Courtesy The Guardian
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The DVDs won’t play? At least Bush paid the Brits more respect.
The Obamas, Barack and Michelle both, pretty much diplomatically botched the recent visit of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife. Oddly enough, the U.S. Old Media seems uninterested in the story that is a hot topic in England, a story that’s left many Brits a bit miffed.
As the visit of the national leader of our closest ally began, the President informed the Brits that he wouldn’t be attending the joint press conference that was planned to be held once PM Brown’s plane touched down. This threw the visiting delegation into a tizzy leaving them scrambling to explain the sudden change in plans to the folks back home.
For his part, PM Brown gave two symbolic gifts and one that expressed national pride. Brown came bearing a pen holder carved from the timbers of the sister ship of that which gave the wood to create the famous “Resolute Desk,” the desk that has been in America’s charge since 1880. He also gave Obama the framed commission for that famous ship, the HMS Resolute. His third gift was a seven-volume biography of one of England’s greatest leaders, Winston Churchill.
In return, Michelle apparently had a staffer run down to the White House gift shop and grab two toy Marine One helicopter models for the Brown’s boys.
So, what did President Obama give the British PM? 25 movies on DVD. Yeah, that’s it. Brown gives a symbolic gift like the pen holder fashioned from a famous British warship and Obama responds by sending a staffer to WalMart to pick up a few quick movies.
All of this is on top of the snub of the Brits that Obama tossed off immediately upon entering office. One of his first official acts was to summarily return to the Brits the generous gift of the most famous bust of Winston Churchill that has sat in the Oval Office since the attacks on 9/11.
Oh, boy, DVD’s (Region 1) and toy helicopters! I wonder if they were gift wrapped. Some of this was earlier reported by John and mentioned on No Agenda. Why did Obama snub the Brits so? And now a few days later, there is still just a hint of this on the “nightly news.” Why not a gift subscription to Netflix?
Oh boy…
I’m sorry, but I just don’t see a snub here. This story came out a while ago in one of the notorious British tabloids (naked babes and space aliens!) which are apparently at a low point for news as their readership can’t digest much of the financial mess.
Dig up some other conspiracy theory please. There are plenty out there to report on with much more import.
PFBoring.
Had another president done this it would be front page news and letterman and leno would have three months of monolog material. The mainstream media loves the emperors new cloths.
didn’t we already have a story on here about this?
Nothing like tossing a close ally in the Iraq war a DVD in exchange for those gifts. Wonderful, masterful job by Obama.
This isn’t even worthy of Nixon.
The first president Bush vomited on the Japanese prime minister. We got a little bit of a kick about it here, but mostly fodder for late night talk shows. When the women’s lacrosse team got the opportunity to meet the president.. they wore flip flops. American’s are just not that interested in protocol.
From what I read in the British ‘press’ the mere fact that he didn’t have rotten fruit thrown on him would have been enough… I bet the presidents staff is going through a real quick learning process!! Ha!
Chaos, controversy, conflict, and something else that I don’t remember are the cornerstones of our media ‘outlets’.
An open sewer is also an ‘outlet’.
Anyway I bet the Brits are more concerned with Ulster than with Washington..
# 5 jccalhoun said,
“didn’t we already have a story on here about this?”
As stated in the story, yes. Perhaps I should have included links from the Brits media about how P*ssed they are about the whole deal.
Obama needs to make friends, not enemies. And he doesn’t need to start off with a tacky tactic like this.
Thats the problem with all “afro-americans” that will not pass for another 5 or 10 generations: the slaves among their forefathers.
White americans quickly forgot about it, specially that vast majority of white americans have never had any slaves ever, but no doubt every black american is a descendant of a slave and they will keep this splinter in their hearts until it become really old and forgotten story.
(yes I know there is small percentage of black americans who came here after the slavery, as well as I’m sure you know what I meant you neo-lib politically correct morons).
“From Slaves to President – Story of One Family”. This book is still in writing, it was only a chapter that ended with election of non-white President 🙂
#10 – 888
I have a feeling we’d be good friends.
#10 – 888
I like it!!!
As this blog continues to point out the American Press ceased to function several years ago. It certainly is not the government watch dog our founding fathers thought it would be, much more like a lap dog.
And they have no audience. Young Americans apparently don’t read much and don’t want to read about government, and who can blame them.
Our current economic collapse is 100% due to greed, mismanagement and illegal activities on the part of people we need to trust. We watch our society collapse around us and express amazement that our youth believe it is OK to lie to get ahead.
Like our government, our American Press is a great reflection of its people. We just aren’t very pretty to look at anymore.
Hilarious! Nice anecdote, seems to me the presi’s staff dropped the protocol ball on this one. You guys don’t think past presidents hand picked diplomatic gifts like that do you? I guess there’ll be some new faces at the white house over this one.
