#New York pols fawn over Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

Why are the governor and mayor of New York taking a meeting at the World Trade Center with the Two Megxiteers? Harry and Meghan threw away their royal obligations as vigorously as John Kerry threw away his Vietnam War service ribbons. I say we treat them like any other tourists. These people are entitled to no more bowing and scraping than the Kansas City Royals. 

Meghan’s brand — California New-Age I’m-Still-on-a-Journey-of-Self-Discovery-in-Middle-Age — and Harry’s palace-born entitlement have intermingled to create the most appalling British-American monster since Madonna’s “Madge” period. At least Madge didn’t mumble about climate change and global poverty, though. 

What has become of what was once the world’s most badass prince? Until just a few years ago, Harry was proof that “macho royal” is not an oxymoron. In sharp contrast to his jug-eared, limp handkerchief of a dad, Prince Charles, he used to roar around Afghanistan in his helicopter giving hell to the Taliban, his red hair blazing like a testosterone torch. Take that, everyone who ever saw a ginger walking down the street and yelled out of his car, “Ronald McDonald,” “Carrot Top” or “Leprechaun,” not that anything like that has ever happened to me. 

Since he had his tender bits chomped off by the Megalodon, though, Hammerin’ Hank has become Girly Harry, an Instagram influencer (whatever that is) who posts cringey pictures of himself with Jon Bon Jovi alongside the squishy sayings of ’80s motivational speaker Leo “Dr. Love” Buscaglia. Fortitude enabled Great Britain to survive the Great War, the Third Reich, and even the European Union, but now one of the UK’s scions has surrendered to Oprahfication. Instead of firing rockets at medieval Islamofascists, Shallow Hal sits there holding his wife’s hand while she emotes about her made-up pain for the cameras. Somehow Thor became Ed Sheeran. 

Snap out of it, man! Whatever happened to Grandma Liz’s stiff upper lip or Grandpa Phil’s wicked sense of humor? The Queen was literally bombed by Nazis for a year and never even said, “How perfectly beastly!” If anyone had ever suggested she go on a worldwide it’s-so-hard-to-be-me tour, she would have told him to stop being such a wet. Which is British for “wussypants.” 

In 1992, the year a massive fire at Windsor Castle took out 115 rooms and both of her sons’ marriages also went up in flames, Elizabeth said, “1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure.” Hell, yeah: The British way is mastery of the colossal understatement. There’s a reason people say “Slay, Queen” and not “Preach, Duchess.” The Queen also called that year her “Annus Horribilis.” What a classy way to say, “That sucked!” Meghan Markle, on the other hand, gets duly mocked by Piers Morgan (“I wouldn’t believe her if she filed a weather report”) and she files a formal complaint. And not even in Latin. 

As if to passive-aggressively troll Her Majesty, instead of giving their daughter a solid English name that suggests equally the ability to wield a scepter or to fix trucks in WWII, H&M gave the baby the monarch’s childhood nickname, Lilibet. The thought bubble over Her Majesty’s indomitable hat when she heard this news can only have been, “Er, thanks?” It’s as if a descendant of Winston Spencer Churchill decided to honor the great man by naming his boy Churchy, or Spencebro. 

And not since the Duke of Windsor turned out to be a bit of a Nazi has the royal family suffered an embarrassment on par with H&M’s ghastly Time magazine cover: “This looks like Harry is her hairdresser and he’s looking into the mirror explaining what he did to her layers,” observed Irish comic Gráinne Maguire on Twitter. 

Harry used to be a swashbuckling 6 feet 1; according to the Time photo, he’s now the same height as his wife (5 feet 6). He’s shrinking before our eyes! The next time we see him, he could be the size of a parakeet, and Maleficent Markle will be carrying him around in a cage as though nothing has happened. She’ll continue complaining about how rough it is to be her, and once in a while he’ll let out a little peep or chirp.