Politico Magazine has dubbed Meghan Markle a “narcissist” in a piece profiling the year of 2022 for those who “used attention as currency and ego as fuel.” Markle’s inclusion in the piece, titled “The Year We All Finally Got Tired of the Narcissists,” was met with pushback on social media, where many argued Politico could not tell the difference between narcissism and “a Black woman standing up for herself.” A senior Reuters correspondent called Markle’s inclusion in the list “demented.” The piece did try to differentiate Markle from others like Elon Musk, Kanye West, and Elizabeth Holmes, noting that “the Sussexes’ addiction to the public eye is benign.” But the author argued that Harry and Meghan’s new Netflix series was essentially evidence of the same narcissistic instincts. “The overreach that led to the Sussexes’ critically panned mega-series is the same impulse that turned Elon Musk into a terror on Twitter, that prompted Ye to up the ante of outrageous behavior until he crossed the line into blatant antisemitism, that sent Bankman-Fried from the top of the world to a Bahamian jail,” the author wrote. When reached by The Daily Beast, Politico spokesperson Brad Dayspring said: “The purpose of opinion writing and commentary is to engage readers and provoke thought. The writer shares a belief, the reader reacts with their own—sometimes agreement, sometimes not. Regardless, diversity of thought is not only welcome, but encouraged.”

—Zachary Petrizzo contributed reporting