#THE NARRATIVES ARE SO RICH PLEASE INDULGE MY DELUSIONS PLEASE

[crow-talks-hockey]

ok but like. there was a really adorable shot of connor and nate chatting and smiling like idiots (IN LOVE?? sorry i'll shut up... unless..) and to me that's just another coloradmonton oilanche win

[snughuz]

Piers Morgan article copied. No pictures

PIERS MORGAN: Meghan and Harry's nauseating two-hour Oprah whine-athon was a disgraceful diatribe of cynical race-baiting propaganda designed to damage the Queen as her husband lies in hospital - and destroy the Monarchy

By PIERS MORGAN FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 07:33 EST, 8 March 2021 | UPDATED: 07:47 EST, 8 March 2021

Sickening.

Shameful.

Self-pitying.

Salacious.

Scandalous.

Sanctimonious.

Spectacularly self-serving.

Those were just my initial thoughts after ten minutes of the Oprah whine-athon with Meghan and Harry, and while restricting myself to only using words beginning with the letter 's'.

By the time I'd finished the whole two-hour orgy of pious, self-indulgent, score-settling twaddle, the steam was erupting out of my ears like an exploding geyser, and my lexicon of rageful epithets extended to the full range of the alphabet.

Never have I watched a more repulsively disingenuous interview.

Nor one more horrendously hypocritical or contradictory.

Here we had the Duke and Duchess of Privacy flinging out the filthy family laundry for the delectation of tens of millions of people all over the world, whilst simultaneously bleating about press intrusion.

They moaned about the terrible pain of their royal titles but were also outraged their son Archie wasn't allowed to be a Prince.

They told of their constant trauma from nasty newspaper stories, but repeatedly insisted they never read any of them.

They claimed they were forced to sign gazillion-dollar deals with Netflix and Spotify because Prince Charles cut off their allowance, despite Harry inheriting millions from his late mother Princess Diana and having his entire life bankrolled by the Royal Family.

And so, it went nauseatingly on.

In the middle of a pandemic that has already taken over 2.5 million lives, a staggeringly rich and entitled couple living in a $14 million sun-kissed California mansion wanted us all to know that THEY are the real victims around here.

Meghan even compared her former life living in a palace to the crippling freedom-robbing existence of coronavirus lockdowns, which must have sounded so empathetic to large families living at the top of tower blocks with three kids they're trying to home-school and no job to pay for food.

'I couldn't even meet my friends for lunch!' wailed the Duchess of Delusion, who flew to New York for a $500,000 baby shower with all her new-found celebrity pals, then flew back to London like any good eco-warrior on George Clooney's carbon footprint guzzling private jet.

But amid all the relatively trivial gossipy stuff emerged some incredibly damaging bombshells deliberately detonated to do maximum damage to the British Royal Family and the Monarchy.

First, Meghan claimed to have been left suicidal by the pressure of being a Princess and had her requests for help rejected by the cold, heartless Palace.

We weren't told who did the rejecting, or why she couldn't seek her own therapy or treatment if that's what she felt she needed. After all, her husband has spent years talking about mental health and has close connections with all the major mental health charities.

Instead, we're left to believe the Palace spurned a pregnant suicidal woman in her hour of desperate need.

But that wasn't even the most explosive revelation.

No, that came when Meghan told Oprah that a member of the Royal Family had queried what colour her baby would be during a conversation with Harry.

In fact, she said there were several conversations, whereas he said there was only one.

But neither of them would name the offending Royal.

Harry said he would never reveal the name.

So, we're now left to view all the Royals as racists.

Nor were we given any details of exactly what was said, or in what context it was said.

Would an older senior Royal innocently asking Harry what skin colour his baby might have, given that Meghan's mother is black and her father white, constitute racism?

It would if there was any derogatory tone to the question, or any suggestion that it would be a problem how dark the child's skin was. But we don't know the answers to those vital questions, because having let off the racism bomb, the Sussexes won't say any more.

I find that cowardly.

And the racism charge got worse.

Meghan followed up by asserting, without providing any evidence, that the Royal Family decided to change the rules specifically to prevent her son Archie from being a Prince, because of his skin colour.

Again, no name was given for the appalling racist at the Palace responsible for such a disgusting discriminatory decision.

But, as Meghan and Harry both know, the only person who has final say over titles is the Queen.

