2019 began with the news media in full flow of rumours about rift between the Duchesses Cambridge and Sussex. Rob Fatso, the royal editor of the London Evening Standard had began an unsubstantiated story after the Australia Royal Tour about the Duchess of Sussex causing a row over the choice of tiara for her wedding back in May 2018. No matter what the story was made up by a staff at Kensington Palace and was an attempt by Rob Fatso to boost flagging sales of a Prince Charles book he had written, the story gained worldwide attention. That began the open onslaught on the Duchess.
Within a week or two of Rob Fatso’s article, Camilla hound dog face Tominey wrote a story about the Duchess of Sussex making the Duchess of Cambridge cry during the measuring up of her daughter’s flower girl dress. She referenced a Palace source as evidence of the truth of her story. Rob Fatso also wrote again that the Duchess of Sussex had requested an air freshener to be sprayed through the Windsor Castle church, where the Royal Wedding was held. The reason she was reported to have given, the church smelled of damp and old. That story was a lie and Rob Fatso knew it.
The Duchess was also labeled as very difficult to work with. An assistant she inherited, when she joined then Prince Harry at Kensington Palace, was suddenly reported to have quit. Other staff members were reported to be unhappy as the Duchess sent e-mails and texts at 5.30 am to them. A Metropolitan Police Royal detail was withdrawn, which turned out to be a personal reason, nothing to do with the Duchess. Then there was Samantha Cohen their temporary Personal Secretary, who had retired as Assistant Personal Secretary to the Queen and agreed to work with the Sussexes for six months. Contrary to demeaning reports that she had been asked to train Ms. Markle then in royal duties, she was there to work with the couple. Far from working with a difficult Duchess, Mrs. Cohen worked with the couple until last month. Six months turned into eighteen months. The Duchess’s own beloved assistant had decided before the wedding for personal reasons to quit after her child was born. She helped settle her and Master Archie at Frogmore Cottage and left. There was no animosity, just a young woman, who wanted a change. Since then, she was seen at the launch of the Smart Works capsule collection by the Duchess. She told a reporter, she was there to support the Duchess.
The facts are the stories were fabrications but were the beginnings of the difficult months the Duchess referred to in her and the Duke’s documentary. The story about Duchess of Cambridge crying could have been quickly blown out of the water, if she, through Kensington Palace, had denied it. As long as it formed part of a nasty narrative being stitched up by the news media against someone who was raining on her parade, that was okay. Neither did the Sussexes force denials through their shared media handlers at Kensington Palace, which was wrong in my opinion.
In the midst of a media out to harm the Duchess of Sussex, she went to her privately organised Baby Shower in New York. She was in New York for at least three days before a paparazzi spotted all those presents, including flowers and suitcases being sent into the hotel. That eagle-eyed paparazzi staked out and caught sight of blackened SUV vehicles stop in front of the hotel and out sprung secret service personnel. Within minutes the Duchess was out, flanked by those men and women. The paparazzi had won a lottery. He posted what he was seeing on an agency website and soon the whole American Television networks had set up camp in front of the hotel. She had been in the US for four days and all had been quiet.
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Not much was reported that the Duchess gave out the flowers and the food prepared by a top-flight gourmet chef to charities in New York. Of course, the British tabloid and conservative journalists were frothing at the mouth with synthetic anger about the event, even though it was paid for by her friends. The Daily Gutter and Gutter on Sunday went further and sent a lying twerp to New York to dig up dirt on the event. What he wrote about the cost of the Baby Shower, was quoted extensively by the news media across the globe. The only thing was that he lied terribly about the total cost, which the Duchess has disputed in her Court case against that rotten cowardly newspaper group.
The Sussexes went to Bristol in South West of England on a royal engagement in snowy winter very early in the year. They went to a charity that helps “ladies of the street” to overcome personal problems that draw them to the street and out of the game. The visit was not pre-announced out of fear or respect for the couple. However, the news media followed them to the charity. They had followed them everywhere around Bristol, so they could not be kept away. The Duchess on impulse decided to write Inspirational words on each of the bananas being packed as food parcels to those women.
