Blame It On Meghan

Congratulation, Meghan Markle. You are now Yoko Ono.

Is it fair? Of course not. Last week I thought, “Here come the Yoko comparisons,” and within ten minutes, I saw the memes. A staunch conservative friend of mine who doesn’t fit the stereotype (not religious, has gay friends, appreciates good music, has never posted anything about Trump EVER on social media, helped me build this website years ago, not an asshole) posted that it was the funniest thing he’d seen all week. It was NOT the funniest thing I had seen all week. For starters, since I was expecting it, I saw it coming. It was obvious. The other thing is, why are sexism and racism still funny?

Yes. Not only is blaming Meghan Markle for Prince Harry wanting to be less involved with his royal family sexist, but it’s also racist. How so? You never heard anyone blame Linda McCartney for the breakup for The Beatles. What does that have to do with Meghan Markle? Bear with.

Yoko Ono, the wife of John Lennon (duh), is blamed for breaking up the world’s greatest band and songwriting team in history. But the person who officially broke up the band was Paul McCartney, who made the public announcement and filed for the legal dissolution of the band’s partnership. Sure, every member had left the group in a tantrum in the middle of a recording session at some point, but it was Paul who officially killed The Beatles. Should we blame his wife?

I don’t think Linda McCartney broke up The Beatles, but if you’re going to take blame away from the people who were actually in the band and lay it on a wife, then why poor Yoko? Is it because she’s artistic and played music with John? Uh, Linda did that too. The reason Yoko is blamed is that she’s not white. And if you go with that she wasn’t British and cast her as an outsider nationally, Linda wasn’t British either.

And why would Yoko break up The Beatles? Did she manipulate John to believe he didn’t need Paul? He already knew he didn’t need Paul. Hell, even Ringo didn’t need Paul as he had his own number one hits (he needed George, who wrote “Photograph” for him). Paul didn’t need John either. They were geniuses and they both wrote incredible music post-Beatles (despite “Silly Love Songs” and “The Girl Is Mine”). But if it was Yoko’s desire for John to be a bigger star than The Beatles, she failed as John spent the bulk of his time between the band’s breakup and his untimely death holed up in the Dakota being a house husband and recording uncompleted songs on cassette tapes in his living for the band to finish up a decade and a half after his death (still better than “Silly Love Songs”).

If you’re going to blame Yoko for breaking up The Beatles, then maybe we should give her credit for the solo songs “Baby, I’m Amazed,” “Band On The Run,” “War Is Over,” and finally…”Imagine.” Instead, today her name is synonymous with women who break up good things. If we’re going to hate anyone for what they did to the greatest rock and roll band of all time, hate Phil Specter (rapist, indeed). People were blaming Yoko Ono for breaking up The Beatles before The Beatles ever broke up. But The Beatles were never going to last forever. You can’t keep two genius songwriters from flying out on their own. For example: Look at the rock band Kiss and their two main songwriters, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley. After nearly 50 years, they’re still together.

John Lennon was an adult at the time capable of making his own decisions. No “tiger woman” had him under a spell forcing his hand, which he joked about in “The Ballad of John and Yoko.” But the fact is, the only one who broke up The Beatles were The Beatles.

But going with a narrative without information is par for the course when it comes to being a conservative. If you design a meme correctly and blame Meghan Markle for pissing off the Queen, Republicans will probably believe she’s the reason we’ll never get another “Bohemian Rhapsody.” At this very moment, conservative bots are sharing bullshit all over the internet claiming that arson in Australia is proof climate change doesn’t exist.

And it’s not just the bots. Rupert Murdoch’s news empire in Australia, where his empire started, is hot (no pun intended) on the false narrative too. While scientists state 3 to 5% of Australia’s wildfires are caused by arson, Murdoch’s outlets are claiming it’s not a climate emergency, but an arson emergency.

Climate change still exists. Even if all of the fires could be blamed on arson, drier and hotter seasons enable these fires to spread further, last longer and destroy more of our environment. Climate change causes it to destroy more personal property and lives. Saying arson is proof climate change doesn’t exist is really just as stupid as blaming Meghan Markle for the wildfires…or Harry distancing himself from his royal responsibilities.

And dammit, right-wing fucknuts. Stop blaming the black girl every time.

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