Don’t Mention the War

Now he is only the *presumptive* third in line to the throne.

I’ve been trying to make the argument that Harry is actually a highly intelligent and deeply subversive performance artist, who was making a point about the inherent fascism of “colonials and natives”, without much success it has to be said.

I’ve been trying to make the argument that Harry is actually a highly intelligent and deeply subversive performance artist

Probably far more intelligent and subversive than Aaron Barschak, who is himself marginally less interesting than Big Brother.

I was actually quite surprised by the story. It was a dressup party and Harry came as a Nazi. So what? His brother, prince William came as a cat. I say dogs should be outraged (or severely insulted).

… you know, certain Bulgarians once thought they got rid of their royals permanently. Now their PM is Simeon Saks-Koburg Gotski.

Be careful of what you wish for.

C.

We hear Harry is being sent to Auschwitz. While they’re at it, have him stay there.

Q. “What’s that word for a Windsor who’d wear a Nazi uniform for any reason?”

A. Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

Obviously dressing up as a Nazi is poor taste… but…

where was all the outrage when we Brits were all chortling about ‘Allo ‘Allo through the 80s. That had plenty of Nazis, who were almost endearing in a twittish sort of way.

I don’t recall many arguments that ‘Allo ‘Allo, beamed into the nation’s living rooms betrayed the memory of resistance fighers, the SOE or the holocaust victims by making light of Nazi-occupied France.

I imagine you get that reaction a lot yourself, Dominic.

We Yanks are quite ready to take over for you Royalty-sodden Brits. If young Harry should marry one of the Bush twins he’d be third in line to run for President in 2012. Can the nuptials be arranged?

Fyrefly: He’s twenty (20) years old, and 2012 is seven (7) years away. He is, as you might imagine, a UK citizen.

Now,

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States.

I think even Scalia could spot one or two problems here, isn’t it?

It’s moments like this when I once again cherish Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution — “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States . . . .”

Des — see we all thought the Republicans were pushing for a “naturalized citizens can run” amendment in service of Arnold 2008 — we were just off by a couple years and a thousand miles or so. (I say in my geographic illiteracy — how far is Austria from England?) So say Jeb 2008, Harry 2016 — by that time they will surely have been able to push the age requirement back to 30 — what’s the use of a permanent majority if you can’t monkey with the Founding Documents?

“We’re all anti-royal here in the United States by temperament and training,”

If only.

“Fyrefly: He’s twenty (20) years old, and 2012 is seven (7) years away. He is, as you might imagine, a UK citizen.”

I keep forgetting you folks have no sense of humor.

““We’re all anti-royal here in the United States by temperament and training,”
“If only.”

Quite right — “if only”! Perhaps Ophelia was referring to the general culture of celebrity in the USA. But in addition, a downside of combining the offices of head of state and head of government, as the USA does, is that citizens look upon the President as more than just a political leader, so that criticism of his policies is seen by many as unpatriotic.

The really shocking thing about Harry’s blunder, it seems to me, is what it says about historical amnesia. I believe a recent poll in Britain showed that an appalling percentage of people hadn’t heard of Auschwitz, and I suspect it’s not much different in other countries nowadays.

I want to echo the question from up-thread. How did he get this idea past all his minders?

By serendipity, no sooner do I come across a post by an Irishman presuming to lecture the British on why Nazism Might Be A Bad Thing than the Times runs an article with the headline
Nazi IRA man’s statue beheaded.
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1437478,00.html)

Some splendid young Dubliners hacked the head off the Dublin statue of Sean Rusell, who worked with Nazi intelligence from February 1939 onwards. The Irish National Graves Association, who erected the memorial to the admirable Mr Russell (‘for what he did in the cause of Irish freedom’) will be seeking funds to repair this tragic piece of vandalism, apparently. Russell was the kind of Irishman who believed that the British were so appalling that it was worth teaming up with a genocidal lunatic to defeat them. De Valera was merely of the view that the British were so appalling that they shouldn’t be supported even if they were fighting a genocidal lunatic, and so he pursued policies, like the denial of naval bases to the Royal Navy, which contributed massively to Hitler’s near-victory in the Battle of the Atlantic and cost the lives of British and Allied seamen.The Taisoeach’s official apology will be coming soon, just after Blair has finished sobbing over the ’98 or Bloody Sunday or whatever the latest sob-story is.

