Victor
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
The Duchess of Sussex is reported to be the world’s most sought after public speaker, but why? She knows how to make everything about herself and rake in cash, but what pearls of wisdom can she possibly offer?
Meghan Markle is a disturbing new breed of leader. Not someone who has achieved anything of note, nor broken down any barriers. Neither does she have a prodigious talent.
What she does possess is a steely willingness to do anything that makes money.
PR experts have revealed that Markle is about to become the most sought after public speaker on the planet.
Her fee per event is estimated to be around $1 million.
A lot was made of Markle’s recent speech at the Girl Up Leadership Summit, as her YouTube figures were far higher than those of Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton, who also spoke.
Whatever you think of the former first ladies, it would take the devotion of a zealous fan to equate them to the Duchess of Sussex – let alone prefer her over them.
One reason people could be tuning in was the hope that she might wash some dirty laundry. Does she hate William and Kate? Is it true she made their daughter cry by manically shouting at her during a wedding rehearsal?
Why has Harry or her son never met her father, who regularly appears in the media asking to be part of their lives?
Why did she invite Oprah Winfrey, David Beckham and George Clooney to her wedding but not a single member of her family, apart from her mother?
On a trip to Africa with Harry in 2019, she told a British documentary crew that life had been “a struggle” since becoming a royal.
It was a ridiculous comment, but the lightning rod was that it was uttered while meeting people who barely have any possessions and worry about where their next meal is coming from. Quite rightly, she was pilloried for it.
Since then, things have changed as Markle has realized she can’t work the royal angle to her benefit.
They can’t make any serious money, as the Queen keeps a firm grip on the family’s commercial enterprises.
While they live in grand palaces and never do any sort of conventional work, they don’t have tens of millions to splash about on indulgent whims.
Meghan thought she had joined the global club of which Winfrey, Beckham and Clooney are all members. One with global fame, but also the wealth to live on their terms.
The royal family don’t have that; the men wear boring suits, the women have to shun lavish dresses for clothes that aren’t too expensive and they all drive ‘sensible’ cars.
There’s no decadence as quite simply, the money comes with rules. Tom Cruise, for example, is wealthier than the Queen.
So Markle – and Harry – walked out of the world’s most prestigious club to go it alone.
They cited their desire to have a normal life and privacy, and raise their son Archie away from all the ceremony.
How does that equate with standing up in front of an audience in exchange for a cheque featuring a string of zeros?
What could Meghan possibly share apart from anecdotes about life on the set of her mediocre TV show ‘Suits’?
Pompous British society magazine Tatler wrote: “The Duchess is well versed on topics such as racial justice…” but it’s hard to see how that claim can be validated.
On the other side of the coin are those paying her. Her speaking agency Harry Walker is a business, which exists to turn a profit. But it’s the corporate bosses paying the $1 million fee who should be embarrassed.
Most of them – who are men – will be bereft of any glamor. They have money, but they don’t have the X-Factor, as that can’t be bought.
Bruce Springsteen, Colin Kaepernick, Beyonce and Barack Obama, for example, all have it and don’t adjust their compass for money.
But Markle is exploiting a worrying trend in society, which used to be the domain of low-rent celebrities. She’s trying to use the formula far higher up the food chain.
She’s neither rich nor exceptional, but is leveraging her undeniably high profile to portray herself as something she isn’t, someone worth listening to.
The disappointment is that many younger and easily influenced people are falling for it, believing this to be someone who can offer guidance and wisdom.
Charlatans like her are being enabled to masquerade as individuals of distinction. It feels like we’re in a race to the bottom, where any sort of integrity or dedication is deemed worthless compared with the great god that is ‘celebrity.’
Markle is cheap, tacky and full of sparkles. However, all that glitters isn’t gold.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
This article is not by Victor. It has been simply aggregated from RT (word for word) without even any mention of the fact….just a link which does not even acknowledge the source.
This article is not by Victor, it is by Chris Sweeney. The correct name of the original author should be given on top. Otherwise this is plagiarism and theft of intellectual property, a criminal act in most countries.
RUSSIA TODAY:
How has C-list actress and A-list money-grabber Meghan Markle become the world’s most in-demand speaker?
Chris Sweeney
Chris Sweeney is an author and columnist who has written for newspapers such as The Times, Daily Express, The Sun and Daily Record, along with several international-selling magazines. Follow him
Yet again your assumptions are presumptuous, Olivia. See remarks below.
FYI, on theduran website it simply asks you for a link to an article you’d like shared. You enter the URL – then automatically everything gets generated including any excerpts.
It is the ‘bot’ that is doing this, not at all the link contributor.
Nevertheless, the author of this article is Chris Sweeney, not Victor. Chris Sweeney is a well-known author. He publishes in The Times, Daily Express, The Sun, Daily Record and in Russia Today. Putting another person’s feathers on your hat is not correct. Furthermore, it is intellectual theft and plagiarism, if under the headline the reader sees “by Victor”. Every serious reader will ask, who is this person? Normally, a writer signs his own intellectual production with his or her first and last name, not with an avatar or monniker. It does not look professional and is a clear indicator that… Read more »
All I can do is repeat myself. Once you enter a link, the bot takes over and puts the link contributor’s name at the top left of the page.
Yes, you have explained it clearly, and I have understood. Maybe the bot could be programmed differently? Alex Christoforou could do that for you. He also used to make the same mistake you are making now: signing other people’s texts with his own name. But he got so much protest and ridicule in the comment section that he changed that. Now he only signs his own texts with his own name. For all the other publications he puts in “Zerohedge” or “InfoBrics” or names of authors who have really written the text. So I know that the bot can be… Read more »
You have badly misunderstood the situation. A link contributor does not sign his name to anything. It is the bot- the web programming code internal to the website – which puts the contributor’s name in the spot where it appears.
Alex Christoforou is one of the editors of this site, and he never places his name on top if he has not personally written a text. You should ask him for advice. You are not working in a professional way; Victor. You need help and advice. With such mistakes, the value of the site goes down. People do not take the Duran seriously any more, if some totally unknown entity like “Victor” places his name under the title of a text written by author Chris Sweeney. People do not like being swindled. If you cannot change the programme of the… Read more »
And I have one more question, Victor: Why do you put “author” in the little blue box next to your name? An author is someone who is writing his own texts. But you are not writing your own texts, you are insertingother people’s texts in the Duran, which have not been written by you at all. You are not doing an author’s work, yours is secretarial work or administrative work. So you should place “secretary” or “administrator” in the little blue box next to your name. Swindling and untruthfulness do not go down well with the public.
This money-grabbing slut is a Z grade ‘actress’ and a F grade human being. Her greatest talent is swallowing a cock. Why else is this stupid ‘prince’ tied to her apron strings.
Good Heavens ! Couldn’t you tone this down a bit ? This remark is most indecorous to put it mildly.
Victor, you make me laugh. Bob Valdez has a very flowery speech. It makes this board a bit more light-hearted and funny. Please excuse my jumping in, but I like what Bob Valdez writes. The Duran is getting “holier than thou” lately, with more and more Orthodox texts and Orthodox themes and Orthodox commentators. They are a serious, zealous, even fanatic group. It weighs the Duran down, turning it into the “Orthodox Postille of Righteous Living”. Many readers do not share this faith. It turns them off. If the Duran keeps going in this direction, the site will lose plenty… Read more »
Thanks, Olivia. Please pardon my ‘French’, so to speak.
LOL! It is the censor/secretary/administrator “Victor” who got offended, not me. I like what you write. It is funny.
Victor, you should change the title in the little blue box next to your name. When you insert texts in the Duran, which were written by other people than you, your correct title is “secretary” or “administrator”. When you censor people’s comments, the correct title in the little blue box next to your name is “censor”. Please change that. Truthfulness is important, when working in the public eye. Thank you.
@ Victor, the NON-author, this IS the toned-down version, mate. I re-wrote it TWICE before posting it. I firmly believe in telling the TRUTH, so I wrote it as simply as I could. If my post is offensive to you, I apologise. However, I did notice that you have not refuted my remarks. That says a lot. 😉
Non-author, censor, secretary, administrator “Victor” seems to be challenged with his multi-task.
