The Reluctant Whore

Prince Harry was secretly deployed in Iraq and had been there for almost 3 months until the Drudge Report broke the story of where he was. Apparently the military had forged an agreement with the UK press that meant that they wouldn’t report on his being in Iraq because he’s essentially considered a “bullet magnet”.

Astonishingly, the UK press didn’t report anything and then Matt Drudge in the US did.
The whole issue of why it was imperative to send Prince Harry to war if he is, in fact, a bullet magnet, is not as interesting to me as the whole issue of post colonial angst that comes through in this. The US has always had this petulant attitude towards the UK and it’s not even about anything current, it’s almost always specifically justified by the War of Independence over 200 years ago.

It would be difficult to be a journalist in the UK and make the decision to put the prince in harm’s way by revealing his location and that’s really saying something because the UK press are freaking insane – particularly when it comes to celebrities and the royal family. I mean, most papers have a Royal Editor for Christ’s sake. If you were the one who reported it you’d be ostracized and alienated. I guess because Harry is hot, good natured and Diana’s son.

So, it would take a right wing ass like Matt Drudge to reveal the information in the US despite the apparent understanding that it could put him in danger and you just know that he justified it by saying it was news (and it is) but far more dominant in this would be his claim that he won’t be told what to do by the English.

Once I was at a party at my American cousin’s house in Sydney and he went on this rant about how he would never sing God Save the Queen because the US won its independence in 1776. Mind you, I refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance when I was in elementary school in California because I felt like it was a weirdly religious cult like thing to do. Which it is.

Now Harry’s on his way back to the UK, actually he’s probably there by now and the poor thing has to hole up in a palace and drink sweet liqueurs and go to cuckoo concerts and shit like that. Oh well. [source]