Thanks to Kieran for telling us that Nazism is a bad thing- but not bad enough to, like, declare war against- and that the British state is a moribund laughing stock, and we’ll merely note that there are worse things than living in a country with a Royal Family. For example, one could live in a country with a National Graves Association which puts up kitsch memorials to dead fascists, and with a political party which venerates the memory of said dead fascists and which carries out fundraising by means of armed robbery.

It would seem that behaving badly is the best way for the royals to stay relevant.

Dan Hardie – I’m trying to discern even the hint of an argument in your comment. Are you really trying to claim that Kieran can’t criticize Harry or other royals, because he’s Irish (regardless of whether he approves or disapproves of what other Irish people have done)? Would you care to back up your comment that “Thanks to Kieran for telling us that Nazism is a bad thing- but not bad enough to, like, declare war against” with, like, any evidence whatsoever that Kieran has said that Nazism wasn’t worth declaring war against? Or that he he supports the National Graves Association? (a fairly bizarre and “unlikely”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001524.html slur I would have thought). Finally, would you be convinced by a counterargument that you’re in no position to talk about WWII because you’re British, and share a nationality with noted Hitler-fanciers like the former King Edward, and the BNP? And if not, why the fuck are you making the bizarre claims of guilt by association-of-national-identity that you’re making?

If you think the institution of the British royal family is worth defending, then more luck to you. Defend it. By substituting sottish football-chant-nationalist ranting for argument, you’re giving a very strong impression that you don’t have any defence worth talking about.

Interesting piece of personal testimony by an Auschwitz survivor on the BBC website:

“Prince Harry, in the midst of a row over wearing Nazi fancy dress, should join other young people to hear about what happened in the Holocaust, Auschwitz survivor Susan Pollack says. . . ” – at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4171893.stm

To put into better perspective an earlier, much publicised report that 45% of Britons are unaware of the holocaust, I would plead that we English are really very bad at our own history. As the late Professor Sir Geoffrey Elton put it in his inaugural lecture: The Future of the Past (1968):

“Now one of the very curious things about the English, I think . . is that they suppose themselves to be conscious of history and to be enveloped in History. They are not. They are indifferent and ignorant as far as history is concerned. If you want a really historically conscious country you have to go to Central Europe, where they have too much history . . or to the United States, where they have so little of it . . ”

– quoted in Norman Davies: The Isles – A History (1999).

Sir Geoffrey was professor of the history of Britain’s constitution at Cambridge. He was born under the name of Gottfried Ehrenberg in Tubingen in 1921. Fortunately, he managed to reach Britain in 1939.

“The fault with royals lays with those who have them as royalty: and that means the British (and the Swedes and the Danes and …)”

The remaining monarchies in Europe are all on the continent’s western edge: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Britain and Spain, for the most part countries with stable constitutional arrangements. In Europe, Britain is one of the few countries with the same constitutional framework now as in 1945 or 1938.

A bit of perspective children. Harry, a name guaranteed to provoke abuse, is a silver spooned teenager and behaves as such. No amount of breeding or inheritance can turn him into a middle aged academic. Deal with it, and ditch your pretensions of working class authenticity. Do you really think that upwardly mobile trailer trash read this self obsessed .. stuff.

Americans pretend we don’t have royalty, but have all the functional symptoms of hereditary aristocracies of wealth, military, and clergy – which makes it all the worse when you get a cesaropapacy going that isn’t acknowledged, as we have now.

The really obtuse thing is the disgusting and shameful nature of attending a “colonialism and natives” party put on by socialites and nobs, just after it’s come out that the British Army was secretly discriminating against commissions for soldiers of African and Asian descent. (Hence Prince William showing up in a leopardskin outfit.) It’s bad enough for the wealthy elite to trivialize Imperialism – Prince Brownshirt is also “farting in the general direction” of the rest of the world.