So, in making this astonishing unproven claim, they're effectively branding Her Majesty, Harry's grandmother, a racist.

It's hard to think of a more disgraceful slur to make against a woman who has devoted her whole life to the service of her country and the Commonwealth.

The Queen is not a racist and has never been a racist.

To even suggest that she might be is disgusting.

But to do so at a time when her 99-year-old husband Prince Philip has spent the past few weeks lying seriously ill in hospital is worse than that, it's contemptible.

Nothing that Meghan Markle said in this interview surprised me.

From the moment Oprah announced her scoop, I predicted to anyone who asked me that Meghan would aggressively play the mental health and race cards to deflect from any criticism of herself and her own behaviour or accountability.

I also cynically suspect it's the reason why she chose to do such a sensational interview when she's five months pregnant. Why would any woman do that after suffering a miscarriage last year, knowing the obvious controversy, media attention, and stress it would provoke? The answer, I fear, is that she thought the pregnancy would afford her another layer of protection against the inevitable furore and criticism that would result from her trashing the Royal Family.

Having had personal experience, on a very small scale, of Meghan Markle's ruthlessness when dispensing of anyone in her life that's ceased to be of use to her, it was no great shock to see her lighting a gigantic bonfire that will surely cause irreparable damage to her husband's family.

After all, she's torched all her own family, along with her ex-husband and most of her old friends.

This was the acting performance of her life, with every word, every facial expression carefully planned and choreographed.

In fact, it it's not late, someone should nominate it for the Oscars.

I mean, this is a woman who was photographed on the railings of Buckingham Palace as a starry-eyed teenager but now wants us to believe she knew nothing about the Royals and never once Googled her handsome Prince when they met.

Given these are both obvious lies, why should we believe anything that comes out of her mouth?

'Nobody told me how to curtsy or sing the British national anthem,' wailed a 39-year-old woman, married to someone who can probably help with both.

But make no mistake, this interview will be a triumph for Meghan in America. Her narrative of a poor, vulnerable, unsuspecting bi-racial woman thrown to the wolves by a white, racist Royal Family and racist British press is already being heralded as 'courageous' and 'brave' and 'iconic' across the United States.

She's got exactly what she wants: her homeland feeling sorry for her.

And woe betide anyone who criticises Meghan, for you will be instantly lambasted as a 'racist bully' towards a woman who stands accused of subjecting her own young female Palace staff to horrendous bullying.

But what about Prince Harry, and his own homeland of Great Britain?

How on earth could he allow his wife to take down his family like this on TV, and attack and belittle the very institution held so dear by his grandmother?

He even let her chuck his brother William's wife Kate - a woman who has never once said a bad word about Meghan in public - under the bus by saying she made her cry in a row over kids' wedding dresses.

That 'space', which is how Harry framed his current fractured relationship with William, will now be the size of 1000 Grand Canyons.

And then Harry gleefully joined in the Sopranos-style whacking too, revealing incredibly intimate secrets about his father Prince Charles of the type that he would scream in fury over if they'd been revealed by the tabloid press.

He claimed Charles stopped taking his calls last January after he and Meghan quit their country and the Royal Family and cut off his massive financial allowance too. And Harry's still furious with his Dad, apparently, for letting him down.

Yet, what has Charles done wrong exactly, other than try to deal with his headstrong younger son's constant self-pitying hunger for drama?

He bankrolled Harry and Meghan for years, and even stepped in to walk her down the aisle when her father pulled out after suffering a heart attack and was disowned by his daughter (where were Oprah 'nothing's off limits' Winfrey questions about that?) - yet they now pay him back with this open back-stabbing treachery.

Harry disloyally says Charles and William are 'trapped' in the institution of the Monarchy because they are the heirs to the throne.

'They don't get to leave, and I have huge compassion for that,' he claimed.

Oh please.

He and Meghan bang on endlessly about their compassion yet show the complete opposite to their own families.

If Charles or William wanted to leave, they could do exactly what Harry's done, and what Edward VIII did when he abdicated the throne.

Any royal can 'leave'.

But only Edward and Harry actually did it, both coincidentally after falling in love with American women.

The only difference is that Edward and Wallis Simpson never spoke badly in public about the Royal Family or trashed the Monarchy.

Within hours of the Oprah interview airing, the hashtag #AbolishTheMonarchy was trending on Twitter.

