Culture

Channel 9 Is Getting Dragged For Framing Prince Philip’s Horrid Racism As “Embarrassing Gaffes”

Making a racist moments montage for a dead dude is one thing. But then trying to put a positive spin on it? That sure is a choice.

by Michelle Rennex  12 April 2021
Prince Philip Racism Channel 9

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In case you missed the news, which has been seemingly impossible to ignore, Prince Philip died on Friday night.

The Royal Family announced the news “with deep sorrow” on social media on April 9, stating that Prince Philip had “passed away peacefully at Windsor Castle” at the ripe old age of 99.

As expected, media immediately went into overdrive to report the royal death with extended news segments and TV specials on the life of the Queen’s husband dominating screens across Australia and the UK. There have even been some quite unfortunate mid-techno mix radio announcements to report the news.

The issue with these TV reports, however, is that these stations have been glossing over the many, many problematic statements Prince Philip made in his lifetime. While death is always a sad thing, death doesn’t absolve someone from the racist things they said when they were alive.

Australian media has even been called out for overlooking the Duke of Edinburgh’s problematic past with Channel 9 getting slammed for literally framing Prince Philip’s racism as “little quirky oopsies” as TikTok user @stormsofjupiter called them.

In her now-private viral video, 23-year-old Aussie Angie flagged just how horrific Channel 9’s coverage of Prince Philip’s clearly racist statements from years past was. In the 12-minute segment, the Prince’s racism was introduced as “clangers”, and “embarrassing gaffs” that were “welcomed by the public with a secret glee”.

“In some ways, Prince Philip was a double-edged sword. Tall. Aristocratic. The warrior-consort to the Queen. But famous for his embarrassing gaffes, welcomed by the public with a secret glee,” the segment started before jumping right into the Duke of Edinburgh’s worst statements.

“Clangers like ‘British women can’t cook’, ‘If it has four legs and isn’t a chair, if it swims and isn’t a submarine… the Cantonese will eat it’,” the reported continued, paired with photos of Prince Philip over the years.

But the racist statements just didn’t let up, with the station also sharing the Prince’s infamous line about Caymanians descending from pirates and his ignorant question of whether Aboriginal people “still throw spears at each other”.

Ending the strange ode to Prince Philip’s rampant racism, the report noted that “whatever his wayward habits, it is hard not to have seen the royal marriage as a great success” without much criticism of his objectively terrible statements.

But Australian media aren’t the only ones glossing over the Duke of Edinburgh’s racism, with the BBC’s obituary to Prince Philip taking a very similar positive tone.

Instead of chastising the Prince’s racist statements, the article just describes them as his “tendency to be forthright” and “nothing more than an attempt to lighten the atmosphere and put people at their ease”.

“While he was heavily criticised in some quarters for such remarks, others saw them as reflecting someone who was his own man and who had refused to become bound by political correctness,” the obituary also noted.

Yikes. Again, I promise that you can criticise someone for the shitty, racist things they said during their life when they die — and Channel 9 please do start to.