(To paraphrase Riverbend – if he realized how offensive it was, and did it anyway out of a spirit of independence, that’s bad; if he didn’t, that’s worse.)

This is beyond a tacky faux-pas – it’s as if Jenna and Not-Jenna showed up at a party with an “Antebellum Glory” theme dressed in a KKK hood and blackface respectively.

Think about how well that would go over, even on this side of the pond, even as things stand…

Well I’m never above having a pop a Germans like Harry so this has been great. I’m even more amused by the fact the certain free republic (in the Irish sense) defenders have been caught short by a well timed historical rememberence that Irish figures were misguided on the topic of Nazism. I trust it means that Irish folk will be even more diehard republicans so that the prospect of future thoughless indescretions on the part of “British” royalty will not prompt recollections of dodgy Irish business during WW2.

nazis are evidently sacred monsters, harry in his role as presumptive figurehead has committed some weird sort of holier than thou sacrilege.

Giles, nobody knowing Jenna and Not-Jenna would think that they were doing anything Po-Mo and subtley ironic. Not after their RNC performance. If that was performance art – the standard has been defined into utter incoherence.

I’m guessing that Britons are just really, really pissed at Harry for reminding the world of how many of them supported Fascism before it got a little too close to home – I would never have heard of Sir Oswald Mosley after a lifetime of 40s movies and WWII history, if it were not for PG Wodehouse’s satirical treatment of him in the persona of Reginald Spode.

Or the fact that there are *still* people in the UK who think that Sir Oswald was a conservative hero who could have saved England from the Depression and his anti-liberal policies good policy today…

For conoisseurs of a)academics trying to Sound Hard and b) self-defeating arguments:

Kieran Healy on how a member of the British Royal Family should defend himself against Nazism charges:

‘My family are all German anyway.’

Henry Farrell on why any
reply to Healy in his own idiom is Wrong:
‘why the fuck are you making the bizarre claims of guilt by association-of-national-identity that you’re making?’

‘Guilt by association-of-national-identity’, eh? Like ‘My family are all German anyway’?

Find another argument, Henry- you’ve lost this one in pretty humiliating fashion.

Perhaps he was doing it to show his support for President Bush.

Hi, Kevin. Nothing regrettable’s happened, beyond Henry’s assertion that Kieran may not be spoken to in the tones he himself has adopted. If someone from country A wishes to slag off country B as a) laughably constitutionally anachronistic b) in need of a few lectures on the evils of Nazism and c) fair game for a few ‘jokes’ of the national-stereotype variety, then someone from country B gets the right to reply in kind. I have no patience with the implicit thesis that Healy can issue a string of national stereotypes (‘German’ royal family, useless Brit constitution etc) in a would-be satirical fashion and have it accepted as good clean fun, whereas if I reply in the same idiom it’s all unconscionably offensive. The whingeing from Henry Farrell may be summarised as ‘But Ma, he hit us back!’

IFS: my bad- working on a whole lot of Churchill documents from different periods at the moment. Yes, in ’37 Dev declared that the Irish Free State was now ‘Eire’, as legally it was- but a lot of the wartime British documents I am reading now still call it the Irish Free State, possibly because they didn’t know how to pronounce the new name. I think legally the British still held to the opinion that it was a Free State- something they gave up only with the recognition of the Republic with the Govt Of Ireland Act in ’48- but addressed it as Eire officially because Churchill was desperate for the use of the old Treaty Ports.Could be wrong- I’ll check. IOW, I blame all those 1940s bureaucrats and soldiers. Churchill stinks on Ireland, btw: he was the man with chief responsibility for forming the Black and Tans.

