Saturday, May 04, 2002

As Bad As Shrub?

GW's foot spends so much time in his mouth that Slate has a column devoted to his blunders and a book compiling his verb-idiocy has already seen print. Another is soon on the way.

However, the awful things Queen Elizabeth's husband has said in public over the years has to make you wonder why he is let out of the castle.

Cut and pasted in its entirety from Reuters:

Prince Philip has put his foot in it again -- with a joke about dogs and anorexics.

Queen Elizabeth's blunt-talking husband is renowned for gaffes that have caused blushes around the world from China to Australia.

And he hit the headlines again on Friday for all the wrong reasons after accompanying the monarch on a round Britain tour to celebrate 50 years on the throne.

Speaking to the blind Susan Edwards, wheelchair bound and accompanied by her guide dog, he remarked: "Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?"

Asked for her reaction after their brief encounter outside Exeter Cathedral in western England on Thursday, Edwards said: "It sounds like he was saying something terrible -- but he was just making a joke."

But Doreen Williams of the Anorexia and Bulimia Care organization was not amused. She called his comments "hurtful and unhelpful. I was quite stunned when I heard."

Reporters covering Prince Philip on royal tours keep their ears pricked for blunt off-the-cuff quips that often turn into diplomatic incidents.

Earlier this year on a trip to Australia, the prince asked Aborigines if they still threw spears at each other.

**Click here for full Australia poop**

On another trip to Australia in 1998, he asked a student who had just returned from a walking tour in Papua New Guinea: "You managed not to get eaten then?"

But perhaps his most famous foreign faux pas came in China in 1986. He told British students: "If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed."

But wait -- it doesn't stop.

Here is more:

He also asked a driving instructor in Oban, Scotland: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?"

Other eyebrow-raising pronouncements have included...

"British women can't cook." (1966)

"Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed." (during the 1981 recession)

"We didn't have counsellors rushing around every time somebody let off a gun, asking 'Are you all right? Are you sure you don't have a ghastly problem?' You just got on with it." (commenting in 1995 on modern stress counselling for servicemen)

"If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?" (in 1996, amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shooting)

"Bloody silly fool!" (in 1997, referring to a Cambridge University car park attendant who failed to recognize him)

"It looks as if it was put in by an Indian." (in 1999, referring to an old-fashioned fuse box in a factory near Edinburgh)

"Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf." (in 1999, to young deaf people in Cardiff, referring to a school's steel band)

"They must be out of their minds." (in 1982, in the Solomon Islands, after being told that the annual population growth was only 5%)

"You are a woman, aren't you?" (in 1984, in Kenya, to a native woman who had presented him with a small gift)

"Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world." (in 1991, in Thailand, after accepting a conservation award)

"Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease." (in 1992 in Australia, when asked to stroke a Koala bear)

"You can't have been here that long - you haven't got a pot belly." (in 1993, to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary)

"Aren't most of you descended from pirates?" (in 1994, to an islander in the Cayman Islands)

"If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has got two wings and it flies but is not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." (at a 1986 World Wildlife Fund meeting)

The BBC is the source for the last section.

posted by Bohica at 6:12 AM