There was no harm in that at all, but the same usual Duchess Sussex bashers got on their high horses to heap condemnation on her. The true mark of journalism is to do a follow up on a story to, either ‘kill’ it or give it legs and ran with it. In this case, those condemning the Duchess chose to stay in the comfort of their London offices and did nothing. If they had done a follow-up story or spoken to that charity, they would have found out that, what the Duchess did, generated so much interest and donations from Canada through the Middle East, of all places, to Australia. They would not want to give any credit to the Duchess, so would not report the terrific results.
Meanwhile, so-called serious conservative journalists were seriously complaining about how the Duchess cradled her burgeoning baby bump in public. They would not keep that among their friends and families but chose to write and say so in TV studios and opinion pieces in right-wing newspapers. At the same time, they were quoting crazy stupid twitter and Instagram trollers, who claimed the Duchess was using a false pregnancy device to pretend she was pregnant. For a responsible newspaper like the Daily Telegraph to join the Daily and Sunday Gutter, the Sun, the Daily and Sunday Express and the Daily and Sunday Mirror to propagate that narrative was very hurtful and awful. Their editors should hang their collective heads in shame. The Duchess could be a daughter, a sister to some of them, but treated her with disdain.
At the same time, the tabloids were using the Duchess’s notorious dad and her demented half-siblings to torment her in interviews in their diabolical papers. They paid thousands of US dollars to those dastardly people just to humiliate the Duchess. Even though, word got around that the half-siblings had been out of her life for close to twenty years, that did not matter. The father was in a totally different ballgame. He was lying and colluding with people who were abusing her heavily pregnant daughter and seriously endangered her pregnancy. I have never ever in my life, seen any father behave like that in public. It was abominable and shameful and wonder how he could live with himself. He has even sided with the Gutter Group Newspapers against the Duchess in her lawsuit against them.
Can we forget the brouhaha that generated all that silly guff at last summer’s Wimbledon Tennis tournaments? The whole “don’t take pictures” of the HRH story was concocted to make the Duchess seem unfriendly and abusing her position. That woman, who was extensively quoted lied through her dentures and would be punished by her God for what she did. Her allegation allowed some idiots at the Gutter Group and the Daily Telegraph to insult the Duchess, with some asking her to go back to the US and take her son with her. These were the same people, who wrote silly racist articles back in 2016 and who were up in bitchy arms wanting the couple to show their son in front of a hospital the very day he was born and wanted to have ringside seats at the christening of Master Archie. Of course, they knew royal christening are always conducted privately, but they were forcing a special invitation from a couple they had done so much to destroy.
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Some people in the news media still raise the so-called four private jet flights the Sussex were supposed to have made at the height of summer. Of course, there is evidence of the flight to Elton John’s South of France home. He invited them and paid to offset their carbon footprint. There is no evidence whatsoever they went to Spain by private jet or at all. The Daily and Gutter on Sunday Group pays handsomely for stories and pictures of the famous. Pictures of the Sussexes would have fetched serious payout. A greedy airport personnel would have quietly taken pictures with their mobile phones to make serious money if they flew to Spain. There is no law against that, so why not. However, there has been the absolute zilch picture of that flight to Spain since summer. Yet even now, the question of the private jet flights comes up in media conversations about the royal couple. They know the flight to Spain was an egregious lie, but as part of their determination to tarnish the Sussexes, they would not admit to a lie and move on.