Yes, probably ‘sottish’ ie perpetually drunk rather than ‘Scottish’ ie Rangers-style sectarianism- maybe it was a straight misreading, or maybe- Freudian- I read it as Scottish because I once had an ‘argument’ with a Protestant Glaswegian over my Irish Catholic parentage. As I say, Henry can take his implicit accusations of Orangeism and stick them somewhere moist and dark. ‘Sottish’ is still pitifully wide of the mark, as I am a horribly abstemious character. Great Lakes: no, I am being paid to write the script for a DVD presentation of Churchill’s Fulton speech, and that and many other things are taking up my time- chiefly learning Arabic.

There’s a lot of whining going on: if it’s okay to have a pop at the fusty, constitutionally-useless, not-as-anti-Nazi-as-they-think Brits, it’s okay to have a pop at the constitutional weaknesses, cultural blind spots and even-less-anti-Nazi record of the Irish. Kieran and Henry’s mothers should have told them what mine told me: don’t start a fight and then cry because you get hit. I’m off to the fillums- have a good night.

Dan, as an actual working class non-academic blue collar Englishman myself, let me just take the time to point out that you’re talking a load of old twaddle.

While I’m not against our English peculiar muddle of a consitution per se — what other country would specially breed a set of pre-marginalised half-wits to distract the tabloids from endlessly and embarrassingly carping on about politics? — I think it’s perfectly reasonable to point out that the royal family serves no purpose whatsoever beyond distraction and amusement. Coming back with “yeah, well, your country is fat!” is not, actually, a defense.

Incidentally, I happen to be quite proud of the sense of humour generally exhibited by my countrymen. Please tell me that you won’t be one of those rare cases, an Englishman with as much grasp on the concept of humour as a damp dishcloth.

One would think that the National Socialist Party had already had its share of bad press over the years – –

without the further calamity of being linked in the public mind with the disasterous Windsors. . . .

One would think that the National Socialist Party had already had its share of bad press over the years – –

without the further calamity of being linked in the public mind with the disasterous Windsors. . . .

Given this phrase from the original post — “other than for entertainment value” — I’m not sure what to make of the rest of the discussion here. Overpriveliged yungun behaving badly, color me completely surprised.

At least the British royals are not dull.

And if you think they’re expensive, just tot up what the second iteration of the Bush dynaasty has cost the US. (On the other hand, GWB has reminded us of a lesson last learned from experience with John Quincy Adams. Though I can’t see W following Q’s example and leaving the White House for a distinguished career in Congress. Admittedly, I can’t see W leaving the White House for a distinguished career in anything [No really, just try using “George W Bush” and “distinguished” in the same sentence. See?], but Congress is surely one of the least likely places for his future non-distinguishment.)

And as for the monarch-less lands of Central and Eastern Europe, most of them had to go through communism to get rid of the monarchy, which doesn’t seem the most efficient way of doing it. (PM Saksoburggotski seems to be doing a not half bad job, btw.)

Rumor (or actually rumour, since it came from the UK) has it that when Pavlos Prince of Greece married the American Heiress whose name I forget in an Orthodox ceremony of great tradition and splendor, amid many guests and so forth, the whole thing had to be done over after the honeymoon because marriages in the UK are only legal if the ceremony is conducted in English. Is this true?

Ya sadiqi, hal darasti al lughra Arabiya?

But getting to the point, you DID make at least one error about “De Valera”. It’s “de Valera” – no capital D.

Addressing the original post:-

– Harry probably can’t renounce his claim to the throne. Look at the trouble mere Wedgy Benn had giving up a peerage – the legal machinery just wasn’t there, and they had to change the law just for him.

– It’s not a public subsidy he gets, any more than it’s a public subsidy if someone gets a payment from government bonds. Family property was handed over to the state in exchange for regular payments, precisely in order to reduce any freedom of action from the Crown Estates functioning as a private resource, and to pretend that the payments are a subsidy as opposed to a composition or commutation is to misstate the situation.

Now if someone were to argue that such things should be changed anyway, effectively arguing that the property should have been seized without continuing compensation, that’s another issue. But disguising it does no more to provide any separate justification than the equivalent abolition of the privy purses in India did. And that was certainly unjust, just as much as stealing from a thief is, simply from being an abuse of due process under the cover of a change in something that proceeded from the government’s gift. But politicians were ever thus.

