How much bigger than a cat is a large football player?

Kurt Zouma is 6’3″ and 209 lbs/94.8 kg. An average cat is 8 to 10 lb, and only a few inches high. Not exactly a fair fight.

Police have opened inquiries into a video that shows West Ham’s Kurt Zouma kicking and slapping a cat. They are planning a joint investigation with the RSPCA, which has described the footage as “very upsetting”.

Zouma has now apologized. Because what, he thought it was ok to kick and smack an animal a small fraction of his size until people got mad at him?

Originally a comment by Freemage on Even dangerous ideas.

Above and beyond the offensiveness of the position, it’s a crap job of philosophy. I read the article in Daily Nous, and it contained a fairly extensive breakdown of Kershnar’s position, which while more nuanced than the clips being touted by the right wing social media ring, are still utter shite.

He has two prongs to his discussion–he says that sex with minors should be illegal if it is harmful or against their will, but then posits that since it isn’t always harmful or against the minor’s will, there might be cases where it shouldn’t be illegal.

This, frankly, shows a grotesque ignorance of both human psychological development AND legal theory.

First off, there’s an entire body of law that exists not because of the certitude of harm, but because of the extended probability of harm–every OSHA regulation in existence, most driving laws, etc, are all based on the idea that when a particular course of action has a heightened chance of harm (even to oneself–see seat belt laws for adults), it is reasonable for the government to enact regulations and prohibitions when necessary. The fact that some 14-year-old might’ve had sex with an adult and turned out okay despite that does nothing to mitigate the fact that there is a very great risk of harm to the child, which the adult is completely and recklessly ignoring in order to sate their own desires.

As for “against their will”, it’s like the man never heard of age-of-consent laws outside of the context of sex. The fact is, adolescents are not fully formed psychologically, and therefore cannot consent to a great number of things, including signing contracts. Therefore, to talk about ‘against the will’ of the child in this context is absurd–under the law, minors have no ‘will’ to speak of, and duty of care is bestowed on their parents for that reason.

So, fine, he has a free speech right to make these arguments, but by doing so he is demonstrating his complete incompetence as a man who is paid to think things through.

Eric Alterman in the Nation on Todd Gitlin:

Todd was no less devoted to activism and organizing than he was to scholarship. This was harder than it looks. To be an honest intellectual, as I once heard Susan Sontag—another friend and fan of Todd’s—say, is to make distinctions. To be a successful activist, however, requires the elision of such distinctions in the name of movement unity. By the time he died in early February at 79, Todd was the veteran of more movements than most of us can remember hearing of. He spoke at rallies, in classrooms, at dinners, and cocktail parties, just as he published in scholarly sociological publications, on op-ed pages and obscure political websites, in underground zines, student newspapers, and, on occasion, these pages. (During presidential elections, he would auction off private meals to raise money for whoever was the least worst Democratic candidate.) He also wrote books of sociology, history, current events, advice to young activists, as well as poetry and fiction. Todd had something to say about almost everything, and, as Kazin told The New York Times, he sometimes made his points rather testily. But in all these venues, he said the same things. He did not bastardize his views depending on the audience. He did not oversimplify. He made critical distinctions at rallies and spoke personally, from his heart, in graduate seminars. Whether the cause was to revive the 1930s’ labor/intellectual alliance, working to pressure his alma mater, Harvard, to divest from fossil fuels, or voicing his opposition to the academic boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement aimed at Israel, Todd told his complicated truth everywhere he went.

…

Todd’s legacy is larger than can be documented here. He deserves to be remembered not only for his writings about the ’60s but also for his pioneering media criticism and his early critique of academic and left-wing identity politics. It was way back in his 1995 book, The Twilight of Common Dreams, that he observed, “While the right has been busy taking the White House, the left has been marching on the English department.” But I would argue that his primary legacy rests in his ability to combine intellectual complexity and honesty with a lifelong commitment to liberal humanist values, applying all of these simultaneously to whatever collective malady we faced at that time.

