Steyn gives us one more perfect Prince Phillip quip, with a Shirley Bassey bonus thrown in.
If you’re a Royal consort, you wind up going to a lot of nights out you have not the slightest interest in, like the Royal Command Performance and the Royal Film Premiere and the like. In November 2002, arriving at the Royal Albert Hall for the world premiere of the James Bond film Die Another Day, His Royal Highness was informed by an excited person in the welcome line that Madonna would be singing the title song. He turned to the Queen, and remarked drily, “So we’ll need earplugs then.”
He was quite right. Shirley Bassey had neglected to bring hers, and so, just a few minutes later, the opening titles and the song ended, and Dame Shirl yelled from the stalls, “Rubbish!” She was quite right, too.
Hey, when you’re right, you’re right.
Enemies in common update! If they’re ag’in him, I’m for him.
It's Prince Philip's comments about other nationalities — often inappropriate, occasionally racist and sometimes made on visits hosted by the nations who were the subject of them — that most complicate his legacy. https://t.co/IXLFYTF3oZ
— CNN (@CNN) April 10, 2021
I imagine Philip’s “legacy” will be just fine, thanks, whatever caviling PC nudniks may think, say, or do. In fact, I’d wager the Prince will be fondly remembered long after CNN is dead, buried, and forgotten. I’m with the WSJ’s Gerard Baker all the way:
I had the privilege some years ago to be invited to a July 4 dinner at the American ambassador’s residence in London. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were the guests of honor, there presumably to bear witness that, after a couple of centuries, the unfortunate business over the repeated injuries and usurpations inflicted by one of her ancestors had been quietly forgotten.
The ambassador rose to give the not-so-loyal toast.
He began with the inevitable nod to the two nations’ divergent histories, noting that some time earlier, in their great wisdom, his compatriots had decided to go it alone. “Oh yes!” cried the prince from a sedentary position, fortified, no doubt, by a couple of glasses of the embassy’s very good wine. “And how’s that working out for you?” It was a good question then, and it’s more apt than ever now given America’s current predicament. The people that once boldly threw off the tyranny of a distant monarch now seem to be meekly submitting to the diktats of a regnant class and ideology that tolerate less independence of thought and action than King George III did.
As the prince did at that dinner, he had an unerring capacity to ask awkward questions, speak inconvenient truths and challenge polite orthodoxies.
When we are obligated to toe an increasingly stultifying conventional line, the queen’s consort was the human antidote to the virus of verbal oppression that has us in a death grip. You’d search a very long time to find a less woke individual than the duke of Edinburgh.
He got all the right knickers in a twist, and he’s still doing it, which makes him a-okay in my book. The unhappier shitlib types are, the better I like it. Kruiser says it well:
Three cheers to Prince Philip for being able to annoy our worthless woke morons first from beyond an ocean and now from beyond the grave.
I don’t care how rich he was, I would have bought him a drink in a heartbeat.
Rest in peace, Phil.
Amen to that.
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OK, I’m warming up to this prince fellow.