caring, which sends the couple into a deep funk of aimlessness.
The Prince himself has a revelation that perhaps he should stop with the demands for privacy and normalcy and actually act to realize these ideas. His wife is utterly puzzled by the suggestion. It makes no sense to her because demanding but not getting sums up the whole of her existence. Indeed, he lifts up her head and yells inside only to hear his own voice echo back. Exhausted and confused, the Prince finally walks out the door.
The South Park kids decide to let go of their whole attachment to brands, in addition to their gaming addictions and online malarkey, and instead play a nice game of basketball. The Prince asks to join them. Thus the ending message: let go of the fakery and digital commodification of the human personality and instead embrace friendship, love, and mercy as the desiderata of the good life. That indeed is a very powerful and much-needed message.
As for the real-life Harry, the part of his plight that is truly heartbreaking concerns the commodification of himself at the expense of his family and destiny. It would be one thing for him to give up his royal status to become a high-school teacher, a front-line fast-food worker, or some other respectable profession. But to merely become an “influencer” is beneath the dignity of his birth. To masquerade as a victim is truly over the top.
We used to speak of “limousine liberals” and “champagne socialists” but Harry and Meghan embody something far more extreme and absurd. It’s privilege that is truly invisible to its holders, one that allows them to live the highest of lives while woefully neglecting the actual victims of the causes they back. They tell the rest of the world to power their homes and cars from sunbeams and breezes while they burn up the fossil fuels on worldwide influencer tours and Netflix specials. They will be the last people to eat bugs, that’s for sure.
The South Park episode might indeed serve as a turning point on this whole cultural meme. One can hope so. Meghan and Harry reportedly found the episode “disturbing” but then walked that back by saying that they were not considering a lawsuit. A spokesperson said that such speculation was “boring”—and in their world there is no worse a moniker of anything. Sadly for them, boring is precisely where they are headed.
