The Black Republican

Leave it to Mark Steyn to say what I've been thinking since Britain began its inane "Prince Harry the Nazi" episode, apologizing all over itself in the process.

It's a good rule of thumb that, no matter how big an idiot someone is, he can never compete with the political class's response to his idiocy. Thus, whatever feelings of unease I might have had about Prince Hitler were swept away the moment the rent-a-quote humbugs started lining up to denounce him....

The French sports minister suggested the "scandal" would undermine Britain's bid to host the Olympics. Londoners should be so lucky.

But, if I understand the concern of the sporting world correctly, being a totalitarian state that's killed millions is no obstacle to hosting the Olympics, but going to a costume party wearing the uniform of a defunct totalitarian state that's no longer around to kill millions is completely unacceptable.

It's a rare bird nowadays that can not only buck the conventional wisdom of the politically correct class but also make fun of them for it, but Steyn continues doing both with gusto while making serious commentary.

(W)orrying about a minor Royal schoolboy's alleged Nazi bent seems something of an indulgence at a time when the neo-Nazis get as many votes in Saxony's elections as Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic Party; when from Marseilles to Paris, Jews are being attacked and their homes, schools, kosher butchers, synagogues and cemeteries burnt and desecrated in a low-level intifada that's been going on so long the political establishment now accepts it as a normal feature of French life; and when the Berlin police advise Jews not to go out in public wearing any identifying marks of their faith. It's not just Nazi insignia you don't see in Germany these days; Nazi wise, the uniforms are the least of it.

But if Adolf Hitler were to return from wherever he is right now, what would he be most steamed about? That in some countries there are laws banning Nazi symbols and making Holocaust denial a crime? No, that wouldn't bother him: that would testify to the force and endurance of his ideas - that 60 years on they're still so potent the state has to suppress them.

What would bug him the most is that on Broadway and in the West End Mel Brooks is peddling Nazi shtick in The Producers and audiences are howling with laughter. I don't know what kick Prince Harry gets out of his Nazi gear, but once long ago I was obliged for an historical scene to wear an SS uniform and I've never felt so screamingly camp as when mincing around doing that little flip-of-the-wrist mini-Heil thing.

One reason why the English-speaking democracies were just about the only advanced nations not to fall for Nazism or Fascism is that they simply found it too ridiculous.... That's why British party stores stock Nazi outfits - because they're a joke, and we made them one. So when prissy Krauts want to ban Prince Harry's party gear they should go suck an old bratwurst.

Brooks has made a career out of poking fun at Nazis (albeit sometimes glancingly): from his original screen version of The Producers, to the American Indian in Blazing Saddles ("Schwartzes!"), to the evil empire of Spaceballs ("May the schwartz be with you!"), and a dozen places in-between. When Brooks began his career, he understood that enough time, grief, and anger had passed since the fall of the Third Reich, that it was time to do some real damage to their legacy: it was time to laugh at them. And he has been laughing at them ever since.

Comedy is always the art of poking fun at someone. It can be used with grace, as a way of saying, "Humanity is funny, because we all make mistakes." But it's also a defensive mechanism, reminding the bully that we can laugh at him too. And no bully ever deserved derisive laughter more than the monsters of the Third Reich.

After reading Steyn, one wonders exactly who William was supposed to be laughing at in his lion outfit. Perhaps Harry didn't have such a bad idea after all.