January 13

Beyond the pale.. politicans who jump when the press tells them to jump

“I suspect that the vast majority of people in this country who are not part of the "Media Chattering Classes", know full well that what Prince Harry said in context, was not racialist but part and parcel of the team building environment so essential in stress related environments like the Armed Forces and Emergency Services,’ writes one reader of the London Daily Telegraph on 12 January.

He continued : “… we in the UK are living in an environment of PC crap that nobody understands so that every ‘non-PC’ outrage .. has to be ‘outed’ … (Prime Minister)  Brown, ( Conservative Leader of the Opposition ) Cameron … say ‘It is unacceptable…’ just because they are politicians.

“The young fellow Officer who came from Pakistan and passed Sandhurst with distinction had no more problem being called Paki than an Australian being called an Aussie."

The News of the World tired three year old beat-up about Prince Harry is still making waves. There is of course serious news out there, about Gaza, and the story that President Bush had blocked an Israeli plan to bomb Iran’s nuclear facility, but agreed to sabotage it.

Then there are king tides which are causing so much excitement on the news but which seem little different from the Christmas tides we used to have. They are certainly not like the tides in the seventies which destroyed large parts of the Bondi Beach promenade.

To show how important a beat-up by another Murdoch newspaper is in the Murdoch empire, Tuesday’s Australian on 13 January has an opinion piece with a screaming page one pointer.  

The opinion piece was written by a journalist from, you guessed it, another of Mr Murdoch’s newspapers, The Times.

Claiming what Prince Harry said was “beyond the pale,” all the opinion piece demonstrated was solidarity within the empire, the Murdoch empire that is.

In the meantime about 60,000 votes have been recorded on the TMZ poll on this, and overwhelmingly they are running in Prince Harry's way…73%.  I wonder if the politicians have noticed?

Have any of the people carrying on about this actually spent some time in the armed forces? Aren’t they aware of the practice among men, especially in the armed forces, of using apparently pejorative terms in addressing the very people they like?

Beyond the pale? It's the spineless politicians who think they have to jump merely because the jaded journalists at the News of the World and their sibling newpapers pretend to be outraged  who are beyond the pale.

 


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