Harry & Meghan Return to Britain, and Royalty Is Still Ridiculous

Ultimize. Harry and Meghan are moving back to Britain. Does this make you go hooray? Does this make you go boohoo? I gotta tell you, this is one place where I feel really weird and out of touch. I'm one of the few people I know where I don't hate Harry or Meghan. I don't love them. I have absolutely zero interest in them, and that's not a slam on them. What I do find interesting is that anybody would find them interesting. So they came to Hollywood in a huff because apparently everything in Britain is so awful, and they somehow convinced big media companies that, hey, we're fascinating, give us tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars so we can talk or put a camera on us. And media companies bought—they bought into this idea. Only one problem: nobody watched. Nobody cared. A lot of talk about how Hollywood is out of touch and doesn't have values that reflect America. Well, yeah, when you give Harry and Meghan tons of money. be ordinary boring people. Yeah, that is pretty out of touch. So in that case, I buy into the whole argument. So I try to get my head around the idea of why anyone would find Harry and Meghan interesting. He's a prince, she's a duchess, she'll be a princess, maybe they'll both be king and queen one day, you never know. Here's the thing, folks. We fought a war. We fought a revolutionary war based on the idea that the whole concept of kings and queens and monarchies and scepters and little crowns, it's nonsense. It's stupid. It doesn't really exist. If I tell you today, I'm the Son of God— no, not the God of your religion or your religion, my own God— I'm the Son, I have divine power, and you need to bow down to me. Would you say, well, DJ, that makes sense, so let me go get my knee pads? Or would you say, that's crazy, this guy's a lunatic, shut down his channel, put him in a little room? So I think that's what you do. And you know what, that would be exactly the right response. So Harry and Meghan, they may be lovely people, they may be awful people, I have no idea. I really have no axe to grind. But let's be honest, if this were a rational world, Harry and Meghan wouldn't have the cushiest job in the world. Because what is the job of being a royal? It is to be a tourist attraction. Because Great Britain is not run by a monarchy anymore. It's not the king saying, off with her head, I want a new wife. Those days are long gone. It's a democracy, a parliamentary— boring stuff. We're not going to go into that. It's all just for show. The government spends millions and millions of dollars propping up these characters, and in exchange, billions of dollars of tourism comes. It's from a pure economic standpoint, it makes sense to keep the royalty and the royal family and all the trappings and the palaces. It's good for tourism business. But can we all just be honest? There's no difference between Harry and Meghan and Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. They are characters, both of them in castles, designed to attract sucker tourists who come and get their wallet out. Oh sure, I'll pay for this, and I'll pay for this, and I'll pay for a FastPass. That's all they are. But there's one big difference. If you or I go to Disney World, and yeah, I had a great time taking my daughter there on her fifth birthday. If I see Mickey Mouse, we might wave, we might take a picture, maybe even a selfie. But I don't go up to Mickey Mouse afterwards and say, "Okay, let's take off your helmet," and I see you're a nineteen-year-old struggling actor and junior college. freshman, and I don't go to that person and say, okay, you're a minimum wage aspiring actor, let me take you out to dinner, let me bow down to you, let me tell you how cool you are, let me make a documentary about you. No, they're just playing the character of Mickey Mouse. Harry is playing a character for a theme park. The theme park happens to be all of Great Britain. And for some reason, nope, nobody seems to really understand that. And people follow, oh, it's royalty, like it's a real thing. It's no more real than if I told you I am the exalted emperor of the galaxy Zebulon. You must bow down to me. If I did that again, you would lock me up in a little room. But If I got my kids to say it and their kids to say it, and there it's 5 generations from now, maybe enough people are convinced that I was the founding emperor of the galaxy from Zebulon. And maybe my great-great-great-grandchildren could run around and get people to call them emperor. Maybe they could get Netflix. Maybe I'm on to something here. Who knows? It's, it's silliness, folks. It's absolute silliness. Okay, nothing horrible I know about Harry and Meghan, but granted, I try to avert my eyes anytime they're in the news. But if this were