Prince Harry’s Nazi blunder

Acres of synthetic moral outrage from the British tabloids, leavened only by a nicely ironic column by John O’Farrell in the Guardian. Sample:

“What’s almost as distressing is that taxpayers’ money was spent sending this boy to Eton, and this is the best they could do. Surely some sort of refund must be in order? Did Clarence House check the league tables for percentage of pupils gaining grades A-C in racial purity? So that’s why his art teacher at Eton said she helped him with his A-level coursework; she had to paint over that great big portrait of Von Ribbentrop.

Despite endless scandals and embarrassing gaffes, these privately educated rightwing wasters are still the only people that the royals mix with. It’s no wonder that our royal family have absolutely no idea about what is normal or appropriate behaviour.

The fancy dress party in question was hosted by one of the pro-hunting upper-class twits who invaded last year’s Labour party conference. The fact that one of the guests sold this picture to the tabloids tells us as much about their morality as Harry’s costume. Last time he got into trouble for punching a photographer. This time you can’t help feeling he was a bit slow off the mark.” [Thanks to Boyd Harris for the link.]

En passant, one charitable explanation for the gaffe is that Harry is probably typical of his generation in knowing virtually nothing about the Nazis other than that they favoured funny moustaches amd had preposterous salutes. He had, in other words, the Monty Python view of National Socialism.