Vee

I think public opinion on Meghan internationally is evenly divided. There's still a tremendous amount of interest and sympathy. I think she has a fair amount of the support Diana had globally, but it will always be cleaved in half because she's not white and because of the contrarian and/or cynical sociopolitical climate we now live in. More people in this country despise her than they ever did Diana, but nobody stops watching and the offers and sympathy keep coming.

In the minds of the British press and a lot of the American right (as well as just some garden variety American misogynists and/or racists), Meghan is the scheming bridezilla who ruined a wonderful fantasy kingdom we've all enjoyed from afar for years. That will always be the image some people have of her. For some it's fun to turn any young, happy and driven woman into a shrewish meme. If I needed to have that fix, well, I've already seen Heathers approximately 50 times. I have no doubt she can be difficult, and I've found some of her and Harry's moves rash and tone deaf at times. But I can't blame young and frankly, very naive people in love for being rattled by the situation they found themselves thrust into and the unbelievable burden put upon them to suspend their lives together and subsume it into "the Firm". And the stories she and her husband have told about how they were treated both inside and outside of the family are just too heartbreaking to ignore, not just the big stuff like the tabloids making all sorts of animal jokes but the smaller, passive aggressive things like asking after Archie's pigmentation. That's all too real. A lot of people will recognize stuff like that from their own lives and remember it.

I think, as others have said, a good portion of the British press and public will continue to reject the wake-up call and them. It's too much cold water thrown in their face. The press in particular will never let it go for deeper reasons, because these two played the American media game and not the UK one which is possibly even more insidious and labyrinthian. That's an unforgivable sin in that world. Still, the injury is going to resonate and fester for years to come. And while there will always be divided opinion about Meghan in the States in a way there really wasn't with Diana (who also became very skilled at playing the game and working media refs, but who above all was white, and we now live in a time of culture wars as well), I think you will continue to see a very sympathetic international reaction and among the British youth perhaps which the royals will have to contend with for a long time. This is going to stick.

And you are entitled to hate me! But I'm sorry, I lost my last shred of patience when you spent the last several pages posting screencaps of other people's tacky opinions on a pretty serious issue. You take care.

Don't worry, I did!

I don't know how you can possibly expect institutional racism to not be a legitimately real thing in a centuries-old white monarchy, but at least you have your own voice and I'm not expected to read low quality screencaps of tweets from nobodies I don't know or care about who aren't posting here.

This one is going to leave a mark on the royals, internationally at least (I can't speak to back in the UK). It's pretty damning. I don't think Harry and Meghan have always played it perfectly through the entire ugly ordeal but it is impossible not to sympathize with them now.

I still don't get Becker. But Ken Levine sings its praises nonstop on his blog, God bless him. Oh, I'd beg to differ. His dramatic turn on Damages revitalized his career significantly after Becker limbo, IMO. Not enough people watched that show despite it running five or so years, and it stayed pretty good overalI. I think it had some potential career best work from him, Glenn Close, Martin Short(!), Lily Tomlin and others (Rose Byrne was great but she had the less showy heroine role). Danson was clearly only supposed to be there one season but the Enron(?)-style villain was such a smash that they kept weaving him back in for several more years. Damages is the reason he got Fargo and The Good Place. In conclusion: Y'all should watch Damages. Just speed through that second season though where the writer's strike decimated it and William Hurt quit midway through.

@DRW50

I thought Ink could've worked, but it clearly didn't. From A.V. Club interviews with both Danson and Steenburgen, individually:

Not that I don't think she can do comedy, but I've seen bits of that and it still weirds me out.

It Had To Be You, 1993. To this day I don't understand who thought Faye Dunaway could headline a romcom sitcom. IIRC they retooled the show with like, Robin Bartlett?

This is actually a big, big deal - everything lately indicates he is prepared to pass HR1 and reform the filibuster in major ways even if that means not killing it outright for now: Jentleson knows his shít. I despise many things about Joe Manchin and his behavior in the last week, but he's not stupid. And this is what we will need his vote for, however scummy.

I'm pretty sure we'd all have remembered or heard about film legend Harry Dean Stanton on OLTL by now.

Harry Dean Stanton on OLTL - we should've been so blessed, lol.

I think the shít Manchin tried to pull re: anti-trans bathroom bills is reprehensible. That being said, he has signaled an investment in passing the Voting Rights Act recently which will require killing the filibuster. Between that and this, it's a lot to think about. I despise a lot of his behavior but I understand why we need his vote.

Thread and link:

(^ Not an endorsement from me)

That truly shocked me. And it was worth firing him for, unlike what allegedly actually did (Hope blowing Stefano away in cold blood, something anyone in town should've done years ago IMO). You occasionally see glimpses of the old Griffith in some of his latter-day bad work - the weird, byzantine story in which Jigsaw turned out to be John's dad, etc. all sorts of other gothic stuff - but when he goes there the entire show gets both so dark and also not very well-written or made. It was different at OLTL when he and the florid, OTT romantic Michael Malone generally balanced each other out in their best years. I wouldn't put him in a position of real power anywhere today beyond maybe an occasional consultant were OLTL still around. His runs at Y&R and DAYS have been pathetic. He burnt out long ago.