@mike lucey said:
How can anyone seriously expect any member of the Royal family to be PERFECT 100% of the time. Heck! I don't know how any of them can hold their cool with those newspaper cameramen running around after them 24 hours and day 365 days a year.
I couldn't agree more with your second sentence, I wouldn't switch places with the Royals for all the money in the world and if every party any of us ever attended was documented on film I'm sure we'd all be judged guilty of grand moral turpitude at one time or another.
Nevertheless Harry was not being papped- he was holding the camera, he was narrating the film, technically he was working at the time and he was wearing the uniform of the British Army. If none of those facts were enough to suggest to him that it might not be the best time to use racist terms to refer to his colleagues then the Windsors seriously need to practise their media training.
I looked at the forum you posted a link to, the first poster, a British soldier wrote:
@unknownuser said:
Imagine for instance a group of soldiers airmen or sailors and within the group there are several called John, how would you distinguish them in a time of crisis?
If one is from Ireland he will probably be called Paddy.if one has red hair he will be called Ginge etc.
Well... that argument might have some validity if the guy Harry was referring to had the same name as several of his colleagues, but in what way would it have threatened military efficency to have called him simply Ahmed or Khan? Just out of interest Harry's "little Paki friend" (note the "little" denoting inferiority) won the award for the best overseas cadet at Sandhurst. Maybe Ahmed should be narrating a video describing Harry as "the spoiled little brat who is only playing soldiers because his family make him, who gets more glory in the media for going about his normal duties than colleagues who excel and risk their lives in acts of selfless valour while he flounces around the battlezone, more well protected than any other serviceman or woman".
@jackson said:
I guess it's okay to call a colleague "faggot", "mick", "nigger", "jap" (unfortunately I already know Ron's answer to that one) or "bitch" then? Or do you draw the line somewhere?
@remus said:
I frequently do, as i know it will be taken in jest.
You don't know it will be taken in jest, you assume that it will be taken in jest and one day your assumption will be wrong. Where do you think the expression "children are so cruel" comes from?
@remus said:
Using those rules there would be very little being said.
Huh? Somehow I, my friends and colleagues manage to socialise and work every day without using racist, or sexist or homophobic terms, entire books are written, TV programmes are made, forums buzz along for years without need for these words. What world are you living in where by omitting offensive terms you would find it almost impossible to communicate? It's 15 years ago since I was 17 years old, but even then I probably only heard racist language used in school a handful of times in 6 years at secondary school.
@bellwells said:
Jackson, I don't consider "Jap" to be any more derogatory than "Yank". Political correctness is nothing more than a mechanism to control thought and speech. And as a member of the politically correct crowd, you've been well conditioned.
It's irrelevant what you consider to be offensive to another race. If you told me you didn't want to be called a "yank" as it had negative connotations I'd happily oblige (although it's not a term I use anyway). The fact that "jap" has been used, especially since the Second World War, to insult and intimidate the American descendants of Japanese immigrants should be enough to suggest that it's not a term which should be used in general terms.
I actually hate the term "politically correct"- it's got nothing to do with politics, it's to do with common courtesy, respecting other people and treating them as you expect to be treated. As this thread up to now has been populated by (AFAIK) only well-educated able-bodied caucasian heterosexual males I would suggest that we attempt to put ourselves in someone else's shoes and to realise that we were born into extremely priveleged circumstances, where we would never expect to be publicly abused, assaulted or turned down for a job on the basis of something we can do nothing about. I for one am grateful for that throw of the cosmic/genetic dice, but I'm not going to sit back and think "well, the current setup worked for me, screw everyone else". You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.