We have all read how the guest editing of the eponymous September issue of the British Vogue happened and the disgraceful abuse heaped on the Duchess by the usual suspects. Why she could be abused for something other members of the Royal Family had done before her, was beyond the pale. That demonstrated in no uncertain terms that the criticisms were racially tinged and disrespectful. The Duchess is, after all, a much better journo than her critics. Camilla hound dog face Tominey even dared to go on television to suggest that, if the Duchess wanted to use her time to highlight charities, why could she not walk into a local charity shop to offer help. The utter lack of respect this ugly woman has for the Duchess is surprising and uncalled for. It is not that she is a terrific journalist, just an average one, who has had someone at Kensington Palace feed her with stories.
Whilst heavily pregnant she worked tirelessly on the Smart Works charity capsule collection. She launched that successfully in September. With her help, the charity is now known worldwide and is flourishing. Has she been praised to high heavens by the media? No, but a grudging acknowledgment of her power to achieve. The Daily Telegraph has a girly magazine, which is supposed to support Smart Works charity but has that newspaper ever supported her, hell no. Not when they had employed Camilla hound dog face Tominey as a Deputy Editor from the tabloid Sunday Express, for her so-called claims of exclusive royal stories, especially on the Duchess of Sussex.
The Duchess has basically done nothing wrong to warrant all those abuses that were heaped on her during 2019. She spent part of the year out of the limelight because Master Archie wanted to meet Archbishop Tutu as a five months old tot. The South African Royal Tour was very successful despite what the news media tried to portray it, because of the attack the Duke launched on some of them and the litigation in the Court of law by the Duchess.
The news media have done their best to misinterpret what the Duchess said in the Africa Tour documentary. The interpretation they put on what a lot of people listened to at the same time, was that she was finding it difficult being part of the Royal Family and scrutinized in public. But that was not her complaint at all. Her beef was that she found it very unhealthy to keep the British stiff upper lip appearance, where even if one is suffering abuse, one kept quiet and said or did nothing.
She could not understand why the newspapers got away with lies and nothing was done about it, even when they know they are lying. She said she knew it would be difficult, but at least as human beings, these journos would play fair. As they are just carbuncles on the backsides of asses, that sense of fair play is out of the window. As for scrutiny, one is scrutinized if one is up to no good. What has the Duchess done to be scrutinized? She did not obtain a loan from Jeffrey Epstein nor has she had her toes sucked by a financier or accused of anything. So why would she object to being in the public limelight? After all, she had a taste of that, when she was an actor and from what I have seen of her on royal engagements, nothing scares the living daylight out of her at all.
Meanwhile, over a week ago, the Duchess was acclaimed to be the most searched for members of the Royal Family, despite the concerted efforts by Kensington Palace and their acolytes in the tabloids to destroy her credibility. She was followed by Duchess K Do-little and Master Archie, who beat his father to fourth place. In fifth place was the combination of the Sussexes. The Duke of Cambridge was eleventh and followed by his children.
The Duchess of Sussex’s overriding agenda is to find a way to totally ignore the newspapers and their online sites. She could also ignore television news broadcaster like Sky News. The Duke, on the other hand, reads the newspapers and is a worrier. He could have got his wife to look at what the idiots write and say about them. They should resolutely ignore them and get on with what really matters to them.
The other thing that worries the hell out of me, is the ineffectual way their media team handles media relations. They cannot win in the old way the Monarch’s press team handled the newspapers. The Monarch would always be respected, so her press team can ignore unfavourable stories about her family and she would be left out of it intact.
The world has changed for the worst. The Sussexes media team seems not cut out for the brutal British tabloids and the conservative media manipulation. I hate to say this bit, but they could learn from the Cambridges media team. There, any horrid news item about the couple is quickly jumped on and nipped in the bud. They do not allow a particular bad news item to fester and gain legs.
The Sussex Team has had eight months to get the hang of it to formulate a better and formidable way to defend and project the work of the couple. So far, I am feeling a wee bit disappointed with what they are doing. There has to be a change of emphasis for 2020.
Having got that off my chest, I wish you all, A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A JOLLY PROSPEROUS, HEALTHY 2020. MAY YOU ACHIEVE ALL YOU PRAY FOR!
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