IT’S GOOD TO BE THE PRINCE

When I was a teenager, the guy I always wanted to be was Bruce Springsteen. Later, my idol as a writer was gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. But now, I have decided who I really want to be when I grow up.

I want to be Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Consort of the United Kingdom.

It’s not that I have any particular letch for Phillip’s spouse, Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth. I mean, she seems like a right nice lady, if a bit, shall we say, reserved. And she is the world’s richest woman, which is always a plus. But that’s not why I want to be the Prince.

And it’s not because of the Prince’s heartwarming success story. Seems that Prince Phillip was born the son of Prince Andrew of Greece (who, for some strange reason, is actually Danish). He didn’t become a naturalized Briton until 1947 when (according to the Royal website) he gave up his Greek title and took the British name of Mountbatten. It’s always inspiring to me to see an immigrant do so well. But that’s not why I want to be the Prince.

I love the Prince because this guy apparently doesn’t give a rat’s patootie about what people think of what he says. The most recent example of what the British press refers to as a "royal gaffe" occurred when the Prince, while visiting Exeter Cathedral, was doing the old "grip and grin"-shaking the hands of the assembled royal subjects who, truth be told, were probably craning their necks to look past him and get a look at the Queen. When he encountered Susan Edwards, a blind, wheelchair-bound woman accompanied by her guide dog, the Prince joked "Do you know that they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?"

Ms. Edwards, ever the loyal Englishwoman, stood by her Prince. "It sounds like he was saying something terrible" she soothed, "but he was just making a joke." The British press, however, acted as if he had tried to dissolve Parliament. They rushed to get the opinion of one Doreen Williams, head of the Anorexia and Bulimia Care organization. Predictably, Ms. Williams was less than amused. She called his comments "hurtful and unhelpful. I was quite stunned when I heard."

I don’t know why she was stunned. The Prince has a long history of shooting from the lip. Some examples:

• During the 1981 British recession, His Royal Highness observed that "Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed." (Ungrateful rabble!)

• In 1984, while visiting Kenya, a native woman presented him with a small gift. The Prince, perhaps bleary from his long flight, perhaps having gotten into the gin, looked at her and said "You are a woman, aren't you?"

• During a state visit to China in 1986, he told a group of British students: "If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed". On another occasion, he observed to attendees at a wildlife-preservation conference: "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."

• While visiting the formerly British-occupied territory of Scotland, he asked a driving instructor "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?" (For a guy whose title is Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince doesn’t seem to have much affection for the Scots.)

• In 1994 on a visit to the Cayman Islands, he asked an islander, "Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?" (I don’t know why this would be considered a gaffe. Australia was founded by prisoners and they seem to regard it as practically a badge of honor).

• In 1996, in the aftermath of a school shooting in the Scottish town of Dunblane, the Prince reacted to calls to tighten the UK’s already stringent firearms laws by saying "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?" (Somebody send that Prince an honorary membership in the NRA).

• In 1998, he congratulated a student who had been hiking in Papua New Guinea by asking "You managed not to get eaten, then?"

In America, of course, the Prince would be shushed up by his handlers, hustled off to "sensitivity training," and would end up a few months later on "Oprah" and "The View" apologizing not only for his remarks about anorexia, but for his entire privileged existence. But that’s the thing about being a Prince, even one who attained the title by marrying up. Oh, sure, you can’t have people flogged or beheaded or burned at the stake anymore. But you can sail blithely above the storms of political correctness, secure in your position. I mean, what are they going to do, fire the guy? Impeach him? Haw-haw, as they say.

So, in honor of His Royal Highness, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, Baron Greenwich, and formerly known as Prince of Greece (and Denmark), the following poem:

Prince Phillip could never fathom

Why his jests were offensive to some,

He said "all you blokes

Who don’t care for my jokes

Can kiss my rosy Royal bum!"

God save the Queen.

COPYRIGHT 2002 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.