If you haven’t heard the latest about the curfuffle involving Obama and the visit by English PM Gordon Brown, apparently Obama’s so-called “smarter diplomacy” ain’t so smart. According to reports Obama committed a serious diplomatic faux pas by snubbing the PM with no state dinner, no joint press conference and a crappy gift that I would be pissed about if my own grandma gave me. Exchanging gifts amongst diplomats is an age old custom, here is a description of the exchange between Brown and Obama:
Mr Brown handed over carefully selected gifts, including a pen holder made from the wood of a warship that helped stamp out the slave trade - a sister ship of the vessel from which timbers were taken to build Mr Obama’s Oval Office desk. Mr Obama’s gift in return, a collection of Hollywood film DVDs that could have been bought from any high street store, looked like the kind of thing the White House might hand out to the visiting head of a minor African state.
To make matters worse they were probably Region 1 DVDs and Brown is blind in one eye and going blind in the other, great gift Obama. In response to this apparent slight, the Obama administration stated that they “overwhelmed” by the economic crisis and “too tired” to think of a decent gift. How tired to you have to be to send some dude to Best Buy to buy a crappy gift? I’m guessing Obama must be utterly exhausted. So, maybe this is no big deal, but it gets better. In response to this idiotic exchange of gifts, a state department official stated:
Mr Obama rang Mr Brown as he flew home, in what many suspected was an attempt to make amends.
The real views of many in Obama administration were laid bare by a State Department official involved in planning the Brown visit, who reacted with fury when questioned by The Sunday Telegraph about why the event was so low-key.
The official dismissed any notion of the special relationship, saying: “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn’t expect special treatment.”
For the smartest administration evah these guys sure are stupid. There is nothing special about Great Britain? Our mother-country, our greatest ally, one of our great trading partners, the country who’s freaking troops have been dying along side us in Iraq, there is nothing special about them? They are just the same as Cuba, North Korea or Russia??? Are these guys crazy?
If the administration had just come out and said “hey, we made a mistake, we’ll try to get better at diplomatic protocol in the future” then maybe we could forgive them and cut them slack. However, this statement makes it look like they were on a mission to intentionally insult our greatest and oldest ally. Maybe this is what Biden meant last fall when he said “we are going to be tested”. It is going to be a real test when North Korea decides to blast Seol, or China decides they really want Taiwan back, and the Obama administration suddenly finds that they have no friends and no allies to stand up to these thugs. Then again, he probably doesn’t want to any way.
March 10th, 2009 at 4:52 am
Wow. What class this bunch has. They are so much smarter then W was. Wonder if they know that they don’t get to keep the gifts? But hey they never stopped Ghetto-bama before.
March 10th, 2009 at 5:14 am
Well you wanted change,you got it!
March 10th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Well if it makes you feel better, there was some small masochistic pleasure in seeing our unelected, thoroughly incompetent and possibly mad leader brought low on the international stage.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Of course, the Obama Administration is waiting for the heads of Hammas, Hezbollah, Syria, North Korