MAUREEN CALLAHAN: Evil global news media! Stop hounding ‘Woko Ono’ Meghan and poor Harry

Never forget: Meghan Markle is the second coming of Nelson Mandela.

Albeit in a custom-made Louis Vuitton gown (one that meanly mimicked Kate Middleton’s Earthshot look), a $90,000 aquamarine ring, and a stubborn stream of complaints and flimsy claims of racism that she will never, ever tire of recounting. .

Last night’s RFK human rights ceremony had it all: an outspoken liberal host who accidentally shot and killed his co-worker, a young wife and mother, and hasn’t pleaded guilty since; our host’s wife, a talentless, stage-five, near-fame charade who still claims to be Spanish, despite being outed as a privileged white woman from Boston; the fading embers of America’s pre-eminent political dynasty, with Kerry Kennedy, the head of RFK Human Rights, a DUI defendant who complained and complained after she was acquitted that she was treated differently, meaning , arrested, charged and tried, because she was a Kennedy .

And, of course, our special guests and honorees: Harry and Meghan, making a rare joint appearance just before their bilious, rage-filled Netflix docu-series begins airing, which seems to have an elastic relationship with the events.

What a night! What a gathering of the best and brightest! What could Harry and Meghan, this happy and brilliant couple, so dedicated to lofty goals like human rights, racial justice, and public tantrums mixed with an ever-present soup of blackmail, have to teach us?

Even Alec Baldwin, our aforementioned host, couldn’t believe that Harry and Meghan, normally so busy saving the world, would turn up.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said on the red carpet. ‘Honestly, I couldn’t believe it.’

Well Alec, that makes millions of us. Indeed, wouldn’t a decent person, knowing that he has done anything remotely approaching the bravery of honoree Volodymyr Zelensky, politely decline such an honor? Or at least accept in absentia?

Not our Harry and Meghan. Sure, Harry has told us that he suffers from PTSD (his Apple TV+ documentary), that ‘every time I hear a [camera] click, every time I see a flash, it takes me straight to the death of her mother, but here they were on the blue carpet at the gala last night, smiling for the cameras, Meghan turning towards the lens like a blooming flower turning towards the expensive. Sun.

Meghan Markle is never more in her element than in front of the camera. But please, evil global media, stop harassing Meghan and her poor, traumatized husband. Just let them get on with their low-key work as content providers at Netflix, Spotify, and Penguin Random House.

And won’t anyone please think of their children, especially the daughter they named after the late Queen, head of that insidiously racist family who didn’t care one iota that a pregnant Meghan was suicidal?

Let them also continue to preach about the environment, even as they flew privately to New York for this ceremony and were driven around in a luxurious, gas-guzzling SUV. Let’s listen closely as they teach compassion and kindness while tearing apart their respective families of origin. Let’s not wonder if Harry is motivated by money, even when we learned that King Charles reportedly told his dying mother that he would no longer take Harry’s calls because “I’m not a bank.”

Let’s not pay attention to the drumbeat of claims that Meghan is a bully for work. Let’s ignore the high-level staff who continue to flee Harry and Meghan’s employment. And let’s certainly forget his mission statement when signing with Netflix.

“Our focus will be on creating content that informs but also gives hope,” they said. As parents, they said that ‘creating inspiring family programming is important to us too.’

That’s one way of saying it.

Anyway, back to Alec, who struggled to answer the following question: What did he find admirable in Harry and Meghan?

You’d think this would be a piece of cake. After all, H&M were the guests of honor, seats at their table costing $250,000 each, sitting onstage in dialogue with DUI defendant Kerry. Surely Alec could name one concrete example from the real world of Harry and Meghan’s work in promoting human rights.

Spoiler alert: he couldn’t.

After momentarily understanding, Baldwin cited their “ability to handle difficult circumstances in the press,” circumstances of their own making, but why get bogged down in details? — ‘without having too much difficulty.’

Desperate, he turned to his fake Spanish wife for help.

“Keep going and that’s inspiring,” Hilaria said. ‘You have to know who you are’, you couldn’t make it up, ‘and move towards it’.

Now let’s pause and give thanks to the real heroes of the night, those frontline workers on the gala carpet, H&M’s beloved and hated media group, asking the tough questions. What:

‘Are you putting money before family, Harry?’

What a rhetorical question. Of course it is! Also Meghan aka Woko Ono!

But as an indication of media skepticism, this is telling. Oprah is nowhere to be found. Whoopi Goldberg criticized Markle on air, and her ‘View’ co-host Ana Navarro burst into the Netflix trailer and said she was ‘sick of seeing’ those two moaning and crying.

Former assistant to Margaret Thatcher, Nile Gardiner: “If an Academy Award were given for arrogance, vanity and narcissism, Meghan and Harry would be the top contenders.”

Only Gayle King, looking more pathetic by far, a water bearer for these two spiteful, juvenile brats, has defended the trailer, saying we should all watch the series before judging.

Too late for that. The first trailer has over seven million views and generated over 400,000 dislikes versus just 22,000 likes.

Both Netflix trailers—a second released Monday, the day before RFK’s gala—have been dissected and scrutinized as if they were Zapruder’s film.

And guess what? Some of what it contains has turned out to be false, false, false.

The images of the paparazzi stalking Meghan are not real. We know that one was still taken from a Harry Potter premiere that took place years before Harry and Meghan met. Another was a media avalanche after disgraced Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Another horde was covering for British star Katie Price at a court appearance.

But hey, Harry and Meghan would never let the truth get in the way of a good story, so why would their producers care?

Speaking of: if you want something that’s closer to the truth, check out Harry and Meghan’s alternate ‘trailer’ that an as-yet-unsung hero put together.

Here we see images of Meghan pushing her way past Harry more than once, of appearing to embarrass a royal courtier during the promenade after the Queen’s death, of Meghan’s inspiring messages about bananas for sex workers (“you are loved” ), of her ability to cry on cue, ‘one tear, left eye’, and the icing on this ice cream, South Africans dancing in the streets, as Meghan claimed they did when she married a prince.

Hey, nobody said that Harry and Meghan were telling the truth. Just your truth. And while it may still get traction in its own little delusional bubble, one where the rich and famous give each other totally undeserved rewards, for the rest of us, here in the real world?

We laugh. And we can rightfully thank Harry and Meghan for one thing: this incredible comic relief, even if it’s unintentional. It is original. It is hypocrisy and deafness at its apex. It’s a lack of self-awareness that just keeps on giving. If you want to call that charity, I’ll take it.