What to do with Meghan Markle? Or, sorry — Meghan Sussex, as in the Duchess of, which she informs Mindy Kaling she prefers to be called on her new Netflix lifestyle show, With Love, Meghan.

It can be difficult to know what to think of Meghan Markle/Sussex from day to day.

Meghan (let’s keep things simple and stick to first names, shall we?) has been caught in such a bizarre public trap for so long that it’s hard to get an objective look at her. A lot of the criticism of her is rooted in racism and misogyny, levied in such bad faith that it’s easy to brush aside: the fury, for instance, over her decision to step down as an active member of the royal family in 2020. On the other hand, there’s also criticism that is more worrisome if true, like all those disconcertingly consistent rumors that she’s cruel to her employees.

In the midst of this good faith/bad faith slurry — a word Meghan apparently learns for the first time on With Love, Meghan — there’s more questionable stuff that’s hard to evaluate, the criticism based on the sense that Meghan’s vibes are just kind of unpleasant. People think that she acts too perfect, that she’s boring, that she relies too much on people’s goodwill from her time as a punching bag for the royal family without producing anything new to justify her and Prince Harry’s multimillion-dollar media deals.

Anyone is within their rights to say that a public figure rubs them the wrong way. All the same, the whole country just watched savvy crisis management firms bend public opinion against first Amber Heard and then Blake Lively, each time working with little more than a sense that both women were sometimes rude in public. Does someone like Meghan Markle (shoot, Sussex), who has had the British tabloids writing nonstop hate propaganda about her for eight years, really stand a chance?

And yet: I see her tell guest Mindy Kaling that her name is Meghan Sussex now, and I cringe. I cringed my way through a lot of With Love, Meghan.

I don’t know if Meghan Sussex is a bad person, or an annoying one. That’s frankly not my business and........

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