Quite a good legacy.

No sooner do I upbraid one collection of strategically vague claims than I find myself reading another.

Louis Theroux has compared pornography to junk food and argued that sex work is a valid occupation in the modern world.

The film-maker returns to BBC2 on Sunday with Forbidden America, a three-part series that explores the adult entertainment industry as it grapples with its own MeToo movement.

Sigh. “Sex work” is feelgood for selling access to one’s body to strangers. “The adult entertainment industry” is feelgood for porn, including violent porn. If you’re going to talk about it, talk about it; don’t pretty it up.

Theroux, 51, told Radio Times that he has watched pornography for the sake of expediency. He admitted: “I’ve been a user of porn. I sort of see it as a bit like . . . maybe this sounds harsh, but it’s a bit like junk food, right?”

Wrong. It’s the opposite of harsh. It’s mollifying. It’s self-excusing. The “junk” in his junk food metaphor here is women – damaged exploited women.

“I genuinely see sex work as work, and valid work, and I know that’s controversial in some quarters,” he said. “These stories are hard to tell, because enlightened, thoughtful, intelligent people can disagree passionately about what it means to be paid to have sex.”

Fun fact: the word “women” doesn’t appear in the piece. Not once. You’d never know there was any power imbalance or exploitation at stake – in fact there’s nothing even indicating why his view is controversial.

Another cancellation?

Philosopher Stephen Kershnar of the State University of New York at Fredonia is barred from campus and teaching, pending an investigation into his recent comments about whether “adult-child sex” is always wrong.

A number of philosophers and free speech advocates have jumped to Kershnar’s defense, arguing that his words have been taken out of context and that academic freedom means nothing if it doesn’t protect even dangerous ideas. Yet other academics believe Kershnar’s comments are troubling enough to make his more than an open-and-shut academic freedom case.

What about this idea that “academic freedom means nothing if it doesn’t protect even dangerous ideas”? All dangerous ideas? No matter how dangerous? What about the “idea” that genocide is good? What about the “idea” that all the Xs should be killed? What about the “idea” that women deserve to be beaten up for disobedience? What about the “idea” that Trump should be forcibly reinstalled in the White House with elections suspended and Princess Ivanka named as his successor? What about the “idea” that the pandemic is a myth?

I’m not convinced that academic freedom is that absolute. Academics aren’t free to be incompetent or fraudulent, and I’m not sure they’re free to be dangerous either.

Fredonia’s University Senate, for instance, is today considering a resolution condemning Kershnar’s “straightforward but factually erroneous oration” as “troublesome, offensive and dangerous, with the potential to normalize attitudes and behaviors that cause great, emotional, psychological and cognitive damage to survivors of child sexual abuse.”

News of the Senate resolution was first reported by philosopher Justin Weinberg, editor of the philosophy blog Daily Nous, who condemned the proposal itself. “One hopes that Prof. Kershnar’s colleagues will not be among those who have fallen for the manipulatively edited video interview footage whose viral spread was initiated by a right-wing social media account known for hit jobs,” Weinberg wrote. “One hopes that these professors will take a moment to actually acquaint themselves with his views or understand the nature of his inquiries before rushing to condemn their colleague.”

Which is interesting, because Weinberg and Daily Nous aren’t generally quite so sympathetic toward “terfs.”

In its own letter to Fredonia, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education said that “Kershnar’s statements are protected by the First Amendment, which prohibits SUNY Fredonia from taking adverse action against faculty members for protected speech, however provocative or offensive it may be to others.”

Yes but “provocative” and “offensive” aren’t the only possibilities. There’s also harm. It’s easy to say that provocative and offensive speech should be free, but not so easy to say that speech that does harm should be free.

I don’t actually know what I think about whether Kershnar should be forbidden or allowed to argue that sex with minors is permissible, but I do think people arguing either way should be clear about what they’re defending.

