Topic: still beats Scientology

[WindAndConfusion]

key terms:

• Vanuatu - a small island nation in the South Pacific.
  
• cargo cult - any of a number of 20th century new religious movements that believed they could summon cargo through religious practices. Most famously, they emulated the US Air Corps (circa World War II) hoping to summon military cargo planes.
  
• Prince Philip - Duke of Edinburgh and consort to Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II; also a senile, racist old coot.
  

A cargo cult "soldier."

• the Prince Philip movement: a cargo cult (that persists to this day) in Vanuatu, among whom Prince Philip of England is regarded as a living god. Philip is believed to be the son of the spirit of a nearby mountain.

"You must tell King Philip that I'm getting old and I want him to come and visit me before I die," said the white-haired chief, who thinks he is about 80. "If he can't come perhaps he could send us something: a Land Rover, bags of rice or a little money."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/19/wphilip19.xml

Philip is famous for his witlessness and off-the-cuff racism. Cataloging his stupidest remarks is something of a hobby among some Britons, a little like stamp collecting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Philip#Controversial_remarks

[angrykeebler]

The pig farmer from "Babe" play Philip in "The Queen".

True story.

[idolminds]

Did he just ask his living god for a Land Rover?

[Quemaqua]

Which is apparently the rough equivalent in value to a few bags of rice.

[WindAndConfusion]

At last, I understand the purpose of keeping the British monarchy: To remind themselves of why they don't have a monarchy anymore.

    * Speaking to a driving instructor in Scotland, he asked: "How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?"[9]
    * When visiting China in 1986, he told a group of British students, "If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed".[9]
    * After accepting a gift from a Kenyan citizen he replied, "You are a woman, aren't you?"[9]
    * "If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it." (1986)[9]
    * In 1966 he remarked that "British women can't cook."[9]
    * To a British student in Papua New Guinea: "You managed not to get eaten then?"[9]
    * Angering local residents in Lockerbie when on a visit to the town in 1993, the Prince said to a man who lived in a road where eleven people had been killed by wreckage from the Pan Am jumbo jet: "People usually say that after a fire it is water damage that is the worst. We are still trying to dry out Windsor Castle."[10]
    * On a visit to the new National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff, he told a group of deaf children standing next to a Jamaican steel drum band, "Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf."[11][9]
    * He asked an Indigenous Australian, "Still throwing spears?" (2002)[12][9]
    * Said to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary, "You can't have been here that long – you haven't got a pot belly." (1993)[9]
    * Seeing a shoddily installed fuse box in a high-tech Edinburgh factory, HRH remarked that it looked "like it was put in by an Indian".[13]
    * During a Royal visit to China in 1986 he described Beijing as "ghastly".[14]
    * "Aren't most of you descended from pirates?" (in 1994, to an islander in the Cayman Islands)[9]
    * At the height of the recession in 1981 he said: "Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed."[9]
    * Upon presenting a Duke of Edinburgh Award to a student, when informed that the young man was going to help out in Romania for six months, he asked if the student was going to help the Romanian orphans; upon being informed he was not, it was claimed the 85-year-old duke added: "Ah good, there's so many over there you feel they breed them just to put in orphanages."[15]

    * At the University of Salford, he told a 13-year-old aspiring astronaut: "You could do with losing a bit of weight."[16]
    * In 1997, the Duke of Edinburgh, participating in an already controversial British visit to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (Amritsar Massacre) Monument, provoked outrage in India and in the UK with an offhand comment. Having observed a plaque claiming 2,000 casualties, Prince Philip observed, "That's not right. The number is less." [17]
    * During a Royal visit to a Tamil Hindu temple in London , he asked a Hindu priest if he was related to the terrorist Tamil Tigers.[9]
    * In 1988 he said that "In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation." [19]
    * In 1996 he drew sharp criticism when he said a gun was no more dangerous than a cricket bat in the hands of a madman. The comment came in the wake of the massacre of 16 children and their teacher by a gun-toting psychopath in Dunblane, Scotland.[20][9]
    * In 1976 on tour in Hong Kong and unaware that he is miked up, The Duke of Edinburgh tells a photographer “Fuck off or I’ll have you shot.”[citation needed]

[beo]

haha, i think it's great. it's completely mad, but whatever works for them! the fact that they're flying the union jack fills the british imperialist side of me with glee.

and yeah, prince philip is a legend. again, completely mad, but he's far more entertaining than most of our royalty.