a fair world, Harry would be an assistant manager at a Hyundai dealership. Given his skills, educational level, temperament, noticeable talents, he would be an assistant manager. at a Hyundai dealership. He'd make probably about $72,000 a year before taxes. And he and Maggot could— they couldn't live in California, but maybe they could live outside of Nashville if they bought 10 years ago, bought a little split-level house. He'd do just fine. You could go into this dealership and say, oh, okay, Prince. Prince Harry, I'd like $2,000 off of this Hyundai. Can you do it? And he'd say, well, let me talk to my manager. And he'd maybe go behind the glass door. Maybe he'd have to call, at the time, Prince Charles, or King Charles now, and say, hey, your lordship, your monarchyship, can I take $2,000 off of this Hyundai to give to this nice couple out here? There'd be this whole back and forth. And maybe, maybe there'd be some tough relations with some of his coworkers if they came in each day and said, hey, Harry, you want some coffee? And he said, that's Prince Harry to you. Yeah, maybe he'd rub some people the wrong way. But all in all, he probably fit in. And Meghan, you know, she was getting some acting roles. Maybe she'd go back to the days where she stood in a short skirt on a step holding a briefcase that may or may not have anything in it. Nothing wrong with that. The world needs people who can look good in miniskirts, stand on a stair, and hold a briefcase. There's nothing wrong with that profession. In fact, she would outearn Harry, which would be fine. There's nothing wrong with women— duchesses, queens, or anyone else— making more money than their husband. And if they ever split up, she could pay him alimony if they're in America. That's the American way. That would be fair. But now we have this situation where they're like, oh, well, we're going back to Britain. I mean, we heard for years and years and years how awful it was, how terrible it was. It's kind of like people who worked in the family restaurant business, then did a 6-part documentary on Netflix about how this is the worst restaurant ever. They're poisoning people. They hate their customer. They're awful, awful, awful. Moved to another continent, started a new life. 6 years later, said, okay, we're moving back to the apartment above the restaurant. We're not going to get our hands dirty cooking or washing dishes, but we're going to move back to live over the restaurant. I mean, that's kind of what it's like. So they're moving back. Is this a loss for America? No. Is this a loss for Britain? I don't think so. It's a couple of extras showing up to be Mickey Mouse again. Again, the difference is with my whole Mickey Mouse analogy is you can't take the head off of Harry without causing harm, and we wish them no harm. They're not wearing costumes like Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, but that's really what they are. They're Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. Oops. I just realized Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse has some black skin. I'm not making this a racial thing. Uh, we're gonna stick with Disney. Okay, we'll say that Megan is Snow White. Maybe that, that's a bit troublesome too. I don't want to get in— I'm not talking about anything white or black oriented here. I'm just saying they are like characters in a theme park designed to attract rube tourists. And hey, I'm one of them. I'm one of the rube tourists. Now, a confession here. Nobody's perfect. I'm not perfect. I like to look down my nose at monarchies because I happen to believe in democracy, although as of late that's not turning out that great either. But I think people who talk about royalty, oh, act like it's impressive are silly. But I will confess to you, from time to time I've worked with members of royalty around the world for media training and public speaking training. European members of royalty, Middle Eastern members. Once there was a— let's just call her the queen. It was a very wealthy, wealthy Middle Eastern country, and I was engaged to work with her for a whole week. Helping her prepare for speeches at the UN, as I do in my day job. So I was told in advance by her team the protocol is to refer to her as Your Royal Highness. I kind of rolled my eyes and I thought, there's no way I can do that with a straight face. It sort of goes against all my core beliefs. It would make me feel absolutely ridiculous. And then they showed me the fee they were paying me for the week. Yes, Your Royal Highness, I would be happy to help you prepare for this speech. I'm not proud of it. We all do have our price, I guess. But what is bizarre to me, that anyone would call another human being Your Royal Highness without being paid. Now, you can call me a whore, but at least I have a price. I wasn't giving it away dignity for free. And this whole idea that we just— if we just tell enough people the protocol is this— if I tell you when you come to my house, the protocol is for you to give me your wallet, would you just do it because I called it protocol? But that's the thing people do for some reason if it's perpetuated for enough generations. People just can't seem to get enough news about Harry and Meghan, which I guess is why these media companies gave them all this money. But I've, I've had enough. They've had the last 2 days front page stories on the New York Times. It's time to move on. