Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

'A California girl' : how Meghan Markle's home state shaped her identity
The Guardian ^ | Dec 2017 | Rory Carroll

Posted on 12/31/2017 5:29:36 PM PST by GoldenState_Rose

Much has been made of Markle’s native country, her race and her divorce – but her ‘confidence and social ease’ prove she is above all a Californian.

She seems to be an appropriate ambassador for things that Californians hold dear,” said William Deverell, a historian of the American west at the University of Southern California. “Her poise and confidence and social ease; it’s not perfect out here but we have a more equitable view of life.”

British viewers of her televised interview with Prince Harry marvelled at how she appeared so informal and relaxed, so un-Windsor, while viewers in Los Angeles took it for granted.

“LA kids like that are not fazed by fame,” said Colleen Dunn Bates, author of the book Talk Like a Californian. “They’re not star-struck. She grew up not being impressed by celebrities so she’s not intimidated. She can see him as a person and not a celebrity.”

The cliche of southern Californians being relaxed had truth, said Dunn Bates, whose own daughters attend Markle’s old high school, the all-girl Immaculate Heart in Los Feliz, near Hollywood. “We’re an informal people. We have our own language and dress casually.”

But Californians also work hard, not least those in the entertainment industry. “She saw her dad busting his butt,” said Dunn Bates, referring to Thomas Markle, a TV lighting director. “The path she chose – actress – is very hard. You have to be very disciplined about it.”

(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: california; hollywood; losangeles; markle; meghanmarkle; princeharry; royals; royalwedding; unitedkingdom
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 81-100101-120121-140141-149 next last
To: SaraJohnson

She has, several times over, already.


121 posted on 12/31/2017 9:37:45 PM PST by nopardons
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 113 | View Replies]

To: ClearCase_guy

I don’t think she cares for him at all. Even now.


122 posted on 12/31/2017 9:40:01 PM PST by BunnySlippers (I love Bull Markets!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Aliska

Very nicely and gracefully expressed.


123 posted on 12/31/2017 9:43:01 PM PST by gogeo
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 36 | View Replies]

To: GoldenState_Rose

Seriously? A post of a biography piece of some lame pop star no one cares about except the sycophantic English press? Have some brains and don’t post crap like this here.


124 posted on 01/01/2018 12:23:39 AM PST by lefty-lie-spy (Stay metal. For the Horde \m/("_")\m/ - via iPhone from Tokyo.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: nopardons

Yep, uneducated, that must be it. Those whom didn’t reply speak volumes. I admire your desire to not ever be thought of as making fun of others different looking than yourself.

Octroon and mulatto are such overused, common terms these days.


125 posted on 01/01/2018 4:34:39 AM PST by CincyRichieRich (Hurtling deplorable!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 118 | View Replies]

To: GoldenState_Rose

Meghan & Harry will be compatible. They both love Obama & hate Trump.


126 posted on 01/01/2018 4:51:55 AM PST by Dr. Scarpetta
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: CincyRichieRich

You are 100% correct. People are jumping all over MM, especially those with straight on racist comments. Do they not know any history of European “royalty”?


127 posted on 01/01/2018 6:10:33 AM PST by sageburn
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 92 | View Replies]

To: sageburn

You are 100% correct. People are jumping all over MM, especially those with straight on racist comments. Do they not know any history of European “royalty”?
...
Thank you...having mixed kids, I get torqued when our side acts like how the Left expects.

My kids and wife are more conservative than 90% of folks here, and know the constitution well, William bradford, have to reeducate their classmates, etc. The world expects mixed kids to have dreadlocks and be loser hippies. Oh, and they are also black belts to boot...and my oldest turned down scholarship money based on race but took $$$ from his academics...he’s off the charts math whiz...


128 posted on 01/01/2018 6:40:03 AM PST by CincyRichieRich (Hurtling deplorable!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 127 | View Replies]

To: GoldenState_Rose

Well, Harry certainly knows how to take the long odds.


129 posted on 01/01/2018 6:44:11 AM PST by Jim Noble (Single payer is coming. Which kind do you like?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BenLurkin

She’s not really homely...and she must have quite a skill set.

But she’s a leftist for sure, and more. In fact, we may need a new term for California leftism, because they really are not that interested in working conditions, the working class, or class struggle.

The actual working class is too challenging. The blacks are, too. So the Californians have decided to objectify nature itself as the focus of struggle.


130 posted on 01/01/2018 6:48:37 AM PST by Jim Noble (Single payer is coming. Which kind do you like?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: CincyRichieRich

“Octroon and mulatto are such overused, common terms these days.”

You’re kidding.

.


131 posted on 01/01/2018 6:55:40 AM PST by Mears
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 125 | View Replies]

To: Mears

Octroon and mulatto are such overused, common terms these days.”

