Like my father always said “If you dish it out, be prepared to take it” (Come at me bro edition)

Imagine if you will a middle aged woman who’s acting/modeling/screenwriting careers never took off. Living in a single level 3 bedroom, 1000 square foot home in Ocala Florida that was built in 1982 and cost $66,000. A 60 something live-in boyfriend with no income of his own. Her monthly income of $935.00 on permanent disability (for what we’re not really sure) is not enough to cover all of their expenses. No children or grandchildren to take care of.

Then it hits! Hurricane Meghan & Harry have triggered a tsunami of publicity. Suddenly she is in high demand for TV and print interviews. Can you feel the attention and validation she has craved all her life? I can almost smell it. Everyone from Good Morning Britain doing a live via satellite interview to Inside Edition doing a tour of your home! (Where your boyfriend said he “keeps a loaded gun in every room”). People clamoring for you. You’re in such high demand that you are doing multiple interviews a day. So many that you actually dedicate a small space off your living room expressly for the application of makeup and hair styling, complete with large mirror and a table filled with make up and beauty accessories. The crescendo hits late May when Harry & Meghan marry.  It’s at this point where everyone thought your insults and rhetoric against Meghan, the British Royal Family, most of your own family (including your children, brother and your own mother) and everyone who doesn’t agree with you thought you would just go back to your normal every day life. We were all wrong.

Fame (even of on the backs of others) can be addictive. And Samantha Markle is thigh-deep in her addiction to hearing people say her own name. Even if it means Piers Morgan calling you a “media vulture” at least he is still talking about YOU. Fame also can destroy if taken too literally. The calls, the texts, the offers of plane tickets for sit down interviews in other countries, the validation, the attention, the paparazzi (the ones you hired yourself) taking pictures of you attempting to drop off a letter to your half sister at Kensington Gardens.

Like a outraged gerbil hitting a feeder bar for that nugget of attention, but the pellets are running low. Things are fading, the phone isn’t ringing like it did. But you want MORE and you must have it now! Scrambling, you try to make over or at least soften your image.  The first PR guy wanted too much money and the second PR team (the one you shelled out anywhere from $5,000 to $7,5000) has already shit the social media bed – within the first week.  Why? You hire a PR team when you need help because you can’t stop running your own mouth and want people to see you as someone you actually are not.  But if the only people they are working with are friends and the occasional jiffy lube ad maybe you need to bite the bullet and just pay the first guy more. PR as with shoes – you get what you pay for. You pay low rent – that is what you will get. Pay thug prices you get a thug services.

Like a knockoff Louis Vuitton handbag bought in Chinese grocery store, you may be able to fool a couple of people, but most of us know it’s a cheap impostor the moment we see it.

Dishing it out is what Samantha Markle (Yvonne Rasmussen) does nearly every day for the last two years. We’ve all seen her call her half-sister all kinds of abhorrent things.  But if you don’t agree with her she will call you a troll or cyberbully. You are not human to her, but an illiterate sub-human, outcast from all decent society living in “your mothers basement” and sustaining yourself with microwaved hot pockets.  (Note: I own my home and it does not have a basement).  Which is why she says the trolls have well, I’ll say a multitude of toilet issues.  These cyberbullies are solitary, lonely souls desperate for a human connection that we get on the Meghan Markle Fan Bandwagon and start a war of words against Samantha. You would think with such a vivid imagination as Samantha’s she would have sold at least one screenplay. But no.

The fact is Meghan Markle already had a career and adoring fans (I’m one of thousands) years before she met Harry. We like everything about her: she is kind, beautiful, smart, and approachable. Not to mention she looks like some of us. Not all of us are 100% white or 100% black. In her blog The Tig and her Instagram feed she was funny and helpful, interactive and friendly. Of course, we don’t actually know her personally.  Then again neither does a half sister who has not seen her in decades nor scarcely spoken to her on the phone in said decades either.

Even without a diamond on her hand, a tiara on her head, or a palace to call home we thought of Meghan Markle as a princess. A princess that makes her own way in the world, helps others and never stops being amazed at the power of kindness.