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The prince and
the P-word
Prince Harry is prone
to embarrassing gaffes, such as when he once
donned a Nazi uniform for a fancy-dress do.
But should we be getting worked up over the
use of the word Paki in his video
diary?
Diesel Balaam thinks not.
So young Prince Harry has
done it again. In a video shot three years
ago, the endearingly gaffe-prone prince
gently joshes one of his army comrades as
“our little Paki friend”, and the whole
antiracist circus swings into action once
again, blowing it up out of all proportion.
Yes, it was a silly thing
to say and just plain wrong, but to the
level-headed this will register only as a
youthful gaucherie, a misdemeanour, not the
heinous “crime” that the antiracist lobby is
desperately trying to pump it up into.
Feigning outrage with all
the theatrical zeal and artifice of Kate
Winslett winning a Golden Globe, the usual
attention seekers are strutting about
demanding ever more fulsome apologies, with
some loony tunes demanding a full scale
mea culpa televised apology.
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Action man:
Prince Harry on
duty |
Wankers! Prince Harry is
guilty of nothing more than ethnocentric
condescension, mildly reprehensible, yes,
but there doesn’t seem to be any malice
involved and he has apologised. That should
be the end of the matter. Goodness knows,
we’ve seen him cuddling enough AIDS orphans
in Africa to get the message this guy is not
a racist!
Shit-stabber
In any case, gay people
have to put up with far worse slurs and
condescension. Radio 1 disc jockeys
routinely use the word gay for
anything considered lame or crap. Via
popular culture, this use of the word gay
has crossed over into the mainstream from
the same Black American subculture that
augmented the homophobic lexicon with words
like gayboy,
faggot and the even more delightful
shit-stabber (which explains the
longstanding, but largely unspoken,
antipathy between large sections of the
black and gay communities). Even some older
people, who really ought to know better,
such as Jeremy Clarkson, have started to use
gay as a byword for anything weak and
useless.
These slurs against gay
people are far more damning than anything
Prince Harry has said, as they leave no room
for interpretation. They are undeniably
insulting and intended to be so. When
Clarkson was censured by the BBC, for
calling a particularly awful car “gay” on
Top Gear, the complaint was not upheld –
though, bizarrely, he was censured for
calling it “a little bit ginger beer”.
The rerelease of the
Pogues record “Fairy Tale of New York” a
couple of years ago had the word faggot
bleeped out when it was played on Radio 1,
but it was later played uncensored after
listeners complained in their droves. And
quite right, too!
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The Pogues:
they had their faggot deleted. |
Surely, as lesbian and
gay people, our shoulders are broad enough
to withstand a little joshing, the
occasional joke, crass comment, or even
hostile criticism. Like our fellow Brits of
Pakistani origin, we should be robust enough
to rise above such foolishness and stop
behaving like a bunch of Mary
Whitehouses who
have just spotted an erection at the
vicarage tea party. We are not voiceless, we
are not without talent, so we need not be
victims. We can fight back simply by proving
we are smarter, kinder, funnier and better
than our detractors.
Blurred
boundaries
As individuals, we all
need to be sensitive to the feelings of
others – that is a mark of maturity – but
allowances have to be made for the young,
the foolish and the ignorant, for whom the
Internet world of Facebook, MySpace and
YouTube has blurred the boundaries of
“public” and “private”, as well as any
notion of what is appropriate in any
particular context.
Rather than jumping on
every unguarded remark uttered in the public
sphere, we should punish only malicious
intent, not immaturity, thoughtlessness or
free expression. As with Prince Harry, it’s
time for us all to grow up.
I think it is also
instructive that Ahmed Khan, the Pakistani
officer at the centre of this fabricated
“race row” has taken no offence at being
referred to as “our little Paki friend”,
while Ben McBean, a serving black officer
who won praise from Prince Harry in
Afghanistan for his bravery, says of the
young royal, “He hasn’t got a bigoted bone
in his body.”
Methinks there is a
distinct whiff of left-wing media bullshit
in the air, generated by diehard republicans
and Muslim zealots angered by Prince Harry’s
tour of Helmand Province fighting the racist
Taliban. It’s gratifying to see opinion
polls showing that 80 per cent of people
have seen through this bullshit.
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Was Harry being racist
or homophobic in using the words Paki
and, elsewhere in his video diary, queer?
Peter Tatchell doesn’t think so, either. See
News.
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