As Lady Chiltern said to her husband, Sir Robert Chiltern, in An Ideal Husband, ‘…you have brought into the political life of our time a nobler atmosphere, a finer attitude towards life, a freer air of purer aims and higher ideals…“. Now it is precisely the absence of such nobler atmosphere and higher ideals that the author has taken the Duchess of Sussex to task. One does not then make a worthwhile contribution to the debate by hauling in the crudest of expressions, a vulgarity and coarseness one should have expected to be coming from the gutter if not the… Read more »
It is refreshing to see that you are quoting Lady Chiltern correctly and attributing her words to her by naming her as the author, instead of stealing her words, which are her intellectual property, by plagiarising them as non-author/administrator/censor/secretary “victor”.
But you still have not replaced the pretentious title of “author” in the blue little box beside the name of “victor”. As we readers here all know, the entity “victor” is a non-author, administrator, censor and secretary of the Duran.
I’ll tell it as I see it AND I will use language appropriate to accurately describe “it”. I have zero use for the ‘touchy-feely, rainbow lefty, politically correct’ bullshit.
I am so glad, Bob, that you write this! There is a whole “holier than thou” group of non-authors at work in the Duran, lately. I do not know where they have sprung from..A whole bunch of new Saints, beginning with the Archangel “Seraphim”, followed by “victor”, and seconded by a very pious, yet aggressive commentator who names himself “Theodros”. He could be a Greek Orthodox Saint, maybe. They have changed the tone and style of the Duran to the worse. This used to be an intellectual site, when Alexander Mercouris still placed his texts here. Now it is a… Read more »
You are of course wrong. So many people are wrong nowadays even as they imagine they are right. However there is a refreshing breeze just at present, and moon hangs in the cool evening sky like a silver bow. At such a moment the affairs of man seem trivial just as the wonders of the world seem sublime.
Author Eric Zuesse writes in one of his brilliant, excellent articles: “A dictatorship functions by news-suppression and other forms of censorship, even more than it does by its own lying. It functions by deceit, but the main way it deceives is by prohibiting the truth to be published …”
Now, this is a quotation that non-author/administrator/censor/secretary “Victor” could learn by heart and apply in his further dealings with the Duran.
But it is not to the gadfly but the harpy that one objects.
No, victor, neither gadfly nor harpy … As a reader, one only objects to non-authors/administrators/censors/secretaries, who live with false pretentions, stealing other people’s texts and placing their own name as wannabe “author” on them. I need to repeat a zillion times: an “author” does not plagiarize or steal intellectual property. An “author” creates and writes his own texts. Please excuse me for comparing you to a stubborn mule, victor. You seem to have a hard time grasping the simplest of facts.
Olivia you bring to mind Wildes famous epigram that people are not divisible into the good or the bad, but the charming and the tedious 😉
Oscar Wilde was such a charming and satirical author. I love him a lot. And one of his best features: he was a real “author”, he wrote his own marvellous texts, which belong to world culture today – in contrast to tedious non-author “victor”, whose main feat is stealing real author’s texts by plagiarizing them and spamming the comment board with his superfluous and boring stuff. And the worst: non-author “victor” has the chuzpe to place a false title in his little blue box, too.
Chutzpe or Chutzpah is the quality of audacity, for good or for bad. It derives from the Hebrew word ḥutspâ (חֻצְפָּה), meaning “insolence”, “cheek” or “audacity”. Thus the original Yiddish word has a strongly negative connotation.
Dear victor, where did you attend school, if any at all? Please watch your spelling: “Wilde’s famous epigram”. Wilde needs an apostrophy here, since he is the real and true author of the famous epigrams. The apostrophy indicates OWNERSHIP!
PS: When will you replace the false title of “author” in the little blue box next to your name, victor? You have four choices for replacement. 1. Non-author. 2. Administrator. 3. Censor. 4. Secretary. That urgent task takes a long time, victor. Instead of writing many superfluous answers on the comment board, you could change the title in the little blue box next to your name quickly and ask editor Alex Christoforou to help you with the bot, so the bot places in the names of authors instead of non-authors over texts in the Duran.
Author Chris Sweeney writes in his text which was reprinted in the Duran: “Charlatans like her are being enabled to masquerade as individuals of distinction.” Yes, Chris! Charlatans can be found everywhere. They even hide as “authors” in the Duran.