The Daily Mail published an absolutely scathing piece on Sarah Ferguson a few weeks ago. I was doubly surprised on reading this because not only is she royalty, but a woman!
It is the standard tale of a woman becoming bored, cheating on her husband, divorcing him, and ultimately ending up alone and destitute. Normally this would be just another feel good empowerment story with the whole alone and destitute part left out. In fact, Oprah has a new reality show in the US about Sarah Ferguson finding herself. My wife and I caught a bit of the show the other week, and it was extremely sympathetic to her. The true story is too well known for Oprah to frame this as another EPL, but she is predictably framed as a victim of her own choices. Here is a clip I found on youtube:
I don’t know how long ago the Duchess’ pattern of betrayal became something the British press could no longer excuse, because I’m not one to follow the royal family. From what I gather the press in the UK hasn’t liked her for quite a long time. At any rate, clearly she managed to find how far was too far. The Daily Mail piece is titled: The Duchess of Delusion: How Fergie’s shamelessly self-serving book is as airbrushed as the cover
Here is a taste of the way she is described in the article:
Who would ever imagine that these tear-stained words refer to a woman who has been given every possible advantage in life, including marriage to a prince and the styling Her Royal Highness — all of which she has only herself to blame for throwing away.
She even betrayed Princess Diana, breaking her promise not to write about her in her book:
Fergie told how, when she borrowed a pair of the Princess’s shoes, she caught verrucas. Diana never spoke to her again.
Here is how she describes her “perfect man”:
‘Someone who is good looking . . . with a good sense of humour . . . believes in old-fashioned chivalry . . . is confident, sophisticated, intelligent and athletic . . . who has integrity, honesty and is family oriented, and who knows me better than I know myself.’
‘I realise I have just described Andrew.’
For his part Prince Andrew seems to not have lost his patience with her. Despite her public humiliation of him by cheating on him with multiple men, divorcing him, and her most recent attempt to sell access to him, he keeps her at his home, and we are told that he still loves her. They still vacation together, and he even symbolically fights against the royal family ostracizing her. She wasn’t invited to William and Kate’s wedding, so Andrew carried a picture of her when he attended. Someone needs to do a mantervention ASAP. The piece closes with the following quote:
‘I look at my ex, and how great he is becoming, more and more centred within himself. He is blossoming into the man I knew he was when I married him.
‘I keep thinking, why did we get divorced? In hindsight, I would say to anyone who takes impulsive, spontaneous giant steps, fighting for a change within a marriage, never be impulsive, because it might be irrevocable. I live in the grasps of the tentacles of regret.’
‘I keep thinking, why did we get divorced?
Um, like, because you were and are a stupid, self-centered, impulsive, immature, childish bitch?
In hindsight, I would say to anyone who takes impulsive, spontaneous giant steps, fighting for a change within a marriage, never be impulsive, because it might be irrevocable. I live in the grasps of the tentacles of regret.’
Yep. Looks like I was right.
PS: Women, words mean things. Words mean things and just because Western men tend towards stoicism, letting words roll off our backs rather than reacting to them it does not follow that we do not hear them. We do hear them. And we are capable of remembering them for a long, long, long time.
Gosh, I never knew Andrew was such a hapless beta chump. Guess this is one shining example of how a charming, good-looking man can nevertheless be a spineless beta bitch. Wow. Charles has more balls, and that’s saying something.
@Anonymous Reader
Yep. Looks like I was right.
Good one!
How the hell did the royal family become so beta. Charles, Andrew, William. Harry is probably the most alpha of the bunch. Maybe because they are ruled by a matriarch?
@The Truth
No – I suspect that the “royal family” realizes that their wealth and privilege remains only by the tolerance of the common man. Their handling of Diana gravely damaged the popularity of the “royals” and the queen roped everyone into a more PC presentation. Self indulgent millionaires who are directly supported by the taxes of “commoners”, need their good will, which means they need the goodwill of the press.
British men have been effeminate wimps for a long long time
Oh, barf, barf, barf. Is Fergie a boomer? Because that whole “finding yourself, learning to love yourself” is so Mid-life Crisis 1995. It’s no wonder she only consults Oprah, Dr. Phil, and Suze Orman – they are of like mind. Even their tough love stuff is pretty flimsy – knocked over with a gentle breeze. “I didn’t love myself enough.” “I was too much of a people pleaser.” Yeah, if by “people” you mean “Sarah Ferguson.”