@#13: It is not just the gifts:
1) Return the gift symbolic of British/American friendship on the “first day in office” (FU in disguise)
2) Snub protocol of receiving foreign dignitary/press conference. (Why were you coming here?)
3) Return thoughtful gesture with carelessness (“staff dropped the ball”) (FU without disguise)
4) Too tired to have planned official dinner but plenty of effort left for basketball game visit and entertainment friends (double FU).
Now imagine similar neglect from Pres. Bush if Nelson Mandela visited. There would have been fire in the media for months. And claims of racism.
I claim later on Obama. Visiting dignitary was white person, so he was snubbed on racial basis. In line with that Revren’ teaching who so inspired Obama that he put him in a book.
To be honest, I expected these sorts of gaffs. Remember that Obama is really, really green when it comes to this sort of thing. As I have mentioned before, it usually takes a Senator about a year to really “get” being President and this is an example of one of those types of unfortunate mistakes.
#13, #15
I think even a dumbest schmuch knows that bundle of DVDs is not a gift apropiate for visiting head of state. Do NOT tell me you believe it is just a gaffe.
Because if you are right, and it was “just a gaffe” and obama and his people are really *that* green when it comes to one of the simplest things, what does it tell you about his and his aides ability to cope and deal with really complicated matters? Man! That IS SCARY thought. I’d rather believe it was Michelle’s idea to snub damn whitey brit as it was suggested somewhere else. Her racism I could understand. Obama’s and his aides such unbelievable stupidity would be horrifying if it were true, so let’s all hope it wasn’t just a “gaffe” from ‘green” Prez and his aides.
It’s very simple. The British tortured Obama’s grandfather during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya — look it up. The snubbing is quite deliberate.
Incompetence or revenge
What wonderful choices.
#17, Rick,
Correct, but only part of the story.
The Kenyan natives wanted independence. The British didn’t want them to have it. So they put it down. Cruelly. Some might say, very cruelly. Obama’s grandfather was picked up and held for almost a year in a not very nice prison. Eventually he was released.
Who gave the order to put down the “insurrection”? Prime Minister Winston Churchill. So don’t expect Obama to hold a lot of affection for someone that had his innocent grandfather jailed. And don’t expect Obama to want to see a bust of Churchill sitting on his office mantle either. And certainly don’t expect him to be honored by a gift of a seven volume work on Churchill.
The British Protocol Officer needs a little more homework on the American President. Personally insulting him is not the best way to forge a friendship.
So here we see the Orama fan boys backing their boy 100%, while the networks ignore the whole thing, since they are his pimps. Fact is, this President is showing himself to be a huge f-ing disaster for the country, and little by little, things are going to hell. Me? I am ready. How? Guess.
who gives a bleep.
move along, these aren’t the konspiracies you’re looking for.
T’was ill done.
If revenge an act that marks the man who did it as dangerous to us.
If due to being naive then he’d better be learning fast because we are going to pay for his mistakes just as we paid for Bush’s mistakes.
I think he and his staff are winging it and not putting enough focus on the big issues.
In fact he may not know what the big issues are yet. The things have have to come first and must be done.
Thanks for that explanation Mr. Fusion. We now know that we can expect Pres. Obama to behave as a petty, small man when it comes to steering the ship of state. He’s to be excused for subordinating US-British relations to his anger over the persecution of a family member.
I would have thought that Mr. Obama would understand the “overly cautious” actions of the colonial British against the Mau Mau murderers. His National Intelligence Council appointee, Chas. Freeman, sure understands when it comes to the murder of pro-democracy activists in China.
The real problem that the Obama administration has with the Brits and Chinese democracy activists is that they aren’t black.
But for the Brits, his ancestors would have been slaves in Arabia.
For all our sakes I hope the last President hid the nuclear football.
Yeah, I’m gonna get my news from a site, like News Busters, that has the tag “Exposing Liberal Media Bias” as it’s motto.
You guys are such idiotic morons.
[Ed. Ok, there are only about 2,000 stories about this on the net. How about this one?]
What happened to the earlier story that you morons posted about what a lying sack of shit Brown was? Did your handlers make you take it down?
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/dominickdesid/2009/03/gordon-brown-lies-hysterically.php
[Ed. No, it was a work in progress (draft) that WordPress posted in error. As you may have noticed, we’re still having problems with WordPress’s handling of “www”. Maybe it will be published, maybe not.]
Some complete and utter piece of shit said:
So here we see the Orama fan boys backing their boy 100%, while the networks ignore the whole thing, since they are his pimps. Fact is, this President is showing himself to be a huge f-ing disaster for the country, and little by little, things are going to hell. Me? I am ready. How? Guess.
Yeah, the middle class has been totally destroyed during the last 2 months. It’s not like it started during the Reagan administration or anything…
IDIOT!
Well if it means the Brits won’t get us involved in any more foreign wars, then this is a good thing. Here’s hoping Obama stuffs the Brits and gets us out of Kosovo and Bosnia.