Analysis: Oprah with Meghan and Harry

I'm passionate about trying to come to as accurate an understanding of the world as possible. Power dynamics and hierarchies fascinate me.

So when I found out Oprah was hosting a special interview with her royal Montecito neighbors Meghan and Harry, I immediately turned it on. Spilling the tea helped draw me in too, however inauthentic it might be.

But what I was really watching for was what might be unintentionally communicated. In a performative act like this one, you are going to get some goodies and we got one right off the bat in the introduction.

Oprah: "So we can’t hug because we are practicing doing..."

Meghan: “All the things.”

Oprah: "All the things. We’ve been so strict. (As Oprah sits without a mask on a Montecito estate). Literally everybody around here is double masked and has face shields, BUT YOU LOOK LOVELY"

With Meghan's help Oprah went on to assure the viewer that "there has not been an agreement, you don't know what I'm going to ask."

This point is of course moot. Both are professional celebrities hyper aware of image and narrative. That is why these two neighbors are sitting down to have the conversation in the first place. And it's at least part of why Oprah is producing a mental health series with Meghan's husband Harry.

Meghan herself summarizes this very poignantly at the end of the interview. “Life is about storytelling right. About the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we’re told, what we buy into.”

Unfortunately for Meghan and Harry, the story they tell is one that many don't buy into.

Take this exchange, for example.

Meghan: “I think the easiest way that people can now understand it is what we’ve all gone through in lockdown.”

Oprah: “Yeah, well everybody can certainly relate now.”

This attempt to connect to the experience of commoners during the Covid-19 lockdowns is comical, especially as Oprah and Meghan immediately proceed to discuss how Meghan's communications team handled press.

When I worked at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey I helped plan then Vice President Biden's visit. For weeks we went over every minute detail from where he would stand to what he would say and why. Though you may not see it onscreen, the lives of Oprah and Meghan are not far from this extreme level of calculation.

The broadcast on CBS was titled, Oprah with Meghan and Harry: A CBS Primetime Special. Though Oprah did first introduce them as "Harry and Meghan," it was by no accident that Meghan's name came first. These are the types of decisions support staff like myself labored over for Joe Biden, so that, in concert with other efforts, a very particular narrative was advanced.

Now, let me qualify all this by saying, Oprah is an unbelievable communicator and Meghan is a very beautiful and impressive woman. But these strengths can't mask the hollowness of a billionaire celebrity and two members of the Royal family forwarding their narrative of victimhood from a $20 million Montecito estate during a global pandemic. They even had shots of Meghan and Harry in the chicken coop (for those of you who've been around the ultra-rich you'll know what I mean).

In regards to the narrative Oprah, Meghan and Harry want me to talk about, the Royal family sounds terrible. Super messed up no doubt. And it is insidious that the palace hosts holiday parties for tabloids that run such divisive headlines against Meghan.

But at the end of the day, when I watched Meghan and Oprah my compassion looked past the camera, behind it, to the cameramen, double-masked and wearing face-shields, as Oprah put it.

Extra Note on Celebrity, Mental Health and Narcissism

When Meghan revealed her mental health struggles and that at one point she did not wish to continue living, I was reminded of an interview Joe Rogan did with Miley Cyrus. In that interview Miley, like Meghan, was extremely dynamic, interesting and attractive, but the conversation started to unravel when the subject became her own mental health struggles.

It seems a divas superpower to drive narrative, interest and attention often comes with kryptonite. When mental health challenges hit, the benefits of narcissism can become a self-indulgent vortex. Like them, their mental health becomes celebrity.

I know that is a very mean thing to say, but it is what I think. Of course I am glad both Miley and Meghan are in a better mental place now.