Monday, October 27, 2008

Britan's Biden

According to Michael Kinsley, a "gaffe" is "when a politician [inadvertantly] tells the truth."

Not so much telling some objective truth, but revealing said politician's thoughts. In the United States, the preemminant practitioner of the gaffe is Senator Joseph Biden.

In Britan, now, he has a serious contender: Prince Phillip.

Savor his latest venting:

Prince Philip has branded tourism ‘national prostitution’ in his latest unfortunate gaffe.

He made the shocking comment to a professor during his State visit with the Queen to Slovenia last week.

Dr Maja Uran revealed that the 87-year-old Duke told her: ‘Tourism is just national prostitution.’

He went on: ‘We don’t need any more tourists. They ruin cities.’

His comments come despite royal aides regularly stressing the importance of tourists to Britain’s economy – with one million visiting Buckingham Palace and Windsor
Castle each year.

It follows other infamous faux pas by the Prince – including telling a British student in China he would get ‘slitty eyes’ and asking Aborigines in Australia: ‘Do you still throw spears at each other?’

Dr Uran, associate professor of tourism at the University of Primorska, was among
four groups of experts who met Philip last Tuesday at the Hotel Union in the
Slovenian capital of Ljubljana.

She told Philip she wanted to organise a network of people with local knowledge to help tourists. But she said: ‘He laughed and said, “Tourism is just national prostitution.”

‘I couldn’t quite believe he used that word and we all collapsed in embarrassment.’


All those sweaty tourists, clogging up the roads so that the Rolls is often stuck in traffic. And the well-to-do ones fill up often fill up one's favorite reasturant during The Season.

As bad as I disagree with the viewpoints of American elites, they have nothing on European elites.

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