That's the effect that Meghan and Harry's accusations have had with their shockingly poisonous allegations.

Ms Markle won't care about the damage she's done to an institution she clearly reviles.

But Harry should.

The fact he's so willingly taken part in such a despicable public attack on the Royal Family – HIS family - and the Monarchy is utterly shameful.

And to have caused so much extra hurt to his 94-year-old grandmother the Queen at a time when her husband lies seriously ill in hospital, is just appalling.

When it comes to mental health and having a heart, it appears Meghan and Harry only care about themselves.

Share or comment on this article: PIERS MORGAN: Meghan and Harry's nauseating two-hour Oprah whine-athon was a disgraceful diatribe.

[bellabooks]

The Case for (Imagined) Queerness in the Works of Jane Austen

As 12 years of mandatory English classes taught us, a book’s impact and importance depend on a ton more factors than just “what the author decided the plot should be.” Every story is contextualized and processed by its individual readers. And if you think you understand the power of this reader/text relationship like the bookish queer youth does, oh boy are you out of your league. There’s an entire ocean of characters out there, and so shamefully few of them are non-hetero. Fan fiction, fan art and extensive Tumblr analyses abound trying to engineer Queer Subtext for any book, movie or television show you can imagine. LGBTQ folk are experts at collecting scraps of dialogue, stray looks or ambiguous moments, pinning them to the cork board of Accidental Queer Representation and connecting them with the red yarn of, uh, Extremely Biased Interpretation? Much like the metaphor in that last sentence, these cobbled-together narratives are often flimsy at best, but we stand behind them with conviction. See? I’m a weathered professional at holding together a trembling, papier-mâché construct despite all evidence to the contrary! Plenty of heteronormative franchises and stories have been given new life by the queer reader’s re-programming, but I have felt mostly alone in my bold quest to Gay Up the works of Jane Austen. These stories all at least partially revolve around the stirrings of Heterosexual Love in the hearts of young women and naturally have been favored mostly by my exceedingly hetero, female-identifiying peers. Therefore I have taken it upon myself to do this heavy lifting on behalf of the Queer Agenda. I have labored intensely for many years, and now at long last I present my findings on a few of Jane Austen’s most notable works.   Mansfield Park for Queer Youth Ah, Mansfield Park. The story of a mousy, impoverished heterosexual young woman fending off the advances of a wealthy and charming young heterosexual man in order to ultimately commit to an austere and boring heterosexual young man. Or is it?   Exhibit A: Mary Crawford, The Original Girlcrush   When Miss Mary Crawford and her wealthy and charming heterosexual brother Henry move into the neighborhood, young Fanny Price and her better-off cousins the Bertrams find their lives turned upside-down. Perhaps not quite in the way you would think. Miss Crawford’s beauty did her no disservice with the Miss Bertrams. They were too handsome themselves to dislike any woman for being so too, and were almost as much charmed as their brothers with her lively dark eye, clear brown complexion, and general prettiness. (Chapter 5) The first half of this excerpt is a very informative piece of intel on the lives of conventionally attractive, straight women. (Finally, Taylor Swift’s #girlsquad makes sense!) The second half, however, is queer as hell if you just believe hard enough. “Almost” as much charmed? Come on, Austen. Just give it to us straight. (Uh, no pun intended.) Everyone is in love with Mary Crawford, which is beautiful and tragic. The Bertram daughters are bound by custom and convention to marry men, but in the depths of their hearts, they clearly yearn to leave it all behind and run away with Mary.   Exhibit B: Wait, Is Mary Crawford after Edmund or Fanny?   The ongoing flirtation between Mary and Edmund is explicit enough. While they turn out to be ill-suited for one another, the initial sparks between them cannot be denied. Only slightly more subtle, however, is Mary’s fascination with Fanny which leads the two women to spend the majority of their free time together. Such was the origin of the sort of intimacy which took place between them within the first fortnight after the Miss Bertrams’ going away—an intimacy resulting principally from Miss Crawford’s desire of something new, and which had little reality in Fanny’s feelings.”(Chapter 22) Mary, girl, we’ve all been there. Experiment away! Bless Jane Austen for this completely unintended example of much-needed bisexual representation.   