{"id":666,"date":"2010-05-26T07:50:07","date_gmt":"2010-05-26T07:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html"},"modified":"2010-05-26T07:50:07","modified_gmt":"2010-05-26T07:50:07","slug":"the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html","title":{"rendered":"The tawdry Sarah Ferguson scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"<form mt:asset-id=\"14271\" class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\" style=\"display: inline;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sarah-ferguson-pic-splash-683981332.jpg\" width=\"450\" height=\"331\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"text-align: center; display: block; margin: 0 auto 20px;\" \/><\/form>\n<p>Believe it or not, that haggard woman is Sarah Ferguson, the erstwhile Duchess of York, getting off the plane in L.A. after being hit with a Mack truck of a scandal back home in England. Did you see the video of the undercover sting carried out by a British tabloid, in which Fergie sold access to her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, for $40,000 in cash and 500,000 pounds more, supposedly to be wired into her account. Except the influence-buyer was really a journalist in disguise. Here&#8217;s the video, in which the spendthrift former royal complains that &#8220;I have not a pot to p*ss in&#8221;:<object width=\"640\" height=\"385\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/kB1gN2VEAL0&#038;border=1&#038;color1=0x3a3a3a&#038;color2=0x999999&#038;hl=en_US&#038;feature=player_embedded&#038;fs=1\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/kB1gN2VEAL0&#038;border=1&#038;color1=0x3a3a3a&#038;color2=0x999999&#038;hl=en_US&#038;feature=player_embedded&#038;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowScriptAccess=\"always\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\"><\/embed><\/object>Boy, you just don&#8217;t recover from that kind of thing, do you? No wonder the Windsors gave her a small settlement when her marriage to Andrew ended. One suspects they accurately took the measure of that woman&#8217;s character early on. I told a friend the other day, &#8220;This makes me feel sorry for the Windsors,&#8221; to which he replied, &#8220;Let&#8217;s not be hasty.&#8221; It must be said, though, that while Fergie is completely responsible for this disaster, the ethics of a newspaper, even a tabloid newspaper, that sets up a woman who no longer has any real power, and who is known to be weak with money, for a fall like this &#8212; well, the ethics of the stingers are just about as sick-making as the ethics of the stingee. <b>UPDATE:<\/b> On the other hand, I can see a case that knowing that someone like Sarah Ferguson, who has extremely rare access to the royal family, though she&#8217;s technically no longer a member of it, is going around representing herself as an influence-peddler, would be important information for the public to have, if only to discredit her and thereby stop her in her tracks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Believe it or not, that haggard woman is Sarah Ferguson, the erstwhile Duchess of York, getting off the plane in L.A. after being hit with a Mack truck of a scandal back home in England. Did you see the video of the undercover sting carried out by a British tabloid, in which Fergie sold access&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-morals"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The tawdry Sarah Ferguson scandal - Rod Dreher<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The tawdry Sarah Ferguson scandal - Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Believe it or not, that haggard woman is Sarah Ferguson, the erstwhile Duchess of York, getting off the plane in L.A. after being hit with a Mack truck of a scandal back home in England. Did you see the video of the undercover sting carried out by a British tabloid, in which Fergie sold access&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-05-26T07:50:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/sarah-ferguson-pic-splash-683981332.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rod Dreher\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The tawdry Sarah Ferguson scandal - Rod Dreher","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The tawdry Sarah Ferguson scandal - Rod Dreher","og_description":"Believe it or not, that haggard woman is Sarah Ferguson, the erstwhile Duchess of York, getting off the plane in L.A. after being hit with a Mack truck of a scandal back home in England. Did you see the video of the undercover sting carried out by a British tabloid, in which Fergie sold access&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html","og_site_name":"Rod Dreher","article_published_time":"2010-05-26T07:50:07+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/sarah-ferguson-pic-splash-683981332.jpg"}],"author":"Rod Dreher","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html","name":"The tawdry Sarah Ferguson scandal - Rod Dreher","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/sarah-ferguson-pic-splash-683981332.jpg","datePublished":"2010-05-26T07:50:07+00:00","dateModified":"2010-05-26T07:50:07+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#\/schema\/person\/0eb55fec41ac37c5cdc76396861852db"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/sarah-ferguson-pic-splash-683981332.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/roddreher\/sarah-ferguson-pic-splash-683981332.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/2010\/05\/the-tawdry-sarah-ferguson-scandal.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The tawdry Sarah Ferguson scandal"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/","name":"Rod Dreher","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#\/schema\/person\/0eb55fec41ac37c5cdc76396861852db","name":"Rod Dreher","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2e1\/2e1e526772cb318f0168aec327715d02x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2e1\/2e1e526772cb318f0168aec327715d02x96.jpg","caption":"Rod Dreher"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/author\/rdreher"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/roddreher\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}