Don't worry, be Harry: The naked prince and skinny-dipping congressman

Obviously what happens in Vegas, does not stay in Las Vegas anymore. It ends up on the social network. Prince Harry has found that out now that his bare ass naked pictures are all over the Internet. The No 3 in line to the British throne is standing buck naked cupping his privates while an equally naked blonde hides behind his back. The princeling took the famous Las Vegas Strip a little too literally. A game of strip poker in a VIP suite in Vegas has left a lot of royal stiff upper lips quivering. The queen might be having a royal flush but her rep told TMZ “We have no comment to make on the photos at this time.” (The pictures are here. Go ahead, look, we know you want to see them.) This isn’t the only bit of news on the strip-and-tell newsbeat. A Republican congressman from Kansas is in hot water for going skinny dipping  in the Sea of Galillee during a travel boondoggle funded by the American Israel Education Foundation. The Israelis are unfazed because apparently they do it all the time. But Kevin Yoder has earned himself a rebuke from the presidential nominee himself. “Reprehensible,” said Mitt Romney. “It’s behaviour that shouldn’t be tolerated,” said his running mate Paul Ryan. Yoder has apologised copiously saying “The gravity of the situation and the actions I’ve taken are not lost on me.” It’s obviously so grave that the FBI has opened an investigation. All this for a little skinny dipping in the presence of his wife and more than a dozen others. And I thought late night skinny dipping was a hallowed American coming of age ritual. The Sea of Galillee was where Jesus walked on water. Luckily for him, the congressman is not Jesus. Otherwise a lot more of him would have been on display for the world to see and judge. No word whether MI6 is going to swing into action on the Prince Harry case. After all the crown jewels are at stake. For now the only consequence seems to be an audience vote on Prince Harry’s escapade on the TMZ site. The choices are Disgraceful and Awesome. Awesome currently is whupping Disgraceful’s ass at 64 percent to 36 percent. [caption id=“attachment_426492” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  For now the only consequence seems to be an audience vote on Prince Harry’s escapade on the TMZ site.  Reuters[/caption] The common factor between Kevin Yoder and Harry seems to be a little too much alcohol before caution, and clothes, were cast to the winds (or waves). The other thing in common between the two is fact that both actually seemed to be having a good time, sort of don’t worry, be Harry. One was on an all expense paid trip to Israel. The other was in a 5,000 pounds a night  VIP suite. Actually let’s be thankful for everything that these strip tease scandals are not. No interns were molested during their production. No favours were traded. No visuals were put in our heads of octogenarian governors cavorting in the Raj Bhavan with two young women. No date rape drugs were employed. No humiliation of Dalit students in an examination hall. No DNA tests have resulted. No suicide notes either. As scandals go these are practically U-rated. Prince Harry will probably have to issue an apology like Kevin Yoder. Poor Yoder. In a country which pretty much invented the frat boy jokes and gave us the American Pie movies, the Republicans have somehow managed to turn the All American Boy into the All American Prude. I think it’s almost refreshing that one of their freshmen Republicans still has it in him to let his hair down in public. Better than shooting his mouth off about “legitimate rape.” As for Prince Harry – well, that’s a different ballgame. The Brits are oddly a little less uptight in many ways than their American Puritan cousins. But it certainly punctures the carefully constructed no-more-a-playboy image the palace likes to put out about young Harry. It is also a good thing for Britain to be reminded that the carefully cultivated pristine allure of royalty is a thing of the past, no matter the bombast of the Olympics opening ceremony, with its pageantry of British history on full display. In the end Harry turned out to be just another very rich boy with some hot chicks in a pool in Vegas. The British royalty wants to make itself more socially conscious to fit with the times. Harry showed us the prince literally has no clothes. So let’s not damn the two full Montys. They both performed a service. Let us instead tell the baring duo what Kevin Yoder’s almost-namesake, Yoda from Star Wars told the rest of us long ago “May the force be with you.” Or in this particular case another of Yoda’s immortal lines might be more fitting. “Size matters not….Look at me, judge me by my size, do you?"