What kind of “tools” do you need to help yourself live for free in your ex’s mansion? Puh-leeze.
Imagine if men went around acting on their worst impulses and after they’d destroyed everything said “that’s not the real me!” People have become really stupid.
Part of Fergie’s problem is simple timing. If she’d been born 2 centuries earlier, she and Andrew would have stayed married, she’d have had 7 or 8 more children most of them by other men and all raised by governesses, he’d have had a series of stunning opera dancers, and the two would have very civilly spent holidays together and kindly overlooked all but the worst of scandals.
The 20th century was a buzz kill of a century for royalty/aristocracy. Increased scrutiny combined with lessened power in the most inconvenient way.
Yes, her life has been destroyed. But heh, at least she wasn’t murdered like Diana, eh?
I actually followed parts of the scandal, and it was clear that deliberate attempts were made to get her to do things that would get her in trouble. Friends were subverted, intelligence agencies deployed. Solely to get her. And of course the English press has been given it’s orders. Now, one wonders who would have the clout to give such orders. I bet it was Bob the Baker who did it!
Everything doesn’t revolve around your personal obsessions.
@TheTruth
I’d have to disagree, and say their beta-ness started a long time ago. Shoot, look at Edward the VIII: he willing gave up his power as king to marry a twice-divorced American woman.
…while said woman was being courted by a member of the German Nazi Party.
…and while said woman was having a supposed affair with a used car salesman in America.
She sounds like me Ex… they can both stick it.
English men are real beta mangina’s. She shouldn’t be living in the house. That is probably why british women are so terrible with misandry. I bet if they saw the cheating bitch out on her ass years later. There would be a lot less of the girl power misandry in british women.
Off with her head.
That’s a royal tradition long forgotten.
Yeah, Sarah is my age. Late boomer. I have some time for Andrew — he served as a helicophter pilot in the Falklands and spends most of his time promoting British trade now.
But Diana and Fergie were two very stupid women. They saw the then current zeitgest (I think a fair number of you all don’t realise is just how much men were hated in the 80s — there was regular propaganda of the all men are rapists / abuse their kids type) and decided they were bored and they would screw around.
The royals have never tolerated that. Both divorces had to happen. But then, Andrew gave up the military and raised his daughters: Charles raised his sons. The men have done their duty — they follow the line started by George V of stoically plodding on. (Yes, the “Kings speech” one).
Diana is dead (sheer stupidity) and Fergie is lucky to be alive.
I’ve always thought Fergie was a mutt…if I were a royal…good god, you’d have hot tail tossing themselves at you, why oh why would you marry a cheating tramp, who is fat and freckled???
must be the infamous royal inbreeding I’ve heard so much about.
“…she describes her perfect man in these words: ‘Someone who is good looking . . . with a good sense of humour . . . believes in old-fashioned chivalry . . . is confident, sophisticated, intelligent and athletic . . . who has integrity, honesty and is family oriented”
So, it is true; opposites attract.
‘Diana was one of the quickest wits I knew’
This is beyond parody! What a statement of the kind of people teh royalz mix with.
She’s a real ‘shining wit’
(spoonerisms – swap the beginnings of the two words…)
dalrock, the British press and the British have disliked Sarah for a long long time, well since about the toe sucking, though it was most likely the NOTW which revealed rather than the Daily Mail.
She did redeem herself in recent years by being a hardworker, but then she did the selling access to Prince Andrew thing so she’s back in the doghouse.
I think I’ve said before that I don’t think the Daily Mail is the paper I think you think it is. They don’t hire Liz Jones because they think she is fab and the readers would empathise with her lol.
“must be the infamous royal inbreeding I’ve heard so much about”
The Duchess of York is not royal by blood, she is not even aristocracy (Princess Diana’s family was. Arguably a ‘better’ family than the Royal Family, if things had played out differently they may have been the royals themselves). She was pretty solid county set, upper middle class I suppose.
She was the ‘commoner’ marriage until the Duchess of Cambridge came along.
Interestingly in both Princess Diana and the Duchess of York’s childhoods, their fathers had a lot of affairs, and their mothers left & got together with another man, and both were brought up by their fathers/stepmothers. Though of course boarding school as well. They both seem to have issues from quite a young age (eating disorders etc). otoh Prince Charles when he was ready to get married/produce an heir asked 2 other women to marry him before Princess Diana and only she was daft enough to accept.