You’re kidding.
...
I was being sarcastic


132 posted on 01/01/2018 6:56:51 AM PST by CincyRichieRich (Hurtling deplorable!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 131 | View Replies]

To: nopardons

I have....long, long, long before this specious crap was proffered by PBS.
__________________

Am I misunderstanding what you’re saying? Charlotte’s portraits clearly show a woman with Negro features. I read that at the time, the artist in subsequent portraits was encouraged to tone down the black features.


133 posted on 01/01/2018 7:32:26 AM PST by LydiaLong
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 82 | View Replies]

To: nopardons

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/jun/29/research.monarchy

Wallis Simpson, the Nazi minister, the telltale monk and an FBI plot

US papers shed light on efforts to spy on fascist sympathisers.
Read document 1
Read document 2
Read document 3

Rob Evans and David Hencke

Sat 29 Jun ‘02 12.23 EDT
First published on Sat 29 Jun ‘02 12.23 EDT

When the Duke and Duchess of Windsor sailed into Palm Beach, Florida, on the SS Berkshire from Nassau on April 18 1941 they were looking forward to enjoying three days of relaxation at the Everglades Club playing golf and drinking and gossiping with American high society.

Little did they know that the previous night instructions had gone out from President Roosevelt to FBI chief J Edgar Hoover to launch what was to be an extraordinary covert intelligence exercise that had to fool both the exiled royals and the US secret service agent who was guarding them.

The exercise was launched after the FBI had been passed intelligence that the duke and duchess were being used by the Nazis to obtain secrets which could wreck the allies’ war effort. The US investigation became even more lurid when FBI agents interviewed a benedictine monk in a Franciscan monastery in the United States; Father Odo had once been the Duke of Wurttemberg, a minor German royal with connections to Queen Mary, the duke’s mother, and her brother, the Duke of Athlone, then governor general of Canada.
Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you
Read more

He told them that a prime suspect in the investigation - Joachim von Ribbentrop, then the Nazis’ foreign minister - had been the duchess’s lover when he was ambassador to Britain in 1936. The minister was already thought to have been supplied with information by the duchess during the German invasion of France in 1940. Now it was suggested that there was far closer arrangement.

Father Odo told the agent: “He knew definitely that von Ribbentrop, while in England, sent the then Wallis Simpson 17 carnations every day. The 17 supposedly represented the number of times they had slept together.”

He also revealed that the Duchess of Windsor had told guests at a Paris party that: “The duke is impotent and although he had tried sexual intercourse with numerous women they had been unsuccesful in satisfying his passions.”

He went on: “The duchess in her own inimitable and unique manner has been the only woman who had been able to satisfactorily gratify the duke’s sexual desires.”

Exile

The duke was forced into exile after he abdicated as King Edward VIII in 1936. He first went with his lover, formerly the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, to France and was only later exiled again to Bahamas to keep him out of the way.

By the time the US president authorised the intelligence operation, the couple had been deserted and snubbed by the royal family and the British establishment. They were suspected of favouring the Nazis after they visited Germany in 1937 and were entertained by Hitler and other senior Nazis.

A year after war broke out, the FBI sent a memo to President Roosevelt outlining the agency’s worries about the couple. It stated: “It has been ascertained that for some time, the British government has known that the Duchess of Windsor was exceedingly pro-German in her sympathies and connections and there is strong reason to believe that this is the reason why she was considered so obnoxious to the British government that they refused to permit Edward to marry her and maintain the throne.

“Both she and the Duke of Windsor have been repeatedly warned by representatives of the British government that in the interest of the morale of the British people, they should be exceedingly circumspect in their dealings with the representatives of the German government. The duke is in such state of intoxication most of the time that he is virtually non compos mentis. The duchess has repeatedly ignored these warnings.”

When war broke out, the duke, a serving officer, had been posted to France to liaise between the British and French armies. But the secret memo, on September 13 1940, reports that an informant had “established conclusively that the Duchess of Windsor has recently been in touch with Joachim von Ribbentrop and was maintaining constant contact and communication with him.”

“Because of their high official position, the duchess was obtaining a variety of information concerning the British and French official activities that she was passing on to the Germans.”

After the Germans invaded northern France in May 1940, the couple fled to Biarritz in the south. But the FBI noted that the Nazis were able to score a propaganda coup by broadcasting that the “increasing successes of the German armies” had compelled the couple to retreat to a Biarritz hotel. Within minutes of checking in, Berlin radio announced their hotel room number because the unnamed informant “had ascertained that the duchess had informed von Ribbentrop of her itinerary, schedule, etc, prior to her departure from their villa.”

The couple then travelled to Spain in June 1940 “but the communications between the duchess and von Ribbentrop were apparently facilitated because of the pronounced Nazi sympathies in Spain.”

In July 1940, the pair moved to Portugal where the duke made indiscreet remarks that Britain stood little chance of resisting a German invasion and may as well try to settle for peace with the Germans. Ribbentrop, encouraged by these remarks, hatched a plot to lure the Windsors into German hands.

