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: Althouse

"Who would have thought it? Prince Harry is just a normal bloke in spite of the weird circumstances of his upbringing."

"Sure, I am all for abominating racism like any other form of odious collectivism... but this hypersensitivity to any politically incorrect use of language is really annoying."

I loved the part where Harry's spoofing a phone conversation with the Queen:

"Granny I've got to go, send my love to the Corgis and Grandpa.... I've got to go, got to go, bye. God Save You ... yeah, that's great."

IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt says:

A royal Kowalski!

Walt Kowalski is the Clint Eastwood character in "Gran Torino," the movie we've been talking about over here. I'd written:

Does the movie legitimatize racial epithets? We have our snarling but lovable geezer spitting a hundred racist slurs ? especially to refer to Asians ? over the course of the movie. And, in trying to teach his young mentee how to man up ? and not be a pussy ? he encourages him to banter playfully using words like "wop," "mick," and so forth. You might want to say it's a hilarious slap in the face of political correctness. But I think the movie is pretty effective in selling plain old-fashioned racial talk.

Freeman now says:

I think you're right about Gran Torino making a case for racial language in general. Having the character talk like that to everyone, people he liked and didn't like, people of his own race and not, sort of popped the bubble that these words should have special, almost magical, powers to offend. Especially with the juxtaposition of the racial insults against the real insults. The times you felt he was really cutting were the times when he called young men "pussies" because they deserved it.

Full post as published by Althouse on January 11, 2009 (boomark / email).