In his fireside online chat on Saturday, Prince Harry said he regards his book as “an act of service.” However, to access said chat, I had to spend $37.15 on a ticket and a copy of ‘Spare’, whether I wanted the book or not.
How greedy and cynical can you get? The book is already a gonzo bestseller. Most likely, anyone who has joined this chat already has their copy. But Harry has to make more money and guarantee more time on the bestseller list, shame on him.
This set the tone for the discussion to follow: myopically narcissistic, intellectually bland and, above all, hypocritical. This is the true mark of Harry, not as a mental health or humanitarian leader or as a warrior against institutional racism in the royal family – oops, he took it back a few weeks ago after getting an honor from Kennedy – but as a Grade A hypocrite.
Harry claimed to have been in the mental health field for two decades, but his actual experience with therapy seems sporadic: His regular schedule, he said, was once every two weeks, then once every few months.
That is hardly in-depth therapy, and hardly makes you an expert. But this is the post-real identity of Harry, a for-profit mental health expert who talks Oprah-ese while endlessly skinning her blood relatives.
Can you be a victim and at the same time be a hero? Can you be a model of kindness and virtue while insulting your family and revealing their private pain? Can you reveal your secrets and demand privacy for you and your wife?
Prince Harry, master of convincing thinking.
Dr. Gabor Maté, who led this talk, will surely do a good part of himself. He noted that he was not overly impressed with all things real and dismissed much of Harry’s memoir as “real melodrama” that held no interest for him.
Together with Dr. Gabor Maté, the ‘trauma expert’ and supporter of both Hamas and hallucinogenic drugs, it all felt like a session on the adult subscription site OnlyFans.
Please. Even Harry’s harshest critics, myself among them, have to admit: his real life and his recent apostasy are the most interesting thing about him. It seems that Maté has mastered the H&M tactic of denigrating others to elevate oneself.
There was a lot of talk about ‘unpacking’ here – unpacking one’s emotions, life experiences, boxes and luggage when one has been evicted from their country home (just kidding). Living authentically was another big theme, as was a sort of Mad-Libs philosophy: ‘strength in vulnerability’ and ‘vulnerability in strength’ or some gibberish of that sort.
I’ll give Harry this: He gave us an authentic, irritated moment when Dr. Maté went off script, diagnosing Harry with multiple disorders. Fortunately, the good doctor had written them all down and produced a list.
Harry was angry, rightly so. This was a total violation of psychiatric ethics, diagnosing a stranger, a public figure, according to his book. Harry’s anger, barely masked by politeness—that royal training has its advantages, it seems—was satisfying.
‘I can see this long list of how you’ve diagnosed me,’ said Harry. ‘Free session. Marvelous.’
Oh, it was elegantly bitchy. Just perfect deadpan delivery.
With that being said, what did Harry expect? This is the natural byproduct of commodifying your innermost thoughts and feelings, of making your wounded inner child and family anger the #1 topic on every platform available: broadcast, published, public speaking, TV interviews and , yes, money online to sell more. books.
Anyway, back to Depressed Harry, Sloppy Harry, Emotional Derelict Harry. “When I read his book,” Maté said, “it’s a story of deprivation.”
Ha! Yes, ‘Waagh’, as it will always be known, is the story of a prince who was given everything, who was given access to a world-class education that he threw overboard, who had access to anything and whoever wanted , he was aided by the best public relations and crisis managers in the western hemisphere, but who was deprived of so much that he had to run for his safety and privacy.
Isn’t that what these public tantrums are about? Security and privacy?
Going back to other hackneyed topics: Charles wasn’t much of a hugger.
‘The father,’ continued Maté, ‘who clearly loves his children, can’t help but be emotionally distant. . .’
‘We only know what we know,’ said Harry. A tautology for the ages. “We do the best we can as parents.”
In his fireside online chat on Saturday, Prince Harry said he regards his book as “an act of service.” However, to access said chat, I had to spend $37.15 on a ticket and a copy of ‘Spare’, whether I wanted the book or not.
Of the memories we were forced to buy: “I want this to be an act of service,” said Harry. ‘Needs to be . . . How can you save a life?
‘Waaagh’: saving lives, one smug complaint at a time.
Mater didn’t go into the cruelest parts of Harry’s book: the mockery of the disabled schoolteacher. The boast of the ‘killings’ of him in Afghanistan. The utter lack of gratitude for a life of privilege few have known throughout history.
Instead, Maté offered this bit of advice: “None of us is a victim if we choose not to be.”
Excuse me? Does Maté know who he’s talking to?
Harry topped that hilarity with his thoughts on therapy. “I always encourage people,” he said, “not to wait until they’re in a fetal position on the kitchen floor.”
Like his wife? Harry wrote that after Meghan got into a texting fight with Kate over the bridesmaids’ dresses, he came home to find his wife “sobbing on the floor.”
On Meghan: “People have said that my wife saved me,” Harry said. She is an extraordinary human being. He talked about a time he lost his temper while they were dating, and Meghan asked him if ‘this is how she grew up’: men would talk to women that way, thinking it was acceptable.
It was, said Harry, ‘a lightening moment’.
Well, Harry has given King Charles and Prince William another lightening moment of his own: Now he’s okay with hinting that the men in his family verbally abuse their wives.
Surely that coronation invitation is in the mail.