Prince Andrew has a reputation of being a bit of a lothario both before marriage (Koo Stark as an example, lol he never did have good judgement) and after. In more recent times I can’t remember the name off the top of my head, but he’s friends with some chap in America who has been in the press for his liking of teenage girls/women.
Don’t care about:
her ishooos
who pointed out the facts of what she has done.
past actions (PRE-marriage) of her husband
Stop making excuses for her, she’s a whore because of HER actions.
I’m not making excuses for her. She gets short shrift in England for the reasons I mentioned above (Princess Diana gets short shrift in my family but a certain type of the masses ‘love/d’ her). I mentioned the things from her background because it ties into other matters that get discussed around these parts. I mentioned her ex husband because of some of the comments made about him in this post.
“…and who knows me better than I know myself.’”
Bullshit.
Men who have that ability (and there’s quite a few), are usually reviled because they have the nasty habit of telling women what they don’t want to hear.
Wow! I was just thinking about Fergie the other day as the poster child for not killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
The press never much liked her, calling her “fat” and “common”. They gave her hell for not being a virgin (Diana’s other saving grace, along with her gentle demeanor…for all the good it did in the end.) But the tabloids still hold her with a certain affection, and absurd gratitude for keeping them in business. Well-behaved royals do *not* sell papers.
I think when a child is raised in the artiface and rarified air of the palace, he might be overly intrigued by someone as unfettered as Sarah was (is). She is what she is: an impulsive, emotionally-driven and high-spirited woman. If she were anything else, she wouldn’t have married Andrew.
Perhaps William chose differently because his upbringing was more moderate and less restricted than his father and uncles.
@Lily
Prince Andrew was freinds with Jeffery Epstein who is in jail or served time for soliciting prostitution from various underagte girls.
He is also gaffe prone like his father but without the sense of humor. I suspect that although he appears rather intelligent in some matters, Prince Andrews social skills or ability to judge character are lacking. In addition to the repungnant Furgeson and sleazy Epstein, he is good buddies with some third world strongmen. Selective retardation, perhaps.
I wonder if Diana wouldn’t be an interesting topic for the Manosphere. I’ll admit to only having a vague idea about everything that lead up to the divorce. I do know it was well pointed out that Charles chose the “old battle axe” over the “pretty, trophy wife”. Which doesn’t say much for Diana.
Also, Diana came off as vaguely “not much there.” Seemed like she wanted to “do good” but never really seemed up to speed. Though the tabloids & a lot of people really loved her.
Fergie always struck me as pretty pathetic, but that might just be the media portraits rather than anything actually known. But this profile does explain why they loved to hate her.
Oh, the British Royals are thought to be a Billionaire family, in holdings, along with a tax-payer provided expense account. Amplifies that wealth a bit.
@Lily
I don’t doubt that you have a better understanding of the paper than I do. But I don’t have the impression that they outright empathize with Liz Jones. I see it as a very gossipy paper, especially the Femail section (for obvious reasons). My take is that they keep Liz around for gossip value. Sometimes they laugh at her, sometimes they are regaled by her exploits with some unknown rocker (if he even exists), etc. Sometimes probably both in the same piece. Likewise with her standard fare of bitching, with the ever present “Liz Jones Moans” in the title. Am I very far off the mark?
Also Opus’ observation in the Trapped in motherhood post seems like an astute one to me, but not something I had considered before he made it:
It runs in the family. The proof:
– Edward VIII: he willing gave up his power as king to marry a twice-divorced American woman, who was extremely ugly and who wanted to be a mistress not a wife.
– George VI (brother of Edward): he was always dominated by his wife (the “Queen mother”).
– Elisabeth II (daughter of George): fed up with so much betatude she married an alpha (Prince Philip).
– Prince Charles (inheriting the beta traits of his grandfather and not the alpha traits of his father): he is humiliated in front of millions of people by his wife. He cheats his wife with an uggo (Camilla), like Schwarzenegger did.
– Prince Andrew: giving shelter to the ex-wife who is a slut and has humiliated him.
Sometime some scientist will decode the Royal genome and find the “beta gene” who is causing such a weird behavior.