‘you DID make at least one error about “De Valera”. It’s “de Valera” – no capital D.”

Beyond trivial. That’s one (1) typo, since I typed Dev’s full name one (1) time in the middle of a sentence. PML, do you ever feel that you may not be spending your time as a grown man should?

Rs:’I think you introduced all the discussion of Nazism’

Rs, if your remedial reading teacher is very nice, she will point you to three (3) uses of the word ‘Nazi’ or ‘Nazism’ in dim-bulb Healy’s original post.

Rs, you really can’t read, can you? For ‘Nazism is wrong’ in Healy’s original post, try ‘I’m only 20, or approximately the same age as many of the men killed fighting the Nazis during the war.’
For a lecture to the dumb Brits on the uselessness of their constitutional arrangements, there’s the entire post, including such phrases as ‘the fundamental uselessness of the Royal Family.’ (Said Royal Family are, of course, in Healy’s non-racist, non-stereotypical phrase ‘All German anyway’, and so, presumably, Genetically Guilty of Nazism, or something. Henry Farrell will tell you that stereotyping is a Bad Thing.)

Keep ’em coming, cretins.’Don’t mention the war’? Yes, it *is* funny how mention of the war offends some people…

“Thanks to Kieran for telling us that Nazism is a bad thing- but not bad enough to, like, declare war against- and that the British state is a moribund laughing stock”

“For ‘Nazism is wrong’ in Healy’s original post, try ‘I’m only 20, or approximately the same age as many of the men killed fighting the Nazis during the war.’”

“For a lecture to the dumb Brits on the uselessness of their constitutional arrangements…‘the fundamental uselessness of the Royal Family.’”

Quite quite bonkers.

Shorter Rs (1): Kieran Healy’s post, contrary to Dan’s statement, makes no mention of Nazism, of the evils of Nazism or of the weaknesses of the British constitution.

Shorter Rs (2): Kieran Healy’s post, as per Dan’s statement, makes 3 mentions of Nazism, and one mention each of the evils of Nazism and the weaknesses of the British constitution. I’m wrong but it is all Dan’s fault, him and his ‘overliteralism’ (sic). Mum, can I play with my Lego now?

In jumbled order:
d)It’s true that there hasn’t really been an argument on this thread, since Healy’s post contained no discernible thesis, and my response was merely a response to his. But if you didn’t lose a non-occurring argument you certainly made a bit of a tit of yourself when you defended a post concerning the words ‘My family are all German anyway.’ with the following statement
‘why the fuck are you making the bizarre claims of guilt by association-of-national-identity that you’re making?’
is self-defeating.
‘Guilt by association-of-national-identity’, eh? Like ‘My family are all German anyway’?
a) If Kieran wants to publish something entitled ‘Don’t Mention the war’, about a dumb aristo wearing a swastika, I’ll mention the war myself, mentioning a dumb Graves Association honouring a fascist, for example. Don’t like it? Tough.

c)Re the Royal Family: I don’t like them, but would probably keep them for want of anything better, albeit with higher tax rates. Kieran’s comments on them were ‘robust’ if that word means ‘childish, hackneyed and borderline-racist jokes about Germans’. I’ve written this already but reading is not your strong suit.

d)Re Orangeism, anti-Irish racism: my mother’s Irish- as I’ve said, and as you’re not capable of reading- and oddly enough I don’t regard her with racial hatred. If I lived in NI I would vote SDLP or maybe Alliance; it would certainly puzzle my Catholic relatives if they could hear the juvenile and unsupported accusation that you have made. I suspect and hope there will be a United Ireland sometime in this century: so long as it is by democratic consent, that would make me very happy. And you call me ‘Orange’? You lying fool: you don’t know what the word means.

And there isn’t a racist sentence in any of my posts: you seem to think it’s enough to make the accusation without coming up with evidence, which on a charge of that gravity is contemptible.

