Posted on 01/19/2005 9:49:00 PM PST by quidnunc
It's a good rule of thumb that no matter how big an idiot someone is he can never compete with the political class's response to his idiocy.
Thus, whatever feelings of unease I might have had about the Prince of Wales' younger son spiffing himself up in a rented Nazi costume for a fancy dress party were swept away the moment the rent-a-quote humbugs started lining up to denounce him.
I say to Prince Harry: "You go, girlfriend, you Reichstone Cowboy, you." It's uniforms night at my pad every Thursday, and you're more than welcome, Your Royal Heilness.
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But a good indication of societal decadence is when it prefers to obsess over fictional offenses rather than real ones.
I suppose it's just about possible that, should fate bring Harry to the throne, he'd turn into a Victor Emmanuel or King Carol of Romania and lend a constitutional figleaf to some Fascist regime.
But worrying about this remote possibility seems something of an indulgence at a time when the runner-up in the French presidential election and the wife of the head of the European Central Bank are not above doing oven jokes in public; when the neo-Nazis get as many votes in Saxony's elections as Gerhard Schroder's Social Democratic Party; when from Marseilles to Paris, Jews are being attacked and their homes, schools, stores, synagogues and cemeteries burnt and desecrated in a low-level intifada that's been going on so long the political establishment now accepts it as a normal feature of French life; when the Berlin police advise Jews not to go out in public wearing any identifying marks of their faith; and when the mayor of London can't wait for his next public kissy-face session with his buddy Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the "moderate" imam who urges Arabs to continue sending their children to detonate in Israeli pizza parlors.
But don't ask the mayor to attend a ribbon-cutting with a renowned hatemonger like Prince Harry.
As should be obvious, these days the uniforms are the least of it.
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link??
BUMP!
It's a good rule of thumb that no matter how big an idiot someone is he can never compete with the political class's response to his idiocy.
Thus, whatever feelings of unease I might have had about the Prince of Wales' younger son spiffing himself up in a rented Nazi costume for a fancy dress party were swept away the moment the rent-a-quote humbugs started lining up to denounce him.
I say to Prince Harry: "You go, girlfriend, you Reichstone Cowboy, you." It's uniforms night at my pad every Thursday, and you're more than welcome, Your Royal Heilness.
First off the block was Doug Henderson, Britain's former armed forces minister, who suggested that the Nazi dress sense should disqualify the young lad from Sandhurst:
"I think it would be very inappropriate," huffed Doug, "that someone who had done such a stupid thing as Prince Harry has should join the army."
The French sports minister suggested that the "scandal" would undermine Britain's bid to host the Olympics. Londoners should be so lucky.
But if I understand the concern of the sporting world correctly, being a totalitarian state that's killed millions is no obstacle to hosting the Olympics, but going to a costume party wearing the uniform of a defunct totalitarian state that's no longer around to kill millions is completely unacceptable.
German politicians, meanwhile, launched their own rhetorical blitzkrieg against the Prince, arguing that his choice of fancy dress demonstrated the need for a continent-wide ban on Nazi insignia.
"In a Europe grounded in peace and freedom there should be no place for Nazi symbols," declared Markus Soeder, general secretary of Germany's Christian Socialist Union party.
"They should be banned throughout Europe, as they are with good reason in Germany."
Personally, I found the sight of the Prince of Wales togging himself up like Mullah Omar's child bride for a swanky dinner with Osama bin Laden's brother a week after the 9/11 slaughter far more disquieting: It seemed a rather more conscious act of identification than his son's party get-up.
But a good indication of societal decadence is when it prefers to obsess over fictional offenses rather than real ones.
I suppose it's just about possible that, should fate bring Harry to the throne, he'd turn into a Victor Emmanuel or King Carol of Romania and lend a constitutional figleaf to some Fascist regime.
But worrying about this remote possibility seems something of an indulgence at a time when the runner-up in the French presidential election and the wife of the head of the European Central Bank are not above doing oven jokes in public; when the neo-Nazis get as many votes in Saxony's elections as Gerhard Schroder's Social Democratic Party; when from Marseilles to Paris, Jews are being attacked and their homes, schools, stores, synagogues and cemeteries burnt and desecrated in a low-level intifada that's been going on so long the political establishment now accepts it as a normal feature of French life; when the Berlin police advise Jews not to go out in public wearing any identifying marks of their faith; and when the mayor of London can't wait for his next public kissy-face session with his buddy Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the "moderate" imam who urges Arabs to continue sending their children to detonate in Israeli pizza parlors.
But don't ask the mayor to attend a ribbon-cutting with a renowned hatemonger like Prince Harry.
AS SHOULD be obvious, these days the uniforms are the least of it.
I'm often struck by how America, the most judeophile society in Western history (which isn't, admittedly, saying much), goes in for far less formal Holocaust remembrance than Europe.
The ludicrous pursuit of some hapless royal schoolboy these last few days confirms my suspicion that, for the continentals, the main usefulness of the Holocaust is, subconsciously or otherwise, as a preemptive cover for their current disposition.
"Anti-semitic, moi? But we hold Holocaust ceremonies and demand that Prince Harry make a public pilgrimage to Auschwitz!"
If Adolf Hitler were to return from wherever he is right now, what would he be most steamed up about? That in some countries there are laws banning Nazi symbols and making Holocaust denial a crime?
No, that wouldn't bother him: that would testify to the force and endurance of his ideas – that 60 years on they're still so potent the state has to suppress them.
What would bug him the most is that on Broadway and in the West End Mel Brooks is peddling Nazi shtick in The Producers, and audiences are howling with laughter.
I DON'T know what kick Prince Harry gets out of his Nazi gear, but once long ago I was obliged for an historical scene to wear an SS uniform and, though it was a very somber vignette, I've never felt so screamingly camp as when mincing around doing that little limp-wristed mini-Heil thing.
One reason why the English-speaking democracies were just about the only advanced nations not to fall for Nazism or Fascism is that they simply found it too ridiculous.
In P. G. Wodehouse's The Code Of The Woosters, Bertie's famous riposte to the Mosleyesque Sir Roderick Spode could speak for the entire Anglosphere:
"The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting, 'Heil, Spode!' and you imagine it is the Voice of the People.
"That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: 'Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?'"
That's why party stores stock Nazi outfits – because they're a joke, and the British and Americans made them one.
Alas, tyranny doesn't always come with a self-evidently hilarious dress code. And the soft supple creeping totalitarian inclinations of Europe's present-day rulers are sometimes harder to resist.
If I had to pick the single most revolting remark from this bogus Reichsfuror, it would be this:
"I think it might be appropriate for him to tell us himself just how contrite he now is."
That's Michael Howard, the leader of Britain's supposed Conservative Party.
What's conservative about demanding people submit to public self-abasement? Wasn't it the commies who used to insist you recant on TV and then disappear into reeducation camp?
A conservative party ought to be a refuge from the sanctimonious nannytollahs of the age.
Instead of demanding Prince Harry do public penance by journeying to Auschwitz, Britons should get together for a three-minute silence, at which young Harry (uniform optional) and his father (in full hejab) can march to the Cenotaph and lay a wreath to mark the tragic loss of Britain's sense of proportion.
The writer is senior North American columnist for Britain's Telegraph Group.
<< I'm often struck by how America, the most Judeophile society in Western history, [Which admitedly is not saying much] goes in for far less formal Holocaust remembrance than Europe. >>
That's because the Euro-peons perpetrated the Holocaust -- and we but brought it to an end. And to this day neither quite grasped nor understood its evil in the way the Euro-peons did.
<< The ludicrous pursuit of some hapless royal schoolboy these last few days confirms my suspicion that, for the continentals, the main usefulness of the Holocaust is, subconsciously or otherwise, as a preemptive cover for their current disposition. >>
Only Canada which after all has degenerated into but a smear of dead and decadent Europe upon our continent makes the list of the five most prolificly anti-Semitic -- and anti-Israel -- states on Earth. The others are all as they always have been: once-great Britain, France, Germay and Russia.
As they are with good reason in Germany.
Fascinating.
The need to ban these symbols 60 years after the last legal NSDAP meeting means to me that Germany, and Europe, still have the fever.
Steyn makes so much sense. He has a way of spelling out the subconscious suspicions we all have about these things.
One wonders where all these people were when Pierre Trudeau was running for office. I guess it is ok to wear a Nazi uniform when your country is at war with them but wrong to do so as a joke.
<< The need to ban these symbols 60 years after the last legal NSDAP meeting means to me that Germany, and Europe, still have the fever. >>
Yep.
It's there to see but for the looking.
They're psychopathologically froth and foam-flecked feverish -- and have the immigrants to prove it!
Steyn is simply a wordsmith genius!
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