Tuesday, Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson addressed the ongoing saga involving Meghan Markle and the British Royals, arguing that Markle’s claim of victimhood demonstrated a larger trend among international elites.
According to Carlson, Markle, former first lady Michelle Obama and others play the victim to add “meaning” to their lives.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: We’ll be honest, we didn’t plan to talk about the British Royal Family tonight. Yes, that interview with Oprah is everywhere in the news today, the other channels are going wall to wall with it. They are natural fangirls with no self-respect. So of course, they love the Royals.
But we’re Americans, and the idea of bringing you the details of some dispute within a decayed monarchy, well, it is a little too much like European History class, who cares?
It’s not like Prince, whatever his name is, and his angry wife from Los Angeles are compelling. You know exactly who they are. He’s weak and unhappy. She’s a manipulative opportunist.
So who do you root for in this? How about nobody? So we’re going to take a hard pass on the whole thing. And then we saw this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MEGHAN MARKLE, DUCHESS OF SUSSEX: A few days before the wedding, she was upset about something pertaining to — yes, the issue was correct, about flower girl dresses and it made me cry and it really hurt my feelings.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So that was the Princess or Duchess or whatever she is. OK, we’re hearing for the control room that she is, in fact, a Duchess not a Princess, not that we know the difference.
In any case, here’s this Royal person, one of the most famous and fawned over people in the world, telling Oprah that she was incredibly wounded because she got into some kind of petty argument about dresses with her sister-in-law at her wedding three years ago. So, stop the presses.
She and her sister-in-law had a tiff about clothes. That’s never happened before.
She thinks this is important enough to bring up in a television interview. It was her 9/11, so of course, she considers it newsworthy.
OK, so she is a narcissist, guessed that.
But that’s not the whole story. What she is really saying is that despite her enormous wealth and fame, despite the fact she never has to cook her own dinner, or drive her own car ever again, as long as she lives, despite the fact that every time she heads to the gym, that journey is treated like the moon landing by an army of awestruck reporters, despite the fact that she’s literally a Princess, sorry, Duchess, she is and this is the headline here: she is actually an oppressed victim.
She may look powerful, but she is powerless. Watch her explain this to Oprah.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARKLE: That’s the sad irony of the last four years as I’ve advocated for so long for women to use their voice, and then I was silent.
OPRAH WINFREY, TALK SHOW HOST: Were you silent? Or were you silenced?
MARKLE: The latter. I came to understand that not only was I not being protected, but that they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family, but they weren’t willing to tell the truth to protect me and my husband.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: I had bodyguards, but I was not protected. I was silenced, says the lady doing a TV interview with Oprah Winfrey. When I speak, only a hundred million people here and around the world, though, to be fair, that number rises considerably once you count DVR and internet views, but the point remains, I have been silenced. I am a victim.
Now a rational person might consider this claim absurd, but amazingly, no one else seems to think it is. Oprah clearly doesn’t think it’s absurd. She’s deeply empathetic.
Oprah is worth more than a billion dollars, but she knows the pain because she sees herself as a victim, too. She often says so.
Now, you’re not allowed to make fun of this. You’re definitely not allowed to mock the oppressed Duchess.
Our friend Piers Morgan did just that on television in the U.K. and had to resign from his job.
Rich people are oppressed. Period. And if you claim otherwise they will use their total powerlessness to get you fired.
It’s not just Duchesses, by the way. Here’s a member of America’s own Royal Family calling in from her castle on Martha’s Vineyard to tell us how incredibly difficult her life is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHELLE OBAMA, FORMER FIRST LADY OF THE UNITED STATES: Now, I understand that my message won’t be heard by some people. We live in a nation that is deeply divided and I am a black woman speaking at the Democratic Convention.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Yes, no one is going to hear you. You were just talking at a primetime speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention, when, oh, when will your voice be heard, Michelle Obama? When will you get the credit? You are so sorely due for all of your remarkable achievements.
Unfortunately, America is not quite ready for you yet. And honestly, that’s our fault. We’re a backward country. We apologize.
One person we should definitely apologize to more often is Hillary Clinton. Four years ago, in a weak moment that we’re now ashamed of, we stole something from Hillary Clinton, something that was hers, something that she owned and we took it. It was the presidency of the United States. That office belonged to Hillary Clinton, and we knew it at the time, it had a little dry cleaning tag on the back with her initials on it.
But we stole it anyway. We, and the Russians and the FBI Director and Facebook and the Macedonians and the Democratic Party itself. We’re all guilty here as Hillary has repeatedly explained.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The Russians — I’d say WikiLeaks, same thing — dumped the John Podesta e-mails.
I have my complaints about former Director Comey.
The use of my e-mail account was turned into, you know, the biggest scandal since Lord knows when.
They covered it like it was Pearl Harbor.
If you look at Facebook, the vast majority of the news — news items posted were fake. There’s all these stories about, you know, guys over in Macedonia who are running these fake news sites. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So they give you a Senate seat because your husband was the President. Then they listened to you in rapt attention, despite the fact you’ve never uttered a single word that wasn’t banal and predictable. By most standards, you would be considered a fairly accomplished overachiever.
How many of your classmates in high school thought you would get this far? Probably not too many.
But because we didn’t hand you the keys to the most powerful country in the world, you believe you’ve been deeply wronged. You’re a victim and you’re mad about it.
You see this attitude everywhere, all of a sudden. The most powerful people claiming to be powerless.
Taylor Lorenz, for example, writes for The New York Times. She is at the very top of journalism’s repulsive little food chain.
Lorenz is far younger than prominent New York Times reporters used to be. She is also much less talented. You’d think Taylor Lorenz would be grateful for the remarkable good luck that she’s had. But no, she’s not.
Just this morning, she tweeted this, quote: “For International Women’s Day, please consider supporting women enduring online harassment. It is not an exaggeration to say that the harassment and smear campaign I’ve had to endure over the past year has destroyed my life.”
Destroyed her life? Really? By most people’s standards, Taylor Lorenz would seem to have a pretty good life, one of the best lives in the country, in fact.
Lots of people are suffering right now, but no one is suffering quite as much as Taylor Lorenz is suffering. People have criticized her opinions on the internet, and it destroyed her life. Let’s pause on this International Women’s Day and recognize that.
You thought female Uighurs had it bad, you haven’t talked to Taylor Lorenz.
So, what’s going on here? Well, a lot of things are happening probably for rich people. Deciding that you’re a victim has many levels of appeal. For one thing, it gives meaning to your decadent, empty life.
There are only so many expensive vacations you can take to St. Barts; only so many overpriced clothes you can buy, only so many dumb parties you can go to in Aspen before you begin to realize that none of it is really enough. None of it really means anything. It is empty.
Victimhood solves that problem. When you’re a victim, you are inherently significant. Martyrdom means you are forever the hero of the story. So you can see why narcissists love it, and there are an awful lot of those right now.
But there is another darker effect of this, an effect that has changed our country.
When powerful people decide that they are oppressed, the balance of power changes. If you’re very rich, you might imagine that you owe something to the people below you; noblesse oblige, they used to call it back when we had a responsible ruling class that thought about other people.
Previous generations of rich people understood this very well, and they taught their children this: to whom much is given, much is expected. That was the deal for centuries.
But victimhood, self-identified victimhood instantly nullifies this deal, and it restores power to the powerful. No one expects anything from a victim. Victims don’t give, victims receive.
That poor Duchess, you think to yourself, I hope she’s OK. When, of course, she should be thinking that very thing about you, but she’s not.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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