“…and who knows me better than I know myself.’”
When a woman says this, she means:
“… and who feeds my hamster better than I could…”
The “feeding-hamster role” is assigned to the beta orbiter. While somebody else is sucking your toes (“yucks!”), the beta orbiter “understand you better than anyone”. He is your best girlfriend.
Is Fergie a boomer? Because that whole “finding yourself, learning to love yourself” is so Mid-life Crisis 1995.
I don’t know if she’s a boomer, but she’s definitely an “Oprah-ite.”
That’s more than enough to qualify as flaky.
Prince Andrew is many things, but beta isn’t one of them. Trust, if it wasn’t for the reality that abandoning Sarah Ferguson to the wolves would be a PR disaster, she’d be homeless in a flash. I’m old enough to remember “Randy Andy”, his sole flaw is in loving women too much (and even then, any post-nuptial/pre-divorce adultery that he may have committed has somehow managed to escape the attention of the press. If Fergie could have said the same, they’d still be married.)
I threw up a little in my mouth just reading this.
I, too, find it interesting that Fergie has fallen under such harsh scrutiny in her home country. Women engaging in this kind of caprice can count on a relatively stout defense from their friends and various cultural memes. But Fergie hasn’t been able to. I’d like to say this is the start of a cultural shift…but I know it’s not true.
@MaMu1977
Are you saying he cheated on Fergie while they were married? Or are you saying he wasn’t celibate before marriage and after the divorce? I did some searching after reading your and MaMu1977’s comments on Prince Andrew, and can’t find anything corroborating him being unfaithful to the marriage. Instead I found articles like this one talking about how she was cheating on him. But like I said I’m no royal watcher and I could well be not using the right search terms.
None of that is as bad as the crown prince of Norway who married a single mother who used to be a drug addict. On top of that the father of her kid is in jail (or was in jail) for drug offenses.
Well, Koo’s basically bankrupt now…. and has been eviscerated by the telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/8319716/Koo-Stark-From-Royal-Romance-to-the-High-Court.html
@dalrock. Challenging to describe the Mail but is a tabloid newspaper for people who think they are too good to read tabloid newspapers. Most of the people I would know would read the Times, with the more right wing reading the Telegraph and the more left wing reading the Guardian.
I just had a look and the wikipedia says its history was targeting the ‘newly literal lower middle class’ which makes sense to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail
It may target women but one thing it is not is a paper ‘sympathetic’ to the ‘plight’ of women in the way people talk about the American MSM. When I was growing up, it liked criticising evil career women. When it wasn’t railing about immigrants. Then it went through the single mother phase. I noticed yesterday the article about how some woman was told not to breastfeed because ‘muslims’ wouldn’t like it, well that’s what the heading said, when you read the exchange between the woman and the council staff, there was nothing about muslims in it. As if muslims don’t breastfeed, lol.
I think the closest to what is said about how women are treated, the closest would be the Guardian which is a broadsheet. We use the term ‘Guardian reader’ in more ways than the literal way, the other meaning is similar to SWPL. Though I have to admit that the Guardian has shown how important it is to have papers like it around in these times (phone hacking saga). NI is not the only guilty party. Last night on television, an MP, a female one unsurprisingly said that the Daily Mail had threatened her (she’d got divorced).
I don’t know of any infidelity on Prince Andrew’s part (though I still don’t think he is a schlump or needs a mantervention, not that the things are necessarily connected to infidelity or not).
I’m not sure how he would have had the time, he was away in the navy for most of their shortish marriage. If he was, at least he was discreet about this. It’s bad enough having her plastered all over the papers in the first place having her toes sucked, but all this blathering to the media is so unseemly.
But she’s a good person… yeah, right– ‘Ho-isness is a ‘ho-ishness does!
I love that line, “but I’m a good person”…what does that mean?????
Some of the biggest cheating tramp whores I know use that line….again, what does that comment mean? I have asked, and some of the answers are simply mind numbing. One said, well, at least I’m honest…hahahahaha…this from a notorious cheater who has an oblivious husband ( that or he simply doesn’t care anymore). Another mentioned she only drops off unwanted pets at no-kill shelters…lol…
I asked one tramp what her threshold for trampiness in women was, get this, she said a gal that screws more than one guy in a given day. So 30 partners a month is fine ( you are not a slut) as long as there wasn’t two in a day…glad to get that cleared up.
The ability of the female mind to rationalize is amazing, a tramp I know said that for women and their actions yesterday didn’t happen…unless they are blaming a man, then yesterday is never is forgotten.
[D: Solomon had a similar take on this.]
Slightly OT, but I couldn’t resist…
Got those rationalization hamsters revving?…..Ready?…..HERE WE GO!!!……
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/none/want-to-have-a-baby-here-are-5-reasons-you-should-consider-waiting-2511493/
“…and who knows me better than I know myself.’”
All men know you better than you know yourself.
However, in the interest of avoiding being party to a meltdown, they keep their mouth shut.
This phrase also has another meaning : he’s not afraid, and I don’t have to ask him, to whip out the Johnny Wadd vibrator when I’m struggling to achieve climax.
@Lily
But my point in sharing articles from the Mail isn’t that the Mail is an outlier. My point is that these things are endemic in our culture and media. The fact that even a paper known for being more conservative in nature regularly sells divorce, frames women as victims, etc. proves my point even stronger. This isn’t unlike the conservative WSJ running a piece by the woman who bragged about keeping the phone number of the cheesy Italian guy she met while going on her honeymoon without her husband. There is no popular countering force for this nonsense, and even the more conservative publications peddle it.
“Got those rationalization hamsters revving?…..Ready?…..HERE WE GO!!!……”
Well fertility doctors have to eat don’t they?
Stephenie Rowling
My favorite was where they claim that geriatric pregnancies are healthier for the babies:
Anyone who has a question on this should ask their OB/GYN if waiting until after 35 will help them have a healthier baby.
Dalrock’s Law
“pirran says:
Got those rationalization hamsters revving?…..Ready?…..HERE WE GO!!!……”
Those are excellent reasons for waiting until you are married, with a comfortable relationship, a stable source of income, and a surety as to your desire to parent. What age exactly that is will depend on the person, but getting those things in order sooner is certainly better. It provides some good reasons to wait until your later twenties, perhaps – not 35.
I love the bad logic – “older women have healthier babies”. -As though the age was the relevant factor and not the attention and effort. As though those same 37-year-old women taking great care in their pregnancies wouldn’t have done better taking the same care, but ten years earlier..
[D: It isn’t just bad logic. It is flat out misinformation. Check out the webmd link in my comment above.]
Following on from the hamster madness, I linked to the authors site….whoa!
I think a neologism is born. “Doing a Claudia” could refer to the refined state of rationalization when your hamster sprouts wing and competes with us flying pigs. Don’t forget now, “Later Mothers ROCK!”.
http://www.claudiaspahr.com/
Sarah Ferguson is despicable. Her life is a train wreck and she has nobody to blame but herself. The most insane part is how her ex-husband is still supporting her. What a fool.
“[D: It isn’t just bad logic. It is flat out misinformation. Check out the webmd link in my comment above.]”
The ‘bad logic’ I am referencing is the idea that “since older women put in the effort and end up with often healthy babies, age must cause healthier babies”. I didn’t mean to negate the fact that their premises are false as well.
I wonder about your chart – if it only measures incidences of down’s syndrome *in live births*, it must be giving skewed results as well. The numbers are down all across the board on down’s in live births, because down’s babies these days don’t often make it to a live birth. I would suspect they are even more likely to in younger women, where they are not monitored quite as stringently, and might be willing to take more chances. I wonder if there are stats on which age range aborts ‘defective’ babies more readily. I’m not sure whether it would be the younger women, who know they have time to keep working on it, or the older women, who know they don’t have many chances.
HRH Prince Andrew never (obviously or blatantly) cheated on her while they were married. That was the cause of her demonisation. He played the field when he was single, then pulled a total 180 when her got married (fulfilling his duty to his chosen family, his forebears and his country by *not* being a player.) IOW, he did what was “done” for a man of his stature, whereas she chased ‘gina tingles until her entire family was all but disgraced in the public eye. If Sarah’s marriage had been like her sister-in-law’s, she would have been given the benefit of the doubt (HRH Prince Charles’ relationship with the current Duchess of Cornwall was an open secret, and is still seen as Diana’s trigger for her infidelity. Sarah, OTOH, literally comes across as an ungrateful bitch for embarrassing her crown and her family on a global scale.)
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