Meghan Markle shrugs off ‘disaster tourist’ insult and returns to help fire displaced students and teens

By now Meghan Markle is more than accustomed to letting insults slide off her like water off a duck’s back. From the nanosecond she was associated with Prince Harry her every action, outfit, comment, and facial expression has been dissected by a legion of onlookers. For some, whatever she chooses to do will be the wrong decision.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that Markle appears supremely unaffected by the torrent of anger that’s come her way over the last week for *checks notes* uh, delivering charitable aid to those affected by the Los Angeles fires. Truly, she is history’s greatest monster.

Harry and Meghan’s appearance over the weekend at the Pasadena Convention Center certainly drew headlines, with the couple helping officials distribute food and supplies to those who lost their homes in the blaze. Markle was born and raised in Los Angeles and while her Montecito home wasn’t affected by the disaster, it’s perhaps understandable she’d want to help out.

But the haters weren’t buying it, dismissing the couple as “disaster tourists.” Family Ties star Justine Bateman delivered a spectacularly venomous critique, billing the Sussexes as “repulsive”:

A “source” angrily pushed back against this to Page Six, saying: “It’s offensive to Meghan and Harry that anybody would think this is merely a photo opportunity. Meghan was born and raised in Los Angeles so this is, and always will be, home to her.” They underlined that Markle is “not just a tourist” and that her “heart is completely broken for all the lives that have been lost and for those whose homes have been destroyed in these fires.”

Well, Markle clearly didn’t get the memo that distributing charitable aid is being a self-centered “ambulance chaser” because she’s back at it. Yesterday she made an appearance at the Altadena Girls Fire Recovery Fund with bags of donations, dressed down in an “L.A.” baseball cap, jeans, and plain t-shirt:

Notably, Markle isn’t even the focus of the video, nor is she even tagged in the description. In fact, were you to casually watch it you might not even realize she was in it. Whether that’s a conscious effort to avoid making this visit about Markle, or simply that the charity decided they wanted to keep the focus on the community is unclear. But, seriously, it doesn’t particularly matter.

Even if you accept the most negative interpretation of Markle’s actions – that she’s cynically exploiting a tragedy as she knows it’s good PR – she’s ultimately still doing charitable work. After all, if your home and all your possessions have been reduced to cinders, a bag of new clothes is a bag of new clothes, regardless of the motivations behind it.

At this point, the army of Markle haters wouldn’t change their minds about her even if she single-handedly cured cancer, negotiated world peace, and solved global warming, so perhaps it’s best she simply pays them no mind and gets on with her life. That said, her Netflix cooking show does look really bad, so maybe we should reserve opinion on her saintliness until after that’s premiered.