On Monday, Politico published an op-ed by Joanna Weiss called “2022 Is the Year We All Finally Got Tired of Narcissists.” From the title, you’d think the piece would be a cathartic read. We were subjected to some titanic narcissists this year, weren’t we? Donald Trump hawked trading cards depicting him as a superhero! Elon Musk carried a kitchen sink through the front door of Twitter before firing half its staff! Ye declared that he liked Hitler!
Except the article isn’t about any of that stuff. Sure, it devotes a few paragraphs to malignant narcissists like Trump, Musk, and Ye, but the main focus of the article, taking up about half of its total word count, is Weiss’s hatred of the Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan. “It struck me,” Weiss writes, “that the overreach that led to the Sussexes’ critically panned mega-series is the same impulse that turned Elon Musk into a terror on Twitter, that prompted Ye to up the ante of outrageous behavior until he crossed the line into blatant antisemitism, that sent Bankman-Fried from the top of the world to a Bahamian jail.”
But … it’s not, though. It’s not the same impulse at all. Harry and Meghan had to leave not one, but two homes after being hounded by racist attacks and death threats. The British royal family fed Meghan to the tabloids in order to draw media attention away from other family members. You can critique Harry & Meghan as a production, but its purpose—along with the Oprah interview—was to set the record straight and allow Meghan to tell her side of the story. Anyone with a modicum of common sense can plainly see that.
Weiss spoke to a political scientist who gave her a definition of “grandiose narcissists.” “They believe they’re the absolute best at what they do,” Weiss writes. “They go to great lengths to protect and defend their egos. They strive to be unique and promote themselves energetically.” Weiss then claims that “that’s the story, in a nutshell, of Harry and Meghan.”
It’s not the story of Trump, with those astonishingly infantile NFTs? Not Musk, who just yesterday compared himself to Batman? It’s Harry and Meghan who are “grandiose narcissists” for pushing back against racists? Okay.
And if you still have any seed of doubt that this is about race, consider the image that accompanied the article. Even though Weiss claims that she’s equally disgusted with Meghan and Harry, it’s Meghan’s photo that’s plastered right in the center of Weiss’s lineup of narcissists. It’s almost as unhinged as Jeremey Clarkson’s desire to see Meghan paraded through the streets naked.
Racists are frothing at the mouth at the idea of a Black princess, and it shows. If you want to see some real narcissism, look no further than white people like Joanna Weiss.
(featured image: Netflix)
