FOR three years now, I’ve been telling somewhat skeptical American audiences that the fortunes of the Sussexes would someday would see a reversal due to the couple’s permanent victimhood act.
It seems that inflection point is now in full blossom with the latest bad news that, at significant financial loss to this once golden couple, Spotify has jettisoned Meghan Markle’s podcast, Archetypes.
It is sad that my homeland, the once proud ‘land of the free and home of the brave’ has embraced an appalling, self-hating woke mentality, where schools teach students to be ashamed of our great past.
But even here in America, the burlesque grievance circus led by Harry and his wife is finally being met with rejection.
Events like the cancelled podcast, the eye-rolling ‘catastrophic car chase’, and Harry’s court activity are especially revealing.
So many episodes have hardened our hearts to these tone-deaf, self-aggrandising hypocrites.
There were the accounts of Meghan getting her diva on, bullying palace aides.
And what about Harry diving headlong into politics, dismissing as “bonkers” our constitutional commitment to free speech?
And don’t get us started on that appalling Oprah interview, designed to harm Harry’s family, where unnamed royals were fingered for racism.
The duplicitous pair then vomited forth podcast after network teleseries, amping up their whingefest against Harry’s family and Britain’s institutions.
Things culminated in Harry’s memoir Spare in which no confidence was safe, no relationship off limits.
In February headlines warned that the couple’s popularity had sunk to an all-time low.
Harry rushed in where few would dare tread, trading even on his relationship with his late grandmother — a woman who was cherished on these shores as she was around the globe.
Americans were completely repelled by the anguish the Sussexes inflicted upon Queen Elizabeth in the frailest moments of her long life.
Harry’s ill-judged decision to seek yet a new venue last week — a British courtroom – to broadcast his grievances, was painful to watch.
None of this has won the perturbed pair any friends either east or west of the Atlantic.
On the contrary, the Sussexes’ popularity has sustained a blow that the likes of Spotify are surely not ignoring.
We Americans like winners with positive success stories.
Moreover, we champion underdogs who have beaten adversity.
Most of all we appreciate loyalty and humility.
The Sussexes could not possibly deviate further from the qualities we admire in humanity, which, at the end of the day, aren’t very different to those prized in the UK.
Harry has revealed himself to be a deeply unhappy and troubled man who blames everyone but himself for the consequences of his own poor decisions, and turns to illegal substances to escape.
It is no accident that, gracious, dignified, and focused on others, William and Kate are far more popular here.
Just a few years ago, the Sussexes were flying high, with multimillion dollar contracts.
Now they are the butt of jokes from South Park to comedian Chris Rock.
We look to be in full bloom of a reversal of fortunes for the pair, once media darlings in the US, who are now figures of ridicule.
Could this be the beginning of the end of Harry’s Hollywood dreams?
- Lee Cohen is senior fellow of the Bow Group and a former adviser on Great Britain to the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee