I'M JUST MILD ABOUT HARRY

I've never seen an interviewer dressed like a royal.

Despite my current no-news policy, it wasn't a difficult decision to watch Anderson
Cooper's interview with Prince Harry on 60 Minutes. This was just another celebrity plugging his new book, the kind of thing you'd see on your average talk show -- ironically, something I usually avoid. What strange times we live in!

Unlike Oprah Winfrey's five-hankie sit-down with Harry & Meghan, Anderson Cooper kept emotion on the back burner turned to low, despite family dramas ranging from a mother killed in a car crash to having a father with the emotional range of a shoehorn. And considering Harry's lived a lifetime of reporters, photographers and videographers trailing him like pack of well-trained bloodhounds, it's remarkable he was as calm as he was. 

It can't be too serious if the holiday
contest is on the top of the page.

Harry came off pretty well, I thought, during the first half of the interview. Really, you have to feel some sympathy for a guy who, through no fault of his own, almost literally grew up in the spotlight. You and I likely did one or two or twelve or thirty-seven stupid things during the first 20 or so years of our lives -- stuff you've either forgotten or, in my case, simply refuse to remember. 

Maybe not as really stupid as wearing a Nazi outfit at a costume party (a move he now blames on William and Kate). But even if you had, the world wouldn't have found out the next day. Because not only were you not the son of a prince and princess, you likely didn't have friends willing to betray you by sneaking a pic of you and selling it to the British press. A British press that thrives on scandal the way hyenas do a wildebeest at dinner time.

Here's where you have to forget all that royalty stuff, though. And I know it's difficult when Harry's "Screw My Family" tour appears on your newsfeeds, the front pages, and seemingly every channel of your TV. (In addition to 60 Minutes, he's been making the scene with Stephen Colbert and Good Morning America. If only Ellen DeGeneres still had her show instead of livestreaming the raging river outside her home!) 

"And he got to a wear a cool uniform at Granny's
funeral and I wasn't allowed to! No fair!"

Take away everything in Harry's life that has to do with royalty. Focus on his complaints about his family:

• My  big brother didn't want to be seen with me when we were teenagers!     Take a number, Harry my boy. 
• I got into a fight with my big brother and he pushed me! Count your blessings -- some siblings shoot each other. 
• My father didn't console me the right way. Gee, he must be, um, a typical father who was raised the same way. 
• My family freaked out because my girlfriend was half black! Look, Harry, that open arms stuff happens only in San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. Everybody else fakes it. Not excusing, just explaining.

 Let me pour you a martini, Harry, while I break the news to you: This is life as the rest of the world experiences it.

Celebrities! They're just like us!

As for Harry's insistence of retaining his title after he's quit the job, all the while claiming to want a reconciliation with the family he's just hung out to dry like yesterday's wash, I'm not sure if he's extraordinarily naïve, a blooming idiot, or trying to make himself look like a nice guy. Whichever it is, none are a good fit.

Harry, too, might want to rethink how much of that Random House and Netflix booty he's going to donate to charities. Now that he's off the royal payroll, he and the missus are going to have to figure out another way to make a buck. You can tell a story just so many times before your audience gets to the punchline first. And, worse, you quit a job that paid $6.9 million a year. Most people have to put up with family crap for nothing.

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