“You have to realize that you can really only tell your story once,” Bragman said.
There is also the question of timing. Harry’s book is being published shortly after the death of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth. Whatever you think of the monarchy, Elizabeth’s funeral gave the royal family the chance to showcase qualities like discretion, fortitude, an adherence to duty and tradition, and an aptitude for remaining publicly stoic in the face of private grief.
But Harry embodies the opposite of all that. With his revelations about private family conversations, his accounts of his anguish and unhappiness at the behavior of his father, stepmother and brother, especially in the wake of his mother’s death, and his eagerness to divulge un-regal details about topics like Meghan and Kate’s high-drama altercation over the bridesmaids’ dresses at his and Meghan’s wedding, he presents a stark contrast to William and, especially, to Kate, who in public have said exactly nothing about any of this.
“It feels a little reality-television-y to me,” Bragman said of the Harry-and-Meghan media offensive. The couple, he added, “feel a little Trumpian, in that they seem like they can’t let a grudge go.”
Alas, even one of the queens of reality television, the former “Real Housewives of New York City” star Bethenny Frankel, believes that Harry and Meghan have finally said too much.
“Is it too late to change the name of Harry’s book to ‘Dirty Harry Laundry?’” Frankel said in a video on Instagram, filming herself as she lay in bed. She decried the level of detail in the book. “How much more? Are we going with Meghan to get a Pap smear? I mean, what’s next?” (“Okay, but how is this any different than the reality shows that you did?” a commenter named wendyjo79 responded, which seemed like a fair point.)
Many people have defended Meghan and Harry on social media and elsewhere in the last few days. But for every person who sticks up for the couple, there is someone else who says that enough is enough.
“We’ve all just fallen down some wormhole where we will never be free of hearing every single detail of Prince Harry’s life and why he believes no one has ever had a worse life than his,” the former “View” co-host Meghan McCain said on Twitter. “This is never going to end. He’s never going to let us live!”