Exhibit C: Fanny Just Wants a Beard I have always found protagonist Fanny Price’s rejection of rich, effusive and affable Henry Crawford in favor of her stoic and dare I say withholding cousin Edmund Bertram to be one of the most frustrating heterosexual choices in literature, which is already full to bursting with the baffling entanglements of straight people. Ostensibly, Fanny has chosen a life of quiet morality as worth more to her than indulgence and having fun and being happy. And at first glance, the moral of this story seems to be the bland and inoffensive message that it’s actually okay for straight women to love solemn contemplation and quiet alone time and reading indoors on a rainy day. Oh, and being sexually attracted to one’s first cousin too, obviously. But is there perhaps a more original and insightful takeaway from this novel? Of course there is! Arguably, a queer reading of Mansfield Park is the only thing that would explain why in the end, Fanny falls for the least threatening or exciting man she has ever met. It also explains her intense discomfort with male attention. (She’s described in Chapter 21 as “almost as fearful of notice and praise as other women were of neglect.”) She’s not looking for sex appeal or chemistry, because she knows she will never find them in a man, nor does she want such a thing. The best case for Fanny is a dependable and amiable enough life partner with whom to pay the bills, share in life’s various duties and sleep in separate beds. Edmund is certainly that.   Emma, Obviously in Denial   In addition to having the most personally relatable protagonist I have ever encountered, Emma is coincidentally also the easiest of Jane Austen’s works to jam into a queer-shaped mold. You can read a good 85% of this novel as the story of a lady-loving lady in very deep denial struggling with the heterosexual inclinations of all the women she cares for. Unfortunately things go a little off the rails when Emma finally realizes her love for Mr. Knightley, which is difficult to handwave away seeing as how it is actually a rather compelling Heterosexual Romance. We’ll just ignore this minor detail that is arguably the culmination of the entire novel and focus on the rest.   Exhibit A: Feelings? For Men?   We are often reminded in this book that Emma has little to no interest in ever marrying. And why would she? She does not lack for money or status. Her only reason to marry would be True Hetero Love. “I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall.” (Chapter 10) Okay but is it not your nature to be in love or to be in love with men? Maybe this requires just a bit more introspection, Emma. Indeed, let us examine Emma’s attempted quasi-relationship with Frank Churchill. Emma realizes that she feels left out of all the fun watching her friends fall in love and circle through flirtations and makes the decision to get a crush on Frank with the aim of adding a little excitement to her life. (Relatable!) She notices that there seems to be something missing in her feelings for Frank, but she boldly soldiers on through the motions of being In Love so as to better fit in. Eventually, even Emma, queen of self-delusion that she is, cannot continue to pretend to love a man as anything more than a friend. But, on the other hand, she could not admit herself to be unhappy, nor, after the first morning, to be less disposed for employment than usual; she was still busy and cheerful; and, pleasing as he was, she could yet imagine him to have faults; and farther, though thinking of him so much, and, as she sat drawing or working, forming a thousand amusing schemes for the progress and close of their attachment, fancying interesting dialogues, and inventing elegant letters; the conclusion of every imaginary declaration on his side was that she refused him. Their affection was always to subside into friendship…When she became sensible of this, it struck her that she could not be very much in love. (Chapter 13) Because “I can like Men if only I just try hard enough” has always worked out!   Exhibit B: I Only Sabotaged My Best Friend’s Relationship For Her Own Good   Who among us hasn’t vehemently encouraged our dearest friend Harriet to turn down the advances of a perfectly lovely boy whom she likes very much ostensibly because he’s not good enough but actually because lurking in the deepest recesses of our subconscious, we could not bear to see her with someone else? This is so classic, I could rest my case right here. I probably spent my entire teenhood trying to subtly manipulate my secret lady crushes into dumping their boyfriends. “I lay it down as a general rule, Harriet, that if a woman doubts as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to ‘Yes,’ she ought to say ‘No’ directly. It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful feelings, with half a heart. I thought it my duty as a friend, and older than yourself, to say thus much to you. But do not imagine that I want to influence you.” (Chapter 7) I would never tell you what to do! I’m just saying maybe think about it. And while you’re thinking about it, think about the fact that you’re thinking about it. If you really loved him, would you even need to think about it? Makes you think, doesn’t it?   