Thursday, April 2, 2009

Prince Phillip's remark is not racist

Some people have emailed this to me. Get your head out of your arse! It's not racist.

Source: New York Times



But in addition to delivering a gift to the Obamas, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, delivered a faux pas as well when the two couples first met. (Although that is the sort of gift he often gives to the British media.)

The queen marveled at how the president managed to stay awake from the jet lag. President Obama detailed his schedule from the morning, mentioning that he had "meetings with the Chinese, the Russians, David Cameron. And I'm proud to say I did not nod off in one of the meetings."

Prince Philip, already chortling in the background, blurted: "Can you tell the difference between them?"

The president, trying to smooth over the awkward comment from a man known to make such gaffes, offered diplomatically, "It's all a blur, of course, of course."


Why would he be refering to whether you can tell the difference between David Cameron, Russian and Chinese? They are totally different and have nothing to do with each other. Obviously he was making a joke about how Obama was able to stay awake in either of the meetings cause they were all boringly the same? The 'them' are the meetings, not the people.

Not everything is racist ok people? It's a bad joke but I understood it right away.

3 comments:

Chris said...

Prince Phillip is one of the many jokes of the Royal Family. He has a history of being wildly "politically incorrect" on many occasions (a Google will probably show lots of them).

He is also around 87 years old. This means that he is getting to the age when people start to forgive gaffes made by the elderly. The Queen Mother was, by all accounts, a proto-Nazi in her political views and much more racist than Prince Phillip, and yet everyone forgave her because she lived to be 101.

Prince Harry, however, is nowhere near that age and appearing in a Nazi uniform at a fancy-dress party was written off as young man's hijinks.

There is a pattern here. Remember, the Royal Ramily is mostly German in origin...

Degenerasian said...

The pattern is irrelevant.

I'm aware that the Royal family, especially Harry, has made racist statements in the past.

I'm just looking at yesterday's quotes and by looking at that, there is nothing racial about it. Anyone who knows English would generally assume that a vague antecedent would refer to the most recent appropriate noun, which, in the context of Obama's comments, would have been the meetings, not the people.

Read the text only, don't generalize a person based on past behavior.

Anonymous said...

please go back to asia and to your fya dolla make you holla,then and quit your bitching...you smell like garlic and fish