You cannot go far these days in Europe, indeed throughout the West, without being harangued by some celebrity about climate change or social justice. Their chosen mediums are the print media and the air waves. All rather ironic as when they are not banging on about modish concerns, they like nothing more than to complain about press intrusion and demand more European, indeed global, regulation.
Prince Harry — son of King Charles III, grandson of Queen Elizabeth II, nowadays a California resident with a wife and two children — is a well-meaning, if rather dim, young(ish) man. In the past couple of years, he’s been on a self-appointed mission. Harry unfortunately has the deep pockets and the global fame to pursue his quest to “reform” the press. His contempt of the media is limitless (“their blood-smeared typing fingers”, he said in his latest court testimony).
Harry and his wife Meghan have launched seven separate court cases against British newspapers, for alleged infractions ranging from breach of copyright to invasion of privacy. He believes his phone was illegally hacked by some media organisations over a period of almost two decades.
So far, so understandable: the Prince’s worldwide fame started with a tragedy, the death in a car crash 26 years ago of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, pursued by paparazzi in Paris. He was 12 when he had to endure his mother’s funeral in front of the world media.
While three separate investigations (one in France, two in Great Britain) ruled that the crash was accidental (the driver was drunk, the Princess had neglected to buckle her seatbelt), Diana’s sons believe with some cause that the chase ultimately caused her death.
From there to calling the First Amendment of his new host country’s Constitution “bonkers”, however, is a gap the size of the Grand Canyon. Toddler-like, Harry confuses his personal feelings with objective truth. He vows he will “change the landscape of journalism” — he prefers bland releases by publicity people.
Appearing in court in London last week, the first time for a member of the British Royal family in 130 years, he insisted that he’d been a victim of skulduggery, even when pushed by the lawyer for the Mirror Group, the news corporation he accuses, to admit that he had no proof at all — and in one case the news he complained about had been revealed by himself in a previous interview.
Harry may have given up on his royal role, but he has only traded one type of courtier for another: Hollywood is not a place given to speaking truth to “the talent”. Flatterers only let up when you’re broke, and so far Netflix and book deals have flown the way of the ex-royal couple. Even the prestigious Aspen Institute, the think tank where former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky praised Ronald Reagan’s steadfastness in fighting the USSR, invited Harry to join their “Commission on Information Disorder”. The final report, which recommends regulation of both the press and social media, contains exactly two mentions of the Prince: under his picture, and under a group picture of all the Commissioners.
As a result, Harry and Meghan, green activists who nevertheless jet everywhere, have become the latest in a generation of celebrities who want to impose “their truth” on the rest of us, usually with spectacular hypocrisy.
Take the racing driver Sebastian Vettel. Never mind that Germany’s answer to Lewis Hamilton uses up more fossil fuels in a week than most people do to heat their families for a year. (Vettel resigned from Formula One last year, but hasn’t given up on private planes.) He is very much in favor of “climate justice”, wore a helmet calling out “Canada’s Climate Crime” during last year’s Canadian Grand Prix, favours speed limits on German motorways and higher taxes — yet lives in Switzerland, enjoying a lenient tax regime he would deny his compatriots.
Or take the Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard, who’s on the record as saying we shouldn’t shower, and we should save our dirty bath water — yet has bought a 5.4 million dollar house complete with a large swimming pool in Los Feliz, a tony area of Los Angeles, between Griffith Park and Hollywood. She and her partner Guillaume Canet shuttle between Paris and Los Angeles — on planes, in the front section.
Greta Thunberg, the planet-roving Swedish eco-pixie, takes trains and boats rather than set foot on a plane. Fortunately, she is friends with Prince Pierre Casiraghi of Monaco who immediately put his “carbon-neutral” 60-foot racing yacht, Malizia II, at her disposal, to take her to a UN climate summit in New York. It emerged soon afterwards that two additional crew members would fly into New York to sail Malizia II back to Monaco, while Boris Hermann, the boat’s co-skipper, would himself fly back from New York after the voyage. TAZ, the Berlin daily, estimated that overall, Thunberg’s boat trip “would end up being more polluting than if she and her companions had just taken flights to New York themselves.”
Mélanie Laurent, another award-winning French actress, is a vocal climate activist who, according to the Golden Globes website, “uses untreated wood for her new house, has compost in her garden and sorts all her waste”. Laurent saw no contradiction in producing an art installation devoted to climate and womens-rights in a temporary air-conditioned pavilion in the desert, in a country where the ruler imprisons his daughters.
Ah, well, at least the press in Dubai woud never disrespect, or simply displease a Prince — theirs or another country’s.
