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Prince Philip's 'gaffes' leave a difficult legacy


Eldorado

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He was called rude, racist, sexist and plain insensitive.

Prince Philip, who died on Friday aged 99, became well known for his long record of inappropriate or awkward gaffes.

ABC Australia

During a royal visit to China in 1986, for instance, Philip described Beijing as "ghastly" and told British students: "If you stay here much longer you'll all be slitty-eyed."

He also quipped: "If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it."

CNN

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Bah, we'd all say worse things than that in 99 years of talking. The Cantonese quip I found funny.

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5 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

Bah, we'd all say worse things than that in 99 years of talking. The Cantonese quip I found funny.

He wasn't 99 in 1986.

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And that's why I don't understand people idolizing that guy only because he's dead now and because he was a royal.
From all I've read about him he was not a pleasant person, not to strangers, not to his family.

Edited by Orphalesion
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22 minutes ago, Eldorado said:

He wasn't 99 in 1986.

I was aware of that. I meant try being politically correct through all 99 years of talking. I know I’ve said worse.

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3 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

I was aware of that. I meant try being politically correct through all 99 years of talking. I know I’ve said worse.

Just because you're as bad as him doesn't make him a gent, worthy of respect.  He was a rude, arrogant racist.

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You look starved." (to a pensioner on a visit to the Charterhouse almshouse for elderly men - February 2017

ROFL

Almost certainly made genuinely and doubtless prompted by care and interest.

Yet   out of full context it  is hilarious unless you are a  po - faced , misery guts .

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5 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

I was aware of that. I meant try being politically correct through all 99 years of talking. I know I’ve said worse.

But don't you think that over all those years he would have learned some restraint? Reality is, he didn't give a stuff . . . . . and he didn't care how that reflected on his wife or his country.

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3 minutes ago, Eldorado said:

Just because you're as bad as him doesn't make him a gent, worthy of respect.  He was a rude, arrogant racist.

I think you are badly exaggerating the issue. 

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2 minutes ago, ouija ouija said:

 

Reality is, he didn't give a stuff . . . . . and he didn't care how that reflected on his wife or his country.

 

His wife used to love his banter . Always asked him to crack a few before bedtime . She was famously overheard  asking him to tell that one about the Slitty Eyes again . 

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Look there's a time and a place for trashing the British Monarchy and it's called the Fourth of July Picnic, let them mourn a little before getting on him about his gaffes. The man was born in 1921 for chrissakes, you can't expect him to have been woke 80 years before woke was a thing. 

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1 hour ago, Autochthon1990 said:

Look there's a time and a place for trashing the British Monarchy and it's called the Fourth of July Picnic, let them mourn a little before getting on him about his gaffes. The man was born in 1921 for chrissakes, you can't expect him to have been woke 80 years before woke was a thing. 

The royal family will never see this thread, so there's no need for you to come to their defence here. It's not like anybody is gonna run up to Lizzie Windsor and tell her she has no right to mourn because her husband was a dirtbag.

But at the same time I do not subscribe to the idea that somebody is absolved of the crap they pulled in life, only because they died. So we don't have to pretend he was a saint only because he was married to a Queen.  

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2 hours ago, ouija ouija said:

But don't you think that over all those years he would have learned some restraint? Reality is, he didn't give a stuff . . . . . and he didn't care how that reflected on his wife or his country.

Seeing as he travelled around the world several times,he can hardly put it down to ignorance of a culture,

So i put his ignorance down to either being a dick,trying to make his hosts feel uncomfortable or just didn't give a siht.

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3 hours ago, Orphalesion said:

And that's why I don't understand people idolizing that guy only because he's dead now and because he was a royal.
From all I've read about him he was not a pleasant person, not to strangers, not to his family.

Simply being respectful of a person's memory isn't nearly the same as "idolizing" or even overlooking their character flaws.  It is done for the living, for those who were close to the man.  I don't know enough about him to make an educated judgment of his life or behavior but I do know he never attempted to harm anyone in my life and that's enough to be getting along with.  

We'll see the same kind of sentiments and perhaps, worse, when the Queen passes.  I just don't see the point is spitting on a person's grave.  Maybe, if I outlive the Tan Messiah, I'll have to eat these words but I hope I'll have the good grace to be respectful even of his loved ones.  

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2 minutes ago, and then said:

 

We'll see the same kind of sentiments and perhaps, worse, when the Queen passes.   

Of course you won't! I doubt there'll be a single bad word said about her.

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4 minutes ago, ouija ouija said:

Of course you won't! I doubt there'll be a single bad word said about her.

In today's world where people endlessly spew hate, often without the least provocation?  I hope you are correct but I think it's unlikely that she wouldn't be smeared by some when she passes.  I never said she'd deserve the slanders, just that we'd probably see them.