But Winston Churchill had arranged for the duke to become governor of the Bahamas in August 1940.

“The British were and are always fearful that the duchess will do or say some thing which will indicate her Nazi sympathies and support, and consequently it was considered absolutely essential that the Windsors be removed to a point where they would do absolutely no harm,” wrote the FBI in the memo, one of a batch of 227 pages released to the Guardian under the US freedom of information act. The FBI believed that the Bahamas were selected to prevent the duchess from coming into contact with British officials and scooping up more secrets to leak and that special precautions were taken, presumably by the British, to prevent her from “establishing any channel of communication with von Ribbentrop.”

From their base in the Bahamas, the couple made frequent visits to the United States during the war. In April 1941, President Roosevelt ordered FBI agents to tail the Windsors discreetly when they visited Florida. But J Edgar Hoover was alarmed because bodyguards from another government department had been assigned to protect the couple. He warned that the bodyguards “would undoubtedly immediately detect the presence of any undercover agents, which might result in considerable embarrassment to all parties concerned”.

Deal

Instead, the government arranged for the bodyguards to report back to the FBI on where the Windsors went and whom they met. An 18-page report was subsequently produced on the five-day trip.

On May 2, an FBI agent wrote to Hoover, saying that an English socialite had told an informant that he had definite proof that Herman Goering, Hitler’s deputy, and the Duke of Windsor had reached a deal - “after Germany won the war, Goering, through control of the army, was going to overthrow Hitler and then he would install the duke as king of England.”

The informant also stated that there was no doubt that “the Duchess of Windsor had had an affair with Ribbentrop, and that of course she had an intense hate for the English since they had kicked them out of England”.


134 posted on 01/01/2018 7:54:28 AM PST by COUNTrecount (If Harvey Weinstein's bathrobe could only talk.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 96 | View Replies]

To: CincyRichieRich

Mulatto is not a species. It was a designation given to mixed race people during the time this country practiced slavery and for some years afterwards.

Black people are the same species as White people and every other human being on this planet.

Your reply and your original post are extremely offensive, racist, and ill becoming of any civilized person. You should be scorned by any who hold to a common standard of decency. Your attitude is inexcusable and deserves condemnation in the strongest terms. You are not fit company. Go to Coventry.


135 posted on 01/01/2018 7:58:41 AM PST by lastchance (Credo.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 95 | View Replies]

To: lastchance; moder_ator

Please remove my previous post. It was made in gross error.


136 posted on 01/01/2018 8:16:15 AM PST by lastchance (Credo.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 135 | View Replies]

To: lastchance; CincyRichieRich

I wish to publicly apologize for my post 135 should it not get deleted by mods. I was wrong and wrote falsehoods against a person who did not deserve. In my haste to answer what I thought was offense I did not take time to find out whether the person was being sarcastic or what their true intent was. That was inexcusable. Cincy, did not deserve my reply and I am very sorry to have caused any grief because of it.

Thank you.


137 posted on 01/01/2018 8:21:59 AM PST by lastchance (Credo.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 135 | View Replies]

To: nopardons

Your posts are the best I have read on FR for a while. Just as nasty as you wanna be, frothing at the mouth.......I think you are genuinely frothing......a tad scary & absolutely full of hatred & bile for a woman who is imperfect like the rest of us. Man I hope you’re not a guy because then you’ve got some serious issues going on.......

Froth on!


138 posted on 01/01/2018 8:59:18 AM PST by leaning conservative (snow coming, school cancelled, yayyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 82 | View Replies]

To: GoldenState_Rose; flaglady47; oswegodeee; Maine Mariner; ExTexasRedhead; Chigirl 26; entropy12; ...
NEWS FROM THE FRONT !!!

Yesterday I had an overseas, hour-long, new-year-chat with my London cousin, a retired Covent Garden opera singer.

I asked him his take on the general public feeling surrounding the two principals in the upcoming royal marriage.

He told me that Prince Harry is much admired throughout England for his outstanding military record and for his tireless charity work.

However, the general feeling toward the bride-to-be is mostly negative for a variety of reasons, but a lot of it is unspoken and unreported because of immediate charges of being "racist" and "too conservative".

The folks-on-the-street feel she won't fit into the necessary life-long royal protocol and restrictions....and my cousin added that the public prediction is that the marriage will crumble within four or five years.

Leni

139 posted on 01/01/2018 9:40:44 AM PST by MinuteGal (MAGA !!!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MinuteGal

Well let’s hope, for the sake of the sacred institution of marriage itself, they are wrong. I predict the Wedding itself will captivate billions and may change people’s sentiments...

They haven’t yet embarked on their life together as official royals just yet, and Markle may redefine the role and the institution for the better (as old generation passes) and therefore our perceptions moving forward.


140 posted on 01/01/2018 9:44:28 AM PST by GoldenState_Rose
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 139 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 81-100101-120121-140141-149 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson