Defending Prince Harry
01/14/2005 11:31

Probably, people expected PRAVDA.Ru to crucify the third in line to the throne of the United Kingdom

However, PRAVDA.Ru is not an internet rag, it is a newspaper based on a quest to remain loyal to the name of the newspaper: Pravda means Truth in Russian. However much of a clot Prince Harry comes across as, this is the image fed to us by a mass media which wishes us to swallow what we are given without asking too many questions.

Has anyone bothered to ask Prince Harry whether he wants tens of paparazzi on his case day in, day out? Has anyone bothered to ask him whether, as a human being, he is happy with the constant talk about his mother and his drinking and his taking dope?

How many young boys of his age do not get drunk once in a while, and if they do, is it not considered as a good blow-out by their proud fathers? Although nobody condones the taking of illegal substances, smoking the odd joint is hardly paramount to jacking up with smack, is it?

Prince Harry has been targeted as the badly behaved young royal that the media wishes to have. After all, the Queen is beyond any criticism, having served her country and Commonwealth with a rare professionalism for over half a century. Prince Charles and Prince William, the second and third in line to the throne, are behaving as expected. So, how to spice things up? Find someone somewhere near the epicentre of  the royal family and try every angle to get a story, however warped.

Now Prince Harry is criticized for going to a party dressed as a member of Hitler Youth, as a Nazi, and so on. Crap.

The newspapers that run these stories are crap and the readers that believe this crap have crappy brains.

The international community which goes for this nonsense and the international leaders who make indignant comments obviously do not play the card game with the full pack.

PRAVDA means Truth and here it is: Prince Harry was invited to a party whose theme was Colonialists and Natives, a bit of fun, pastiche, nothing too serious. Some people turned up as natives, complete perhaps with spears, but nobody took photos of them and called them racists.

Prince Harry turned up in an Afrika Korps uniform - who better to mock than the German colonials under Hitler, the greatest imperialist project in human history since perhaps Genghis Khan?

If Prince Harry had arrived dressed as a Maori, nobody would have accused him of wanting to undermine the government of New Zealand. If he had gone as a British colonial explorer with a cork hat, nobody would have accused him of taking the pith.

Yet the Israeli lobby was ready with an instant hail of stones, without even mentioning the humanitarian crimes committed by Tel Aviv in the last fifty years. Perhaps Prince Harry should have worn the uniform of Sharon's units in the Lebanon as they were committing their massacres of civilians. Then nobody would have said anything.

To conclude, if this young man was invited to a Colonials and Natives party, what was he supposed to wear? A pink ballet dress, to be accused of being a fairy, a trans-sexual or a cross-dresser?

My advice to Prince Harry: Next time, instead of apologizing, tell them where to stick it.
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey


Pravda.Ru

http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/101/399/14817_harry.html