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51 minutes ago, and then said:

  but I do know he never attempted to harm anyone in my life and that's enough to be getting along with. 

But do you know whether he attempted or did to harm other people?
Plus the evidence says that he WAS an abusive parent to Charles...

51 minutes ago, and then said:

  It is done for the living, for those who were close to the man. 

As I said, I'm not gonna write ol'Elizabeth a letter about what I think of her husband. But I'm not gonna pretend he was a saint.

Edited by Orphalesion
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1 hour ago, and then said:

Simply being respectful of a person's memory isn't nearly the same as "idolizing" or even overlooking their character flaws.

 

Respectful?

“You’re too fat to be an astronaut.” (Said to 13-year-old Andrew Adams who told Philip he wanted to go into space. Salford, 2001).

Irish Times

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Remember the car accident he caused? It was in 2019 when he was 97. What was a 97 year old man doing driving when he has a chauffeur who could have been driving him?! It was sheer luck that no one in the car he hit was killed.

Just two days after this incident, police had to pull him up because he was seen driving without wearing a seat belt.

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The way i always seen him was ,a guy who lived in a bubble,totally out of touch with real people.

A guy with little to no empathy.

Remember prince andrew showed no empathy towards his victim in that interview.gotta think where did he get that attitude from.

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Only if you're of the woke generation and offended by absolutely everything.  Apparently Daffy Duck and Mr Potato Head is offensive these days. 

(p.s. That last quote you attribute to him is pretty much why we are where we are.) 

Edited by itsnotoutthere
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For those who have only heard about his gaffs through the media here is a Prince Philip interview that perfectly captures his personality

He is normal, likeable, and nice.

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Phil the Greek was a product of his time, he lacked tact but that was solely because he never had a need to learn it. He wasn’t racist because of hate of the other, but rather he was a member of an extended royal family that literally ruled most of the world at the time of his birth, to him everyone else was of a lesser class, an equally mockery worthy mass of people he honestly neither cared for nor hated. 

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2 hours ago, Sir Wearer of Hats said:

Phil the Greek was a product of his time, he lacked tact but that was solely because he never had a need to learn it. He wasn’t racist because of hate of the other, but rather he was a member of an extended royal family that literally ruled most of the world at the time of his birth, to him everyone else was of a lesser class, an equally mockery worthy mass of people he honestly neither cared for nor hated. 

I post this with the greatest respect, aware as I am of the national outpouring of grief which has not yet had a chance to abate, and aware as I am of how hard-working and well-respected all the Royal Family are, him especially, but I notice in the piece Eldorado opens with, from ABC Australia, the journalist says

"And then there were the times he snapped at people working at royal events, with the prince not being one to suffer fools lightly." and he then gives these examples:

In 2015, to a photographer hovering near his table: "Just take the ****ing photo."

In 1991, to a car park attendant who didn't recognise him, he said: "You bloody silly fool."

He once cut off BBC journalist Caroline Wyatt after she had asked whether the Queen was enjoying a stay in Paris, with the words "damn fool question".

At a royal reception at Windsor Castle he asked Simon Kelner, the republican editor of the Independent newspaper: "What are you doing here?"

"I was invited, sir," he said.

"Well, you didn't have to come," Prince Philip replied.

It may be me, but it seems unclear in what way these people were being foolish.

I do realise that it is my own fault I don't understand Royal wit, I would not like to be seen as being critical, I just raise it as a point.

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And when he was spouting on about world population levels because people were having too many children, someone riposted with, “ That’s a bit rich from someone with four children”, and he responded with, “Touché” and laughed.

Written examples of his ‘gaffes’ or ‘foot in mouth’ incidents don’t show his demeanour or whether he said these things with a laugh.  We all know how the written word on here can be misconstrued without the body language to go with it.

He liked to get on with things and had little time for procrastination or dithering.  He was shunted about as a child from pillar to post without either of his parents around.  He never had the chance to learn parenting skills by example.  I sympathise on this one because my parents had poor parenting skills and there was little affection from them, so I too was a poor parent because I didn’t know any different.

We are all products of our ages and times and our own upbringing.  Overall I think he did far more good than bad.  Many of his achievements he kept under his hat and they are only coming to light now.  He made mistakes, but don’t we all?  Only he has had to make those in the limelight.  I believe the not wearing a seat belt was on a road on private crown land and the police offered advice.  He had one on when he was driving at the time of the accident but that was on a public road he needed to use for a short distance to access further private land the far side of the road.

To the detractors, he has gone now so can’t do any more ‘gaffes’ or wound your sensibilities with his status, wealth, privilege or whatever else it is that so offends you.  Get over it and get on with your own perfect, blameless lives.

 

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