But you don’t, in any case, believe me to be a racist: you have in any case banned racists from posting on CT- eg ‘Modern Crusader’- and quite rightly so. You won’t ban me- rather you just want to chuck a nasty word at me, because I’ve said rude things to you and your mate. If you had something resembling a conscience you would apologise. You won’t apologise. I hope that you never find yourself in a situation requiring either courage or honesty, because you’re short of both.

Just off for the night. A minor point: it’s not worth all these thriller-style tough-guy remarks like ‘got it’.

I have actually just sent you an unsolicited, but polite email. To recap one point I make in it: on re-reading, I was not 100% sure if you were or weren’t accusing me of racism and (what is not necessarily identical to it, but often is) Orangeism: there are a couple of phrases which might mean that or might not. The first in particular did strongly seem to mean that. I would never use the racist charge as a rhetorical device: it is too serious for that.

You say ‘By substituting sottish football-chant-nationalist ranting for argument,’- and that to me sounds like a pretty clear accusation of Orangeism and anti-Irish racism, since the English and Scottish football chants about the Irish tend to be both. But if it isn’t such an accusation- great.

I’ve just re-read ‘Ditto, lack of evidence for me accusing you of Orangeism, anti-Irish racism etc.’
Now I’m glad to have your assurance that this isn’t an accusation of racism, but to be honest, I wouldn’t otherwise have known. Remarks about ‘lack of reading comprehension’ won’t cut it: this phrase is a pretty classic example of what I remember from my logic classes as ‘phrasal ambiguity’. It could mean that I wasn’t arguing that you had no evidence that I wasn’t racist and Orangeist; or it could mean that I had no evidence that you were saying that I was racist and Orangeist. It’s not a clear remark, and given the ‘football chant’ gibe, I interpreted it as an accusation of racism. If you assure me that you’re not calling me racist and/or Orangeist, that’s good and I accept that.

There is no ‘self-pity’ here: racism is a serious charge and so should only be made seriously. I wouldn’t say ‘x is calling me racist’ because it seemed like a neat point to score: I said it because that is what you seemed to be saying, and because that is one charge I will never accept. I did say, writing to you privately, that I would be glad to withdraw any remark that seemed racist. I wasn’t talking about racism as a rhetorical device: I meant it, and I wanted to clear it up with you, which is why I emailed you personally.

It’s good that you’re not making this charge, and I apologise for having read you as making it. In retrospect, perhaps I should first have sent you a private email saying ‘is this saying what I think it is, and if so apologise’.

Again, this is not a rhetorical move: I am afraid you will need to accept some of the responsibility, since your posts to me were so poorly expressed that you did seem to be a possible charge of racism or Orangeism. Football chants against the Irish are racist, and the second sentence I’ve quoted re racism is hard to follow. Some discussions need a lot of care. I don’t think this is anybody’s finest hour.

In case it is of interest to readers here, Sir Martin Gilbert, one of several historians who have written biographical studies of Churchill, has a long essay on the BBC website relating Churchill’s responses and actions as Britain’s prime minister during WW2 as the scale of the holocaust became evident to him through incoming intelligence and reconnaissance reports and, eventually, through the discoveries of allied troops as they came across concentration camps on their advance through Germany itself towards the end of the war in Europe: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/genocide/churchill_holocaust_01.shtml

Is should make instructive reading for Prince Harry and his social circle.

May I suggest reading the report in one of the links I posted earlier? The lead para is:

“The Prince of Wales has been warned by one of his senior advisers that he must act urgently to separate his sons from a ‘social scene that thinks racism and bigotry quite funny’, The Independent on Sunday has learned. . . ”
– from: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=601397

I read the article. And it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Harry’s a twit/a lout/so thick and ignorant that he’s not clear on what Nazism really was. All I’m saying is that, pending some actual moral reasoning from someone on the subject, I don’t take this action as by itself diagnostic for any of those things. Dressing up is just not that straightforwardly interpreted. I’m sure in the red states there are parents who won’t let their children be witches for Halloween, but I wouldn’t want to think that way myself.

rb,

Two quite different things going on. First there are the people who want to make a point about racism, and infer that there was something wrong about what Harry did. I agree with you. There was nothing morally wrong with his choice of costume.

Second there are people (like Keiran, like Dennis Skinner, and other people with a sense of humour) who think the whole set of people involved in the royal family are as ridiculous as the institution itself and are having a bit of fun at their expense.

If I dressed up as a Nazi for a costume party I think I’d be setting myself up for a lot of fun-making, at the very least. I also would know that some people would take great offence, and they would have reason to take offense. Would that make it morally wrong? No. But at the very least it would make me a figure of fun.

Part of what is going on, though, is that most of us don’t know people who go to ‘Colonial and Native’ themed parties in coutnry houses, and those of us who have had some contact with such people have reasons to doubt the whoelheartedness of their commitment to ridding the world of racism, unearned privelege, colonialism, etc. Harry manages effortlessly to give the general impression of somone without deep moral principles. Possibly, we all suspect, the kind of person who would have been with Halifax rather than Churchill.

If there’s anyone on this site who wasn’t sufficiently self-aware at 20 that this would be their fate they were, frankly, morons, and I think it is incredibly condescending of them to suppose that Harry is any different. Maybe he is: if so then he deserves a hard time.

thanks Harry. some reactions:

I know that right-thinking English folk make it a point of principle to despise the royals, and not to pass up any opportunity for whaling on them. Fair enough. But as a Canadian, at a safe remove, it seems clear to me that their main function now is to make up for slow days at the Daily Mail, which function Harry is fulfilling admirably. So why not just enjoy the sideshow? I suppose hysteria *is* the media’s way of enjoying it, but I’m puzzled at the number of sensible people who are letting their chains be yanked. All that’s really been demonstrated is that Harry is a fool surrounded by fools, and fortunately in his line of work that doesn’t seem to be a problem.

Now to the interesting question. You say:

There was nothing morally wrong with his choice of costume.

and

I [if I did the same] also would know that some people would take great offence, and they would have reason to take offense.

But then you add:

Would that make it morally wrong? No.

Now: what exactly is a good reason to take offence at something that isn’t morally wrong? And why should the person who isn’t doing anything wrong care about any offence taken (apart from prudential reasons which one might legitimately on reflection choose to ignore)?

I think these are actually pretty hard and important questions. I don’t have answers. Instead, two preliminary comments:

1. I pretty sure I don’t want to live in a society in which the simple fact of giving offence (whether taken with good reason or not) is in itself taken to be wrong. Canada, the US and the UK are all moving in that direction.

2. There is such a thing as bad taste which is ‘offensive’ but not in a (genuinely, deeply) ‘wrong’ way.

In fact, I can remember when this kind of bad taste used to be a badge of the intelligentsia. Bands with names like the Dead Kennedys and Shoot the Pope (that was before anyone shot the pope, needless to say), the crucifixion scene in Life of Brian… it was all of a piece with punk and new wave and everyone expecting to die young in a nuclear war. In high school I gave a fancy dress party on the theme of ‘Decadence’ (ok ok, I was sixteen), and two of my friends came dressed as “gay SA members in love, just before the purge”. They’re both now politicians on the progressive side — perfectly well-informed, well-intentioned people, and they were then too. That’s who *needs* bad taste. I suppose I was in some weak sense shocked or ‘offended’ by the costumes — that would be why I remember them, and not what anyone else wore — but, thank god, we didn’t really have the concept ‘offensive’ back then. So I just thought they were in bad taste, deliberately so — a kind of bad taste which sophisticates then cultivated, which generally does no harm and expresses no moral viciousness, is arguably part of a noble epater la bourgeoisie tradition and sometimes (as whenever the Pythons did it) can be very very funny. Harry is I’m sure a different kettle of fish. But I’m glad that no one has photos to blackmail my guests with, and very glad I had my own adolescence before ‘offensiveness’ came to be treated as the only socially recognised cardinal sin.