Turns out Trump stole a bunch of federal property when he skulked back to Mar a Lago.

The National Archives and Records Administration last month retrieved 15 boxes of documents and other items from former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence because the material should have been turned over to the agency when he left the White House, Archives officials said Monday.

That is, because the material wasn’t his to take, that is, he stole it.

Trump advisers deny any nefarious intent and said the boxes contained mementos, gifts, letters from world leaders and other correspondence. The items included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which Trump once described as “love letters,” as well as a letter left for Trump by President Barack Obama, according to two people familiar with the contents.

Interesting but does not touch the point that it was all government property. Those people weren’t writing to him because they like him, they were writing to the office.

Two former advisers described a frenzied packing process in the final days of the administration because Trump did not want to pack or accept defeat for much of the transition.

Which being translated means Trump is so stupid he thought he could just yell “I don’t want to!” and stay there indefinitely.

The National Archives and Records Administration said in a statement that “these records should have been transferred to NARA from the White House at the end of the Trump Administration in January 2021,” and that Trump representatives are “continuing to search” for additional records.

“The Presidential Records Act is critical to our democracy, in which the government is held accountable by the people,” Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero said in the statement. “Whether through the creation of adequate and proper documentation, sound records management practices, the preservation of records, or the timely transfer of them to the National Archives at the end of an Administration, there should be no question as to need for both diligence and vigilance. Records matter.”

Especially records of a criminal pretending to be president.

“I don’t think he did this out of malicious intent to avoid complying with the Presidential Records Act,” one former Trump White House official said. “As long as he’s been in business, he’s been very transactional and it was probably his longtime practice and I don’t think his habits changed when he got to the White House.”

See that’s a pretty pathetic defense. It’s not that he meant to steal them, it’s just that he’s so stupid he can’t grasp that being president is not the same as being a real estate tycoon.

A rebuke:

The Today programme presenter Justin Webb has been partially rebuked by the BBC after he suggested students were lying when they accused a university professor of transphobia.

Introducing Radio 4’s newspaper review last October, Webb said: “And quite a lot of coverage still of Kathleen Stock, the academic from Sussex University who’s been abused by students who accuse her, falsely, of transphobia. She says her union has now effectively ended her career. It’s published a statement of support, not for her but for those who are abusing her.”

Four listeners complained to the BBC that Webb’s use of “falsely” was inaccurate and betrayed a personal opinion. Three also complained of inaccuracy and apparent bias in describing the students who had been protesting against Stock as “abusing her”.

But here’s the problem: saying “students who accuse her of transphobia” would also be inaccurate, in the sense that “transphobia” is a highly loaded and slippery and contentious label. It’s a newish word, and it’s a very convenient weapon against anyone who resists any item in the List of Trans Ideology Rules, no matter how politely and minimally. The word itself reeks of malice and dishonesty, so a good presenter can’t just use it as if it were normal vocabulary.

The BBC’s editorial complaints unit ruled that Webb was not sufficiently accurate when he suggested the accusation of transphobia against Stock had been disproved. This was because the “validity or otherwise of the accusation of transphobia are the heart of the controversy”.

Yes, but so is the validity and meaning of “transphobia.” What is called transphobia is almost always not hatred of trans people at all, but skepticism of the wild truth claims of trans ideology. It’s not phobia to say that Gwyneth Paltrow markets woo, and for the same reasons it’s not phobia to say that trans ideology is yet more woo.

It’s all about the dress. Literally all.

“Science News” is kidding about the “Science” part.

The coronavirus is a danger to babies and pregnant people, and the vaccines are safe, data show

Good science communication is as clear and unambiguous as possible. Pregnancy is not a universal human experience.

We get a story about a pregnant she who got the vax and then

Others who’ve been pregnant during the pandemic haven’t been so sure. Cumulatively, only 42.6 percent of pregnant people ages 18 to 49 have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in the United States as of January 15, before or during their pregnancies.

The campaign to erase women from public discourse continues even in science journalism.

Yet unlike when Yohay rolled up her sleeve almost a year ago, there is now a great deal of data attesting to the safety of COVID-19 vaccination for pregnant individuals and their newborns.

Elegant variation – in one paragraph it’s “people,” in the next it’s “individuals.” There are many ways to avoid saying “women.”

But there’s a slip-up.

The risks from developing COVID-19 when pregnant and unvaccinated were demonstrated again in a recent study from Scotland. From December 2020 until the end of October 2021, a period when vaccines were available, there were 4,950 confirmed coronavirus infections among pregnant women.

Ooops ooops ooops!

All of the babies who died over the course of the study were born to women who weren’t vaccinated when they got COVID-19, the researchers found.

Could the writer be a secret agent?

The highest numbers of U.S. deaths for pregnant individuals, 40 in August and 35 in September, occurred during the delta surge.

There aren’t details yet on how pregnant people fare after becoming ill with the now-dominant omicron variant.

Following orders again, whew.

5 more people, individuals, or those, followed by 5 women. 5 women!! It’s outright rebellion.

There are 21 “women” total in the piece, 19 “people,” and 11 “individuals.” 21 v 30 (and I didn’t count instances of “those” or “others”) so the Correct Term clearly dominated but the Incorrect one put up a fierce struggle. Go wims.

H/t Jim Baerg

Trump may have put himself in worse jeopardy.

Donald Trump’s incendiary call at a Texas rally for his backers to ready massive protests against “radical, vicious, racist prosecutors” could constitute obstruction of justice or other crimes and backfire legally on Trump, say former federal prosecutors.

…

Trump’s rant that his followers should launch the “biggest protests” ever in three cities should prosecutors “do anything wrong or illegal” by criminally charging him for his efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, or for business tax fraud, came at a 30 January rally in Texas where he repeated falsehoods that the election was rigged.

Legal experts were astonished at Trump’s strong hints that if he runs and wins a second term in 2024, he would pardon many of those charged for attacking the Capitol on 6 January last year in hopes of thwarting Biden’s certification by Congress.

John Dean said it was the stuff of dictators, which of course applies to a lot of what Trump has said and done, in and out of office.

Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor who is of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy, told the Guardian Trump “may have shot himself in the foot” with the comments. “Criminal intent can be hard to prove, but when a potential defendant says something easily seen as intimidating or threatening to those investigating the case it becomes easier,” Aftergut said.

Aftergut added that having proclaimed “his support for the insurrectionists, Trump added evidence of his corrupt intent on January 6 should the DOJ prosecute him for aiding the seditious conspiracy, or for impeding an official proceeding of Congress”.

Other than that he should be ok.

Ex-prosecutors say that Trump’s Texas comments are dangerous and could legally boomerang as the prosecutors appear to have new momentum.

“Our criminal laws seek to hold people accountable for their purposeful actions,” Paul Pelletier, a former acting chief of the fraud section at DOJ, said. “Trump’s history of inciting people to violence demonstrates that his recent remarks are likely to cause a disruption of the pending investigations against him and family members.”

Pelletier added: “Should his conduct actually impede any of these investigations, federal and state obstruction statutes could easily compound Mr Trump’s criminal exposure.”

Also, he’s pissing off the prosecutors, which is probably not a brilliant idea either.

Trump’s remarks resonated especially in Georgia, where former prosecutors say he may now face new legal problems. Former prosecutor Aftergut noted that [Georgia DA Fani] Willis understood the threat when she quickly asked the FBI to provide protection at the courthouse, and he predicted that the immediate effect on the deputy DAs working on the case would be “to energize them in pursuing the case”.

“You’re threatening us, Goldilocks? Ok, game on.”