Exhibit C: Serial Monogamy   On the topic of Harriet, let’s take a closer look at a pattern of behavior Emma seems to set up. She was exceedingly close to Mrs. Weston, her old governess-turned-best-friend before this woman had the nerve to move out and get married to a man. Emma, drowning in sorrow at the loss of this relationship, cannot handle being single and working on herself for a while, therefore she immediately turns her faculties to selecting herself a new girlfriend. When Emma decides that Harriet shall be her next life partner, she cleaves to her wholly and immediately. Harriet must accompany Emma on all her errands, must call on her nearly daily and must attend every party Emma attends as well. The poor girl doesn’t know how to exist without being in the constant company of a woman who adores her. Have I mentioned how relatable Emma is enough times yet?   Pride and Prejudice and Homosexuality Yes, Pride and Prejudice is perhaps the most Heterosexual piece of literature ever written at first glance, but please! Do not doubt my ability to make Austen’s most enduring triumph Extremely Gay. I told you I was a professional. By the time my case is finished, you will see that Pride and Prejudice is one of the queerest classic works in the canon.   Exhibit A: Uhhh, Why Do Darcy and Bingley Have to Be Together All the Time?   Darcy has Pemberley. Bingley has enough money to buy any property he pleases. There is no reason these boys need to follow each other from estate to estate, attending parties together, traveling to all the same boroughs. Darcy, if you hate the country so much, why don’t you just go live at home in your home that you own? You know, the home that everyone constantly talks about how incredible it is? The home you can just ride a horse over to right now? That home? Darcy gets a lot of guff for convincing Bingley not to propose to Jane. And yeah, that screams Jealous Secret Crush on Darcy’s end. But one must also wonder why Bingley would have been so very easy to persuade. If he truly wanted to marry Jane, I think it would have taken more than a slight nudge from his platonic best bud to ghost her the way he did. I mean, he didn’t just stop answering her texts. He moved himself and his family out of town. However, it doesn’t seem quite so inexplicable to dump one’s beard at the urging of one’s Secret Boyfriend now does it?   Exhibit B: Everyone Is Gay for Georgiana   “I really do not think Georgiana Darcy has her equal for beauty, elegance, and accomplishments; and the affection she inspires in Louisa and myself is heightened into something still more interesting…” (Chapter 21) I swear to God, no one in this book will ever shut up about Georgiana Darcy. We get it! She’s so very beautiful and kind and charming and talented! The Bingley sisters practically salivate over her. Lady Catherine admires her in her own grumpy old elitist way. Elizabeth finds her fully delightful. Everyone is obsessed with Georgiana. She’s like the Shane McCutcheon of Regency England.   Exhibit C: Relax, Elizabeth, People Get Married.   Elizabeth has decidedly no interest in marrying the human embodiment of Oblivious Mansplaining, Mr. Collins. Elizabeth’s best friend Charlotte Lucas, however, seems to think the constant stream of ignorant babble is worth the cash money. So she locks it down, infuriating Elizabeth. She had always felt that Charlotte’s opinion of matrimony was not exactly like her own, but she had not supposed it to be possible that, when called into action, she would have sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage. Charlotte the wife of Mr. Collins was a most humiliating picture! And to the pang of a friend disgracing herself and sunk in her esteem, was added the distressing conviction that it was impossible for that friend to be tolerably happy in the lot she had chosen. (Chapter 22) Lizzy. We get that you weren’t into him, girl, but why are you, like… so upset about this? Could it be that your dearest partner and secret love Charlotte has accepted a Heterosexual Union. And immediately after you yourself made such a display of rejecting one? Ouch!   Sense and Sensibility   Guys, I tried with this one. I really did. But all the women in this book are related and also obsessed with dudes. I thought I could stick it to the straight people, but I must regretfully concede that this task is beyond even my expertise. If anyone has a queer angle on this one though, please contact me immediately. We queers have always been around, even when every offshoot of culture has tried to erase us from existence. Yeah, it’s super fun to retroactively barge our way back into old literature. But it’s also a much-needed assertion that we exist, we matter and we deserve to see ourselves. Even in light-hearted novels about manners and marrying rich and falling in love with one’s first cousin. Ashley Chupp is a Chicago-based writer, crossword enthusiast and frequent crier at the local Trader Joe’s.   Gif 1: fibu.tumblr.com Gif 2: teenvogue.tumblr.com Gif 3: BBC Gif 4: bringmybooks.com http://dlvr.it/PZ94CB