Virgil
LE
Among the many articles praising Harry here's a somewhat nasty piece of work--both the article and the author.
Harry, you're not normal, you're a prince. And this is war, not therapy
What the cringe-making Afghanistan stunt has shown us is that royal lives are still worth more than off-brand ones
Marina Hyde - marina.hyde@guardian.co.uk
Excerpts:
On the one hand, it was nice to see Prince Harry in a British army uniform, as opposed to one of Hitler's. It's a little bit like Pokemon, really. I'm hoping he'll give us a highly collectible Hutu warrior snap soon. Gotta catch 'em all! On the other, is there anyone over Pokemon-playing age who believes it was really worth it? The sheer number of man-hours and money lavished on allowing one young man to experience job satisfaction is mind-boggling. It has to be the most fatuous use of Ministry of Defence resources since Geoff Hoon.
...
Anyway, he was spirited out on a special flight, and is now back on what we must call civvie street. For their part, the ministry are frightfully upset about the fact that it has all come out. Colour us crushed. In fact, I haven't felt this choked up since Cherie Blair cried because her son was off to university and people were being mean about the £500,000 worth of property she'd bought to help him settle in.
And so to the deep new insights. "Nine times out of ten someone stumbles upon you when you're having a shit," Harry explains in one interview. "They don't bat an eyelid because it's normal out here." "It's very nice to be a sort of normal person for once," is his verdict in another interview. "I think this is about as normal as I'm ever going to get." "William sent me a letter," he reveals in a third interview, "saying how proud he reckons that she [Princess Diana] would be."
...
A personal preference would have been for this newspaper to have told the MoD that it didn't fancy being part of their suspicious stunt, given that the Guardian is not given to clearing pages for the kind of cringe-making "access" offered in return. A hunch says a couple of other titles could have ended up agreeing, at which point the idea might have been deemed unsustainable. The money saved on facilitating it all could then have been spent on something genuinely morale-boosting for the troops. Adequate body armour always makes a lovely gift.
It would of course have been beastly for Harry to have had his hopes of seeing action dashed, but perhaps he could have seen that as a life lesson in itself, given that coping with disappointment is something that "normal" people do every day.
Harry, you're not normal, you're a prince. And this is war, not therapy
What the cringe-making Afghanistan stunt has shown us is that royal lives are still worth more than off-brand ones
Marina Hyde - marina.hyde@guardian.co.uk
Excerpts:
On the one hand, it was nice to see Prince Harry in a British army uniform, as opposed to one of Hitler's. It's a little bit like Pokemon, really. I'm hoping he'll give us a highly collectible Hutu warrior snap soon. Gotta catch 'em all! On the other, is there anyone over Pokemon-playing age who believes it was really worth it? The sheer number of man-hours and money lavished on allowing one young man to experience job satisfaction is mind-boggling. It has to be the most fatuous use of Ministry of Defence resources since Geoff Hoon.
...
Anyway, he was spirited out on a special flight, and is now back on what we must call civvie street. For their part, the ministry are frightfully upset about the fact that it has all come out. Colour us crushed. In fact, I haven't felt this choked up since Cherie Blair cried because her son was off to university and people were being mean about the £500,000 worth of property she'd bought to help him settle in.
And so to the deep new insights. "Nine times out of ten someone stumbles upon you when you're having a shit," Harry explains in one interview. "They don't bat an eyelid because it's normal out here." "It's very nice to be a sort of normal person for once," is his verdict in another interview. "I think this is about as normal as I'm ever going to get." "William sent me a letter," he reveals in a third interview, "saying how proud he reckons that she [Princess Diana] would be."
...
A personal preference would have been for this newspaper to have told the MoD that it didn't fancy being part of their suspicious stunt, given that the Guardian is not given to clearing pages for the kind of cringe-making "access" offered in return. A hunch says a couple of other titles could have ended up agreeing, at which point the idea might have been deemed unsustainable. The money saved on facilitating it all could then have been spent on something genuinely morale-boosting for the troops. Adequate body armour always makes a lovely gift.
It would of course have been beastly for Harry to have had his hopes of seeing action dashed, but perhaps he could have seen that as a life lesson in itself, given that coping with disappointment is something that "normal" people do every day.