IT'S NOT JUST HARRY...
I've refrained from posting about Harry and the swastika until now, because I felt other people covered it enough. It was just a wrong, stupid choice by a teenager who unfortunately is very high profile because of his royal bloodline. But I'm posting a link to this JTA story because apparently, there's a substantial number of British youth who believe that their Prince's costume choice was perfectly appropriate:
The publication of pictures showing Prince Harry wearing a Nazi uniform at a costume party caused outrage around the world. But it seems that most of his British peers can’t see what all the fuss is about.
In the days following the furor, a poll published by the Sunday Mirror newspaper showed that although 71 percent of those interviewed thought Harry was wrong to wear the costume, which featured a swastika armband, more than half of those between 18 and 24 said the choice of outfit was acceptable.
The results were particularly dispiriting because they followed a recent BBC survey in which 60 percent of those younger than 35 claimed never to have even heard of Auschwitz.
The article notes that it's hard to imagine what's causing this insensitivity since learning about the Holocaust has been required in British schools since 1991. Maybe Miriam will have some insight into this...
UPDATE: Miriam has an interesting post on this here.
posted by Esther Kustanowitz @ 1:14 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
I think a great deal of the world - especially the youth of today - have grown insensetive in general. The gap between those of us who are outraged, and who don't seem to see the big deal, seems for the most part to be divided by age. The older people are (or the more they have studied history), the more they seem to be outraged, where the youth almost seem to think "What's the big deal?" or even find it amusing.
The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, not only because of what the swastika on a red armband has represented since the 1930's, but thinking how his mother would feel if she were alive to have seen this. She would've been more upset than Charles.
Toss in the rotten timing (being this close to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, and it just takes a dumb, callous stunt and makes it even worse.
While not all young adults and teenagers are bad, I often do sit around and wonder what the hell is wrong with many of them... The ones of today makes the ones I grew up around seem like pussycats - and they were anything but.
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