Despite his being the spitting image of James Hewitt, I think we can lay all questions surrounding Prince Harry's parentage to rest. That kid shares significant genetic material with Prince Philip. The foot-in-mouth gene just skipped a generation.
I mean... referring to a (sleeping) fellow officer as 'our little Paki friend'... It's at least on a par with Prince Philip's memorable pearl of advice to british students in China: 'Don't stay here too long, you'll go all slitty-eyed'. It's Charles I feel sorry for. The poor bloke actually seems to possess some sensitivity... must be a recessive gene...
I mention the fact that Harry's 'friend' Ahmed was asleep for a reason. Love Prince Philip or hate him, one thing he isn't is duplicitous. if he wants to know if African people still throw spears, he comes right out and asks them. Yes, it's uncouth, naive, un-P.C... but it's fundamentally honest.
What Harry did wasn't friendly army banter between equals. He wasn't saying. 'Oi, Ahmed, you Paki!' in a jovial and irreverent way. He was mocking someone he evidently regarded as inferior (hello, "little friend"? Even without the 'Paki' in there, it makes him even more of a condescending upper class twit than you might expect), and effectively, he was doing it behind Ahmed's back for the amusement of his other (white) friends. Also, no, random guy I heard on Radio 4 this morning, It is not the same as you being called 'Taffy' because you're Welsh. Paki, is not like Jock, Taffy, Paddy etc. these are racist labels, yes, with a history of oppression behind them, yes, but they don't have the clout as an insult that words like Paki and nigger have, words that have been used in conjuction with CONTEMPORARY racial hate crimes. Words that were the last thing victims of racial murders heard as they lost conciousness. That is the difference.
I'm not even starting on the homophobic stuff. A girl's only got so much spleen to vent. Of that more later.
WG
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment