What sort of person could possibly defend a scurrilously maniacal bigoted dictator? I'm not about to for a second, but what I find so utterly repugnant about this whole Harry the Nazi thing is the utter contempt that the newspapers and in particular the Sun* has for sanity.Over in London's west end, theatre goers have for the last 16 weeks been privvy to a musical written by a Jew called The Producers that paradoxically pokes fun at the Nazis. Perhaps in a bizarre sort of way, the media is again parading doublespeak.
I question the sort of person who goes to a function with the sole purpose of photographing royalty. Sure, Harry may be a pratt but the person who took the photograph has made a cool £50,000 and the newspaper trade itself continues to rake misery in order to sell newsprint. Obviously if they could they'd publish photographs of royalty in the shower if they thought they could get away with it. While we're at it, let's sneak into Princess Beatrice' room and grab some pictures of her naked and see if that makes it to page 3. If it's good enough for that hotel heiress then why not?
While we're at it, let's clamp down on every Japanese car displaying a sticker of the Hinomaru (the Japanese Imperial Naval Jack). 7½ million Chinese people were tortured at the hand of the Japanese versus 6 million Jews. Are we therefore to think that somehow Jews are more important?
I think people are being incredibly po-faced about this. As with any subject, there is humour that can be derived from Hitler and the Nazis. By that I don't mean humour that seeks to trivialise their actions, and neither am I suggesting that this stupid bit of behaviour by Prince Harry was at all amusing, except to him and his aristocratic friends. However, the number of people saying that this was absolutely disgusting because there's nothing funny about the Nazis, we're coming up to Holocaust Memorial Day and so on, I find rather depressing.
Does this mean that I shouldn't laugh at the 'Don't mention the war!' sketch from Fawlty Towers, which derives humour from aspects of Nazi Germany? Does it mean I shouldn't still find it funny that workers at Disneyland who hated their working conditions and low pay started referring to the place as 'Mouseschwitz', were then instructed not to by the management, and instead started calling it 'Duckau'? It is possible to refer to such things in a funny way without demeaning the things behind them. I think that people today are becoming increasingly overcome by what the satirist Armando Iannucci referred to on the BBC's Question Time programme as 'manufactured outrage' every time something like this happens.
The only reason, in my mind that, it retains such a focus in the daily press (TV/Radio & Print Media) is that for a news editor it gives them another reason to have a go at an already "easy target" i.e. the royal family or anyone in public life, and therefore they can command some fairly outrageous headlines and starp lines that grab Joe Public's imagination. Nowadays if someone in public life so much as farts, then they are being pilloried for it, come on guys get a grip on reality.
We all make mistakes and faux pas, there's no need to make such a big deal out of it. The Sun will always be far more offensive than a misguided student prank. When the sole priority of your newspaper is peddling bigotry & hatred, then you lose the right to the moral high ground.
Since this whole affair is a terrible mistake it's worthwhile to consider that in 1997, the press lost their biggest target when a black Mercedes crashed into a Parisian road tunnel whilst being pursued by the paparazzi. Has anyone actually ruled out the possibilty that it was actually tagged from behind by a media vehicle? Is that effort now being used to hunt down and attack her son?
*Also of note is the that the Sun like the Daily Telegraph is also a Murdoch run paper, as already razzed on by this column.
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