In a similar vein, ex-ambassador Norm Eisen and States United Democracy Center co-chair said Trump’s call for protests in Atlanta, New York and Washington if prosecutors there charge him “certainly sounds like a barely veiled call for violence. That’s particularly true when you combine it with his other statements at the Texas rally about how the last crowd of insurrectionists are being mistreated and did no wrong”.

In other words he’s openly calling for a repeat of January 6 only worse. Let’s hope that backfires on him as opposed to succeeding.

This garbage again. Boys are to be ambitious and strong, girls are to be humble and kind. It might as well be shirts marketed to slave-owners and slaves respectively.

A bestselling author has criticised Primark over a “sexist” children’s clothing line that encourages girls to be “grateful”, “humble” and “always perfect” while telling boys to be more assertive.

Kate Long, a teacher and novelist, condemned the “hugely sexist messaging” she found emblazoned on many of the retailer’s clothes for children. On a visit to a Primark in Chester, Long found tops for girls that had printed on them phrases such as: “Be kind”, “Kindness always wins”, “Grateful, humble and optimistic” and “Be good, do good”.

The messages displayed on boys’ clothing encouraged them to be more ambitious and self-assured. One read: “Change the game. Rewrite the rules. Go for it. Born to win.” Another read: “Explore. Nothing holding you back,” and a third said: “You are limitless.”

It could hardly be more unabashedly sexist if it sat down and worked out a plan.

No doubt the people who design this shit and the people who sell it will say it’s what parents want, but I don’t believe that. It’s not written in the stars that shirts have to have Messages written on them in the first place, and if you’re going to insist on putting Messages on shirts there are surely plenty of exhortations that are gender-neutral. Boys should be kind too after all, and girls should reach for the stars.

This is good.

The discussion is lively.

Yes, and when Woman’s Hour discusses rape do they make sure to include plenty of rapists? When Woman’s Hour looks at harassment and abuse of women do they invite enough abusers for balance?

This should be interesting.

I’ll listen later. The first thought that occurs to me is that the consequences aren’t all that unintended. Some of the intention may not be fully conscious – we’re good at lying to ourselves about why we’re being shits – but some of it has to be, especially now, when the consequences have been so thoroughly and emphatically explained.

Because men are the real people while women are the afterthought.

The language game – tricks all the way down.

One, “minority.” Montgomerie is a white man, but he’s pretending to be part of an oppressed minority (which is what “minority” is shorthand for in these contexts). White men as such are not an oppressed minority. It could be that he’s homeless or disabled or an immigrant but I don’t think he is any of those things.

Two, “healthcare.” The medical experimentation done on trans people isn’t healthcare; it’s more like malpractice.

Rachel Cooke reviews Laurie Penny’s new “feminist” book:

If the tone of this book is almost comically relentless – if Penny, whose pronouns are they/them, says something once, they say it 54 times – it’s also oddly reminiscent of a superannuated self-help manual, its assumptions seemingly based mostly on the experiences of its author and their friends, a focus group to whom every possible Bad Thing has happened at least once (so handy).

…

For the reader, especially the reader who has never read a book or a newspaper, never watched any television or seen a film, Penny has all sorts of revelations.

Ouch! That does sound so exactly like LP – forever pointing out the obvious as if she’d only just noticed it.

But don’t be disheartened. Penny has good news, too. Like them, we may eventually be able to overcome our addiction to “predators with pretty eyes and a vacancy for a secret side-piece”. We may even wind up loving ourselves instead of just waiting around “for a man” to find us lovable (for someone who identifies as gender-queer, and who therefore has some trouble with the word woman, which does not reflect her “lived experience”, Penny uses “man” with an abandon that is quite dizzying).

Well you see men don’t have cis privilege, so it’s fine to talk about them, but women oppress trans women just by existing, so they have to be deleted from the discourse at all times.

