Stop Hate Watching Meghan Markle (And More)
Five For Friday, March 6th, 2025
Over the weekend, Steve and I escorted my folks down to Florida to visit my aunt, who has dementia. It was a trip that had some heavy moments. Then, my ears became infected on Monday night, after flying home with a slight cold.
Gene Hackman’s death — wandering around for a week in an Alzheimer’s fog after his wife died — is haunting.
I’m also bummed out because a good friend unexpectedly passed away last week from a heart attack. Yes, women get heart attacks, too. Know the signs.
So, I’m dealing with sore ears and an aching heart.
Otherwise, life is fine. Jonah drove to Vermont to retrieve his autistic brother from his autism college yesterday. It’s spring break! We’re all crammed in the kitchen eating egg sandwiches from the deli and talking about summer vacations, our vegetable garden, and new jobs. We missed Ian so much.
It’s Friday — well it was when I started this draft — so that means five short posts today. Maybe I’ll expand on one for a longer newsletter next week.
Stop Hate Watching Meghan Markle
Because the X algorithm is aware of my guilty pleasure of reading royal family gossip, my feed was awash all week with hate posts on Meghan Markle’s new show on Netflix. I refuse to watch the show on Netflix and give the show another viewer, but I got the general idea. Between the terrible reviews and the endless clips on social media, it looks bloody awful.
But is this show worse than any other bad show on television? Probably not. It seems to be generically bad, rather than spectacularly bad. She doesn’t seem to know how to cook or have natural conversations with acquaintances on camera. Her friends seem plastic with their botoxed faces and Ozempic bodies.
I don’t want to eat food that has been prepared by someone on a 500-calorie diet.
Based on the million clips on X, nothing about the show looks aspirational — boring clothes and the same old farmhouse kitchen. Any other boring, bad television show would quickly disappear into the ether, but it’s Meghan Markle. And folks truly hate her.
I get it somewhat. Meghan is the classic Mean Girl, who has marginalized her family and his. Everyone has encountered someone toxic like her in our past. I am certainly not rooting for the success of her enterprises. But the sheer volume of columns about her is insane. Can’t we talk about someone else? I can think of many other people to hate. Don’t give Meghan the clicks!
Authenticity Means Flaws
While Meghan and her friends share identical faces, all plumped and stretched in the right places, the girl from White Lotus with her big teeth is the hit of the week. The actress, Aimee Lou Wood, is getting huge attention for being natural in a world of veneers and Invisalign. From the Independent:
Wood looks, for want of a better word, real. Like the kind of girl you might see on the treadmill at the gym, or waiting for the kettle to boil in the office kitchen, or standing next to you on the train platform while bopping along to the latest Sabrina Carpenter track. She’s slim and pretty, sure, but her face is at once striking and authentic.
Pamela Anderson has also embraced the natural look, appearing on camera without any makeup and unashamed of her aging body. Her popular cooking show has attracted some copycats.
I’m interested in smart, original people, who have geeky obsessions in books, homemade pasta, music, or anything. I want to learn from nerds, not posers.
Do People Care?
Bad shit is going down in the world, thanks to our crazy president. But only a handful of people in my day-to-day life seem to notice. Sometimes I’ll lock eyes with someone at a party, someone who I think gets it, and I’ll whisper “Gulf of America” or “Invade Greenland.” It’s like a secret handshake.
You really should read the tea leaves, folks. Things are bad.
Poland Plans Military Training for Every Adult Male Amid Growing European Security Fears
Russia’s neighbours consider leaving weapons treaties as invasion fears grow
US stock markets fall amid trade war fears
College Isn’t For All
More high schools — even high-end charter schools — are rethinking "the college for all” message. As reported in the New York Times:
Even after decades of bipartisan effort and billions of dollars spent, about 40 percent of students who start college never finish, often leaving with life-altering debt. Across the political spectrum, higher education institutions are less respected and trusted by the public, whether because of sticker shock, perceived left-wing bias or doubts about their ability to prepare students for the job market.
We’re seeing a mini college backlash in the upper middle class suburbs. I’ve been working with a local civics group to organize a panel around alternatives to college, because students aren’t learning about those options at their high school. Administrators from a local community college, trade school, and technical high school will tell students and their parents how their graduates earn six-figure salaries without a $300,000 college price tag and four years of lost earning years.
All the Health Woes
Great story in the New York Times about the poor healthcare outcomes in areas like West Virginia.
Americans now spend more years living with chronic disease than people in 183 other countries in the World Health Organization — a reality that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. framed as a “national crisis” in his first weeks as health secretary.
RFK Jr. isn’t wrong about everything.
Here’s another upbeat medical story. A doctor on the Mel Robbins podcast talks about older women, who break their hips and die. Their bones are brittle because they’ve spent their lives caring for others. They never had time to care for themselves.
Laura, that's a nice stack of notes. Lots of yummy stuff in the post. I especially wanted to call out this statement:
"I’m interested in smart, original people, who have geeky obsessions in books, homemade pasta, music, or anything. I want to learn from nerds, not posers."
It struck me that taken out of context, this is a really important idea. The idea of clarifying one's interests is applicable in many other cases, including our shared concern about the well-being of children and youth with disabilities.
In special ed, I'm much more interested in what I can learn from smart, original, nerds than from people who ride their hobby horses at a gallop through the topic of the week.