I once showed Harry the M107 .50 cal and he looked up at his mum and said 'One day, can I be a soldier?'. I won't tell you what she said. Harry is a military officer and he has been trained to be a military officer, and he is acting as you might expect a young military officer to act off duty when he imagines no one is looking (if I had to set through that closing ceremony, I'd feel the need to get hammered too).
But there is a world of difference between getting innocently and pleasantly sloshed at a naked bar with your military buddies at no one's expense - and engaging in a drug crazed gang rape after trashing a hotel. And lets face it, this is hardly Tailhook. Puritanical civvies look upon nakedness as shameful, but getting nekked
is all part of the military craic; everything on show, everyone equal (well.. almost) and what you see is what you get.
I'm baffled by the whole thing. Its as if we are suggesting that innocent cavorting is a bad thing. Lets be honest, the skuzzy media needed an excuse to show these pics and it has to find an angle to justify it. Why? Because any redtop publishing the strapline 'Harry has some innocent fun and we have the pictures', without covering its 6 by thinking up another 'public interest angle' about his 'many, varied and latest behavioural shortcomings' would be served with a severe dig.
And if all he is 'guilty' of, is naivety, then what has the world come to when a 27 year old who goes to Vegas hotel can only read the Gideon bible there? Its also not so much a reflection of him, but more of us, if we find fault with him over this - and thats the sad part. Finally, a point about The Sun searching its soul and needing to show the pics 'at any cost' because we, the public, had the 'right' to see them? Is this the same valiant, crusading, Super Soaraway Sun that wimped out of showing the Danish cartoons?