Most crucially of all, something is now – out in the world, I mean – fighting to break out, as if from a shell: something “wet and angry”, with “claws”. By this, I think Penny is referring to the ongoing activism that was stirred by #MeToo, but I suppose it is possible – I’m troubled by the word “wet” – that I’ve got this entirely wrong.

If only Laurie Penny could write as well as Rachel Cooke.

(For a second I thought “But she would still be Laurie Penny,” but then I realized no, she wouldn’t. You have to be able to think well in order to write well, and a Laurie Penny who could think well would be a very different Laurie Penny indeed.)

But the reader waits in vain for Penny to offer solutions to the injustice she describes, for serious analysis of any kind. The best they can do is to suggest that affordable childcare might be of help. No shit, Sherlock.

The chapter devoted to sex work is utterly enraging, and not only because Penny clearly knows so little about it (where are the interviews, the statistics, the thoughts of experts in this field?). Having painstakingly explained that many women enjoy sex – that they do not, contrary to the old myths, only endure it, the better to keep their men happy – Penny then accuses those women, feminists and others, who are critical of the sex industry of, yes, a sort of twisted envy, because why should some women get paid for what others have to do for free? I’m afraid I clutched my own pearls (inherited, I should say, from a grandmother who left school at 13) at this point.

Having spent half of my life hoping for feminism’s revival – for it to be, if not fashionable, then proudly worn and meaningfully directed – it is lowering beyond words to see a serious publisher describe this ill-edited, ill-considered drivel as a manifesto for the cause. This isn’t feminism. This is a swizz.

But if it identifies as feminism…?

Sarah Ditum reviews Grace Lavery’s book for the Times:

And there is so much penis here. Not just in the title (if there’s a better literary pun this year than A Heartbreaking of Work of Staggering Penis, I’ll be highly surprised), but all the way through. On the first page, Lavery is having penis trouble. Since starting on hormones, she’s been experiencing semi-erections: her penis (a phrase I pray I never get used to writing) feels “as though I were laying my own miscarried foetus across my hand”.

Ah yes that’s very Lavery. He knows it will infuriate, and that’s why he does it. He loves to taunt women that way.

While trans-inclusive feminist writers speak delicately about identity, Lavery goes on a taboo-trashing rampage. She doesn’t quite ascend to the outrageous heights of fellow trans author Andrea Long Chu (whose 2020 book Females: A Concern defined the “barest essentials” of “femaleness” as “an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes”), but Lavery seems to have a good time trying to match them.

Life would be so dreary and empty if men like Chu and Lavery couldn’t taunt women and get applauded for it by people who consider themselves feminists.

… this is a relentlessly non-standard memoir. Chronology is smashed up, genres are rifled, truth is very rarely the point. “I’m not trying to be clever,” she says at one point, before adding, “obviously the book in general is an attempt to be clever”. But the fourth-wall breaking and self-referentiality gets tired fast: BS Johnson, but with narcissism instead of mordant self-loathing.

I suspect Lavery is too busy loathing women to have time to loathe himself. Besides…would he ever?

Yeah no.

“People are more than their sex organs. People are more than their sex organs, you cannot reduce a human being down to their sex organs. I’m a woman, it does not matter what is in my pants.”

Yeah it does. Knowing which is which isn’t “reducing people down to” anything, it’s just knowing which is which. We need to know which is which, for a whole slew of reasons, including safety. Vehement guy with curly hair telling us otherwise is just wrong.

“It is not about physicality, woman is something far deeper and far more complex than that.”

Yes, physicality is so crude and simple and of the earth earthy, we Platonists and spiritualists know that is all dross and what matters is the soul.

Adults who work at a university?

Lecturers at a leading university are being given guidance on neopronouns, which include emoji labels and catgender, where someone identifies as a feline.

There are no “neopronouns.” There is slang, argot, jargon, dialect, in-group code, and so on – but no neopronouns. Nobody needs lectures on how to make discourse more muddled and laborious and full of traps.

