Prince Harry's a what?

You know, I was all ready to do a post about our wonderful holiday, complete with pictures, until I fell out of bed this morning, turned on my tv and was subjected to yet another round of dramatic drivel disguised as "news". Thanks to CBS, I was slapped in the face with the "news" that Britain's Prince Harry...(dramatic music here)...is a racist. The basis for this claim? A video, taken and narrated by Harry, has surfaced wherein he points the camera at a fellow cadet and calls him a "Paki". The fellow cadet was indeed a Pakistani but, apparently, "Paki" is a derogatory term for Indians or Pakistanis. Who knew? Now I haven't heard any response from the aforementioned Pakistani cadet, but his uncle has managed to make the news by telling the world just how insulting Prince Harry's comment was. Huh. Wonder if Australians are similarly offended by the turn "Aussie". Come to think of it, I've also been known to refer to those from Great Britain as "Brits". Certainly didn't mean any offense by that, but perhaps I assumed too much, eh? Better check on these things before I make an unintended faux paux. But, back to Harry - lest you think the news is making much ado about nothing, there's further proof that the Red-Headed, Third-in-Line-to-the-Throne, Wild Child-of-the-British-Isles is indeed a racist pig. In yet another video shot by William's little bro, Harry spots one of his comrades with what appears to be some camouflage netting over his head and as he looks up at the lens, Harry says: "It's Dan the Man... F*** me, you look like a raghead." (For those of you who aren't current on offensive slang, "raghead" is a racist term for Arabs.) Well now. That just goes over the line, don't you think? What a jerk. What an insensitive, arrogant, unthinking jerk. I'm appalled that the Royal Family still claims him.

Okay. So that's not how I really feel. I really feel that what passes as so-called news these days is really nothing more than salacious gossip. I feel that, while racism is ugly and intolerable, the world has gone too far into the "politically correct" stage and anything and everything can and probably will be misconstrued as racist if heard by the right (or the wrong) person. I feel that some people are too thin-skinned and that there are false proponents of those people who will raise the specter of ugliness and hatred for their own purposes without thought to the strife their actions will cause. I feel that we, the people of the industrialized nations all across this planet, spend way too much time listening to people who claim to be bringing us the "news" when those people have absolutely no idea of what the basic tenets of journalism actually are. I feel that our ability and willingness to let other people formulate our opinions over issues ranging from Prince Harry's latent and/or blatant racism (depending on how you view this latest "news", of course) to which of our potential leaders' shady associations are really worth thinking about is going to lead us into ruination and chaos. And most of us will be standing there asking "How'd this happen?". Well let me just tell you ahead of time...it happened because we were all too damn lazy to find out facts for ourselves. Having it force fed to us by plastic faced talking heads on so-called news shows was just easier. The Politically Correct Police have informed us that Prince Harry is a racist, therefore he will be labeled as such forever more in the minds of many. Just like the Politically Correct Police told us that Obama's associations with the likes of Tony Rezko, William Ayers and ACORN were unimportant and not worthy of scrutiny. Far too many of us said, "Duhhhhhh, okay. If you say so.", and let those issues fall to the wayside. Whether or not they were worthy of scrutiny may never be known because we were told it didn't matter and we excepted it. Probably because we were too busy watching Britney Spears' latest mental breakdown or agonizing over who would win the "big prize" on the latest Must See reality show. Priorities are everything, eh? It happened because we gave far too much trust to those who are supposed to earn it from us and were too lackadaisical and/or ignorant to take that trust back when we knew we should.

Okay. I'm done for now. Note to self: stick to reruns of Monk in the A.M. and avoid "news" channels like the plague.

I'll be back with some Christmas pictures later on today...once my blood-pressure has returned to normal. And just so you know; hearing that Prince Harry issued an "apology" for his "racist" remarks really didn't go a long way towards accomplishing that. I think I'd have felt better if he'd have told the world media to "piss off" instead.