Harry Windsor and the Half-Wit Prince
What the hell is wrong with young Prince Harry of Wales? In 2005, he was busted for going to a costume party dressed as a Nazi officer, complete with swastika armband. I can imagine his great-grandmother the Queen Mum, who stuck it out like a good 'un in London during the Blitz, boxing his royal and apparently tin ears for that one.
And now a tape surfaces of young Prince Harry calling a colleague and fellow soldier "our little Paki friend" and referring to him as a "raghead." Surely at some point someone must have told him that this is not exactly the way to foster warriorly camaraderie in the troops? I like to think that his mother would have smacked him good had she heard that...and I hope his father gave him a talking-to. Even Prince Hal of yore had more sensitivity than that.
He certainly seems to be the less mentally endowed of the Wales boys. Wills is no academic whiz, but at least he looks to have a grasp on certain realities that his younger bro appears incapable of achieving. Pakis and ragheads, forsooth! One might as well call the Mountbatten-Windsor family a pack of feckless Krauts...oh, wait...no, no, just kidding.
Anyway, the Brits have always had a breathtakingly insensitive approach to such things. It was only in the Sixties that it finally occurred to them that using "nigger-brown" as a descriptor for the color dark brown might not be an entirely terrific idea. True story! I heard and read it myself, back then: salesmen sold nigger-brown shoes, or wool coats...and there was an inn-keeper in Glastonbury once who had my jaw hitting the fourteenth-century floor with a thing or two she said in conversation. But she was from South Africa, so perhaps her prejudice could be explained, though never excused. Stupid racist cow.
Prince Harry's tin ear does not clang alone, it would seem.
So he issues yet another half-baked "apology", but I bet you dollars to doughnuts he feels put-upon and picked-on and still can't see what he did wrong. Good thing he's the spare, not the heir. Otherwise, I could see the fulfillment of something I once dreamed, long ago: King Henry the Ninth, last king of England...which would make me sad, really.
And now a tape surfaces of young Prince Harry calling a colleague and fellow soldier "our little Paki friend" and referring to him as a "raghead." Surely at some point someone must have told him that this is not exactly the way to foster warriorly camaraderie in the troops? I like to think that his mother would have smacked him good had she heard that...and I hope his father gave him a talking-to. Even Prince Hal of yore had more sensitivity than that.
He certainly seems to be the less mentally endowed of the Wales boys. Wills is no academic whiz, but at least he looks to have a grasp on certain realities that his younger bro appears incapable of achieving. Pakis and ragheads, forsooth! One might as well call the Mountbatten-Windsor family a pack of feckless Krauts...oh, wait...no, no, just kidding.
Anyway, the Brits have always had a breathtakingly insensitive approach to such things. It was only in the Sixties that it finally occurred to them that using "nigger-brown" as a descriptor for the color dark brown might not be an entirely terrific idea. True story! I heard and read it myself, back then: salesmen sold nigger-brown shoes, or wool coats...and there was an inn-keeper in Glastonbury once who had my jaw hitting the fourteenth-century floor with a thing or two she said in conversation. But she was from South Africa, so perhaps her prejudice could be explained, though never excused. Stupid racist cow.
Prince Harry's tin ear does not clang alone, it would seem.
So he issues yet another half-baked "apology", but I bet you dollars to doughnuts he feels put-upon and picked-on and still can't see what he did wrong. Good thing he's the spare, not the heir. Otherwise, I could see the fulfillment of something I once dreamed, long ago: King Henry the Ninth, last king of England...which would make me sad, really.
posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison | 1:50 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home