The University of Bristol has provided guidance for its staff on “using pronouns at work”, urging them to declare in verbal introductions and email signatures whether they use he/him, she/her or they/them, to support transgender students.

Even the Telegraph can’t get it right. We don’t “use” the pronouns other people refer to us – it’s the other people who use them, and it’s nonsense to talk about “using” the pronouns other people call us. Also, this nonsense does nothing to “support transgender students.”

But unlike myriad pronoun manuals on other campuses, Bristol lecturers are also directed to neopronouns which include “emojiself pronouns”, where colourful digital icons – commonplace on social media – are used to represent gender in written and spoken conversation.

Naturally. Thin end of the wedge, innit – unless it’s mockery. How, by the way, does one use a colorful digital icon to represent gender in spoken conversation? Does one keep little digital icons in one’s pocket to whip out on these occasions?

Another section explains how noun-self pronouns are used by “xenic” individuals whose gender does not fit within “the Western human binary of gender alignments”. The webpage adds: “For example, someone who is catgender may use nya/nyan pronouns.”

Catgender, it says, is someone who “strongly identifies” with cats or other felines and those who “may experience delusions relating to being a cat or other feline”. The word nyan is Japanese for “meow”.

This may all be very meaningful for small groups of intense post-adolescents who haven’t grown up enough yet, but for actual functioning adults working in universities it’s an insult.

The Telegraph understands that a University of Bristol staff member was invited to a meeting with a senior diversity manager after objecting to being encouraged to add pronouns to emails, fearing that it undermined the concept of binary biological sex.

Ah a senior diversity manager was it. There’s your problem right there.

Speaking of oversharing and related issues…poor old Hazza is becoming such a joke. It’s a funny joke though, so I’m not complaining.

I see from his latest video that Prince Harry, living in California, is now fluent in Peloton, or at least some kind of Yoga-with-Adrienne-style “mental toolbox” iterative blah. Speaking from beneath a sprig of newly farmed carrot hair with a panel of sculpted execs, the prince explained in an interview on Thursday for his wellness app how he dealt with the extreme mental burden of living in a $14 million mansion with 16 loos.

Every day he strives for “mental fitness”. He will try to find a “slate of white space” after the school run. “I now put in half an hour or 45 minutes in the morning when one of the kids has gone to school and the other is taking a nap,” he said.

Ah yes, he “puts in” that 30 to 45 minutes – sweating at the coal face.

How does he think it looks to claim he has suffered from “burnout” when the most stressful thing he now experiences is probably the occasional subpar morning affirmation and not-quite-right American-style grass? Burnout from what, anyway? From taking four private jets a week? From his wife? Everything he says assumes poor mental health is the default, which is, in itself, mad.

Burnout from being absurd, maybe?

I wonder what the Kween herself is thinking as she watches Harry’s latest attempt to dress up navel-gazing as “boldly committing to inner work”. Today is the beginning of her Platinum Jubilee — or, as one run of souvenir crockery hilariously misspelt it, her “Platinum Jubbly”.

As a woman who specialises in sincere, short and savagely to-the-point haikus — “recollections may vary” — she must look at Harry with his sprawling, meaningless bromides and wonder what has gone wrong in the past 70 years.

To be fair, that’s the other end of the spectrum as opposed to a happy or sensible or compromise middle. There’s excessive navel gazing on the one hand and there’s not looking behind the curtains at all ever on the other hand.

Harry claims he is now so mentally fragile that he needs to surround himself with “people who I would happily have washing the [mental] windscreen”. Charles, of course, calls such people “valets”. I find it interesting that nearly everything Harry speaks about involves not what he can do for others but what others can do for him.

That’s the thing. So many people confuse “thinking” with “thinking about the self.” There’s an infinite supply of things to think about that are not the self. Bonus: doing that tends to put the self in perspective, at least a little. You get your “the problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world” from directing your attention out instead of in, and that’s a good thing.