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. We're going to start something a little bit different today. I'm going to end our shows with a question. And what's different about these questions is you could be submitting them Hey, I could be submitting them. The key is I'm not going to know it until I look at it live in front of you. So you're going to get my spontaneous take. So I'm going to scroll down now and look at this spontaneous question. Would you like to be the sort of successful person who is dominating news, at least in your industry? Well, if so, it's time to up your skills. At ultimize.com, I've created online courses to help you do that. Now, here's the thing. No obligation. You can get a free course on communication skills, a free course on how to build better habits. All you have to do is go to ultimize.com. That's ultimize.com. No obligation. Go there now. The question is, what's the one thing people in South Florida treat as completely normal that you still believe is insane? Okay, I'm coming to you from South Florida today. I've lived here For the last 6 years. I've lived here in other stints too, back in the '90s. And yes, things are different in Florida. There's no doubt about it. It's not just South Florida, it's all of Florida. When you see a crazy, insane story anywhere in America, or if you're in Europe and you're hearing about America, and it's something like a man ate a dog's face off and then ran around naked and lit his hair on fire, you You don't have to do a search to figure out where did this happen? Was that in Kansas? No, you know it happened in Florida. And things like that happen all the time. It's just considered normal. The biggest thing that is insane about South Florida, and it's— I still can't get over it, is here it's considered completely normal to move here as a pariah, as a criminal. As a failed dictator, South Florida is where you go when you are considered a pariah in your old state, your old city, your own country, your old country. This is where former dictators like Somoza hang out. This is where people who tried to steal elections hang out, whether we're talking about the guy from Brazil or the guy who used to live. On Fifth Avenue, who now spends a lot of time in Palm Beach. This is where you go when you're absolutely, utterly shameless. This is where you move if you murdered your wife and everybody knows it. Yeah, this is where O.J. lived his remaining years before he passed away. This is the place where it's considered perfectly normal. You're, you're at the country club. You're at the Starbucks on Main Street in Boca Raton. So, oh, you just moved here? Congratulations. How many felonies are you convicted of? What's your current indictment situation? That's a normal conversation in South Florida. So, you can be a criminal, you can be a convicted felon, you can try to create insurrections in various countries around the world, including this one. It's okay. The other thing is there are more flaky people per square inch in South Florida than any place in the world I've ever been, and I've been to 45 countries. I well remember living in South Florida where you could meet someone at lunch on the beach, having a fantastic lunch, having a great time, having fun, and say, okay, hey, it's 2 o'clock. Let's go out to dinner. I'll stop by at 6 PM. Oh, you live right there? Okay. You make it an assigned plan. You have a date to get together. I go to their house, 6 o'clock, knock on the door. The door sort of opens. You look in, apartment's empty. A neighbor will pop out and say, can I help you? Yeah, what happened to Janice? We were supposed to meet at 6. Oh, Janice moved back to Kansas about an hour ago. She just left with all of her things. And that's considered normal. People will make plans, seem like everything's completely normal, and simply vanish, move out of town within an hour or 2, often Because drug dealers are chasing them for payment, or bill collectors, or law enforcement officials. So it's that kind of a place. Are there positives here? Yeah, I'll talk about that another day. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. Thanks so much for joining me. See you next show. Ultimize.