Update to “Snub Britain” post – Obama Wants to Meet England’s Queen
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on March 6, 2009
By Vicki McClure Davidson * Frugal Café Blog Zone
Queen Elizabeth II
Posted today, Telegraph.co.uk’s Iain Martin wrote the following piece, which you’ve gotta read (I’m off looking for an aspirin): President Barack Obama dislikes Britain, but he’s keen to meet the Queen
In the spirit of the old song “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” I think a revision of it to “50 Ways to Insult Your Ally” may be a Number 1 hit with the clowns in the White House circus. Although, I am almost 100 percent confident that one of the 50 ways would not include Barack giving Queen Elizabeth II a good-natured wedgie… at least, one would hope. Here’s the draft of a letter we’re writing to assert some “Obama Damage Control.”
Dear Citizens of England and Prime Minister Brown,
We’re sorry about all this terrible behavior (spelled “behaviour” in the UK) from America’s government and president toward you, our allies. He’s new and proving to be a self-serving wastrel and socialist. They have always had a problem with properly behaving with international leaders and playing well with others.
Please remain our friends, despite our POTUS’s evident flaws, improprieties, and shortcomings. We hope this situation on this side of the pond improves soon. The year 2012 should produce some hope and change.
Manchester United!
Sincerely, Americans with a Brain
UPDATE: For those who missed the excrutiating play-by-play of The Great Gift Gaffe between Obama and Brown, here is columnist Mark Steyn’s take on it:
The Great Destabilization
Mark Steyn
March 7, 2009 7:00 AMBritish prime minister Gordon Brown thought long and hard about what gift to bring on his visit to the White House last week. Barack Obama is the first African-American president, so the prime minister gave him an ornamental desk-pen holder hewn from the timbers of one of the Royal Navy’s anti-slaving ships of the 19th century, HMS Gannet. Even more appropriate, in 1909 the Gannet was renamed HMS President.
The president’s guest also presented him with the framed commission for HMS Resolute, the lost British ship retrieved from the Arctic and returned by America to London, and whose timbers were used for a thank-you gift Queen Victoria sent to Rutherford Hayes: the handsome desk that now sits in the Oval Office.
And, just to round things out, as a little stocking stuffer, Gordon Brown gave President Obama a first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert’s seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill.
In return, America’s head of state gave the prime minister 25 DVDs of “classic American movies.”
Evidently, the White House gift shop was all out of “MY GOVERNMENT DELEGATION WENT TO WASHINGTON AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT” T-shirts. Still, the “classic American movies” set is a pretty good substitute, and it can set you back as much as $38.99 at Wal-Mart: Lot of classics in there, I’m sure — Casablanca, Citizen Kane, The Sound of Music — though this sort of collection always slips in a couple of Dude, Where’s My Car? 3 and Police Academy 12 just to make up the numbers. I’ll be interested to know if Mr. Brown has anything to play the films on back home, since U.S.-format DVDs don’t work in United Kingdom DVD players.
It could be worse. The president might have given him the DVD of He’s Just Not That Into You. Gordon Brown landed back in London a sadder but wiser man. The Fleet Street correspondents reported sneeringly that he (and they) had been denied the usual twin-podia alternating-flags press conference. The Obama administration had supposedly penciled one in for the Rose Garden, but then there was that catastrophic snowfall (a light dusting). This must be the first world leaders’ press conference to be devastated by climate change. No doubt President Obama could have relocated it to a prestigious indoor venue, like the windowless room round the back of the White House furnace in Sub-Basement Level 5. But why bother? Some freak flood would have swept through and washed the prime minister and his DVD set into the Potomac and out to the Atlantic. And by the time the Coast Guard fished him out, the sodden classic movies wouldn’t work in any American DVD player any better than in the Brit one.
He did, however, get to give an almost entirely unreported address to Congress. U.S. legislators greeted his calls to resist protectionism with a round of applause, and then went back to adding up how much pork in the “Buy American” section of the stimulus bill would be heading their way.
About the author
Does Obama dislike the British? The answer seems to be-Yes. He really dissed the British Prime Minister. That could not have been an accident. He has too many diplomatic advisers for that to occur. Read more here.
Does Obama dislike the British?