James Lileks: The Prince? He's an Idiot

The Minneapolis/St Paul Star Tribune ^ | January 18, 2005 | James Lileks

[quidnunc]

In case you missed last week's truly big story: Prince Harry, one of those royal things of which the English are so unaccountably indulgent, showed up at a costume party wearing a swastika. Instant scandal! Why? Oh, some might find it a bit déclassé for the scion of the British Empire to lounge around dressed like Hitler's driver, but really. Please. Maybe he was dressed up as a good, decent party member. Just because someone was a Nazi doesn't mean they were bad, after all. Lots of ordinary people were Nazis; you want to demonize them all? I know they did some bad things, but they suffered terribly in the war. Bygones be bygones, etc. Everyone relax.

Of course I am not serious. I'm just saying what everyone would say if he showed up wearing a hammer and sickle or a Che shirt.

I was thinking about just this very matter when "Meteor" came on TV the other night. It's a bad disaster movie with Sean Connery as a gruff Scottish scientist saving the world from a large piece of driftwood rolling towards earth. We know he's a man of principle, because he scowls and swears a lot, and Takes No Guff from Anyone. (See also, Jerk.) The American military is represented in the film by Martin Landau, who sums up perfectly the view in 1979 of our nation's generals: a humorless, hysterical psychotic who would prefer to see the earth blasted into kibbles 'n' bits rather than work with the Soviets. Then we meet the Soviet scientist, Sean Connery's counterpart: Brian Keith, from "A Family Affair." Cultured, scholarly, twinkle-eyed, loves his vodka, given to occasional passionate outbursts — you know those Slavs! — and a stark contrast to the raving nutcase. A delightful character.

-snip-

[hiredhand]

I lived in England for nearly all of the 1990s. I know a good many veteran pensioners who would have thrashed this little moron for such a brainless act....prince, or no prince.

[pipecorp]

Who's the bigger idiot, the guy who doesn't have to work a day in his life and has everything handed to him on a silver platter? Or is it the guy who has to work all his life for a pittance and pays for the first guy?

[ez]

Steyn - " But a good indication of societal decadence is when it prefers to obsess over fictional offences rather than real ones."

[hiredhand]

Who's the bigger idiot, the guy who doesn't have to work a day in his life and has everything handed to him on a silver platter? Or is it the guy who has to work all his life for a pittance and pays for the first guy?

What the young man has had handed to him during his short lifetime has little to do with his lack of discretion, and poor judgement.

Likewise for those (who as you say), "...pays for the first guy..."

[newzjunkey]

This is a free speech issue. I have no problem with Harry's choice of costume. Pity he didn't try an SS uniform, they have a much better cut. This Leftist/Euro WHINE much ado about nothing. Well, wait, it will momentarily boost the political power of the fascist Zionists and Muslim scarf-banners in Europe.

Look at the EU's consideration of banning anything Nazi... symbols, whatever. Insidious. Corruptive. Fascist. They'll make Adolf proud yet!

[ShadowDancer]

This has got to be one of the silliest pieces I have ever read.

[visualops]

Just because someone was a Nazi doesn't mean they were bad, after all. Lots of ordinary people were Nazis; you want to demonize them all? I know they did some bad things, but they suffered terribly in the war. Bygones be bygones, etc. Everyone relax.

Of course I am not serious. I'm just saying what everyone would say if he showed up wearing a hammer and sickle or a Che shirt.

Good point.

[rcocean]

It is interesting that Prince Hal could have worn a shirt (or symbol) celebrating some bloody commie tyrant like Stalin, Mao, or Castro and no one would have said boo.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

For the sake accuracy the source for this article should be refered to as the "RedStar Over Minnesota".

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

...no one would have said boo.

Granny might have thrown him into the Tower of London.

[visualops]

For every movie that showed Soviets as eeeevil sadists, there were ten that had the main Soviet guy as a genial bear, a fellow of exquisite civilized manners. (Spies, especially.) I'm not saying they should have demonized every Ivan - that's not the point. I'm just always amused, in retrospect, to see how they bent over backwards to the point of pulverizing their spinal cords to pretend that these guys were, you know, guys. Just like us! Well: duh, in one sense. But in the other sense they weren't like us at all. Picture all those movies where the huggly-cuddable Soviet guy quotes Pushkin and raises a vodka glass, and imagine him with a swastika. Same deal.
Not to say the symbols are equivalent. They aren't, somehow. The swastika has more extra potent concentrated super-evil. You meet someone who has a room full of Nazi memorabilia, and you get that uh-oh feeling, as if he puts it on late at night and walks around the house with his arm up in the air threatening the Sudetenland. An ordinary guy with a room full of Soviet stuff sends off no I-heart-Lenin vibes, unless he starts railing bitterly about how Khrushchev betrayed the glorious ideals of 1917. But that has more to do with longevity, I think; if the Nazis had stayed around long enough, the swastika would be an implement of kitsch 20 years after their eventual demise.

And my point is? I have no idea. The Prince is an idiot.

[visualops]

Lileks is very funny, and a master of the wisecrack and sarcasm a good deal of the time.

[rcocean]

If you are "irony" challenged - you won't get Likeas.

[willyboyishere]

The swastika as a symbol is in a class by itself, no question about it. A Che T-shirt, or an image of Stalin,or a meticulously reconstructed Soviet Communist Party military uniform, or a hammer and sickle (as an analogous symbol) would have elicited NOTHING from the press, except the conceit that there was an implicit CRITICISM of the Marxist system in the act of wearing it. Sport a swastika, however, and your monumental "insensitivity" and stupidity becomes the big issue, because it's assumed you're oblivious to the history of the 20th Century.
The fact that we don't feel the same way about the symbols and icons of Marxism/Communism shows that it's US who are equally oblivious to the history of the 20th Century.

[maggief]

"Of course I am not serious. I'm just saying what everyone would say if he showed up wearing a hammer and sickle ... "

This from the Red Star and Sickle.

:-/

[LibertarianInExile]

[Prime Choice]

I've always considered the "royal" family of England to be the biggest welfare cases ever propped up as celebrities. They're useless and nothing more than a bunch of inbred artifacts from a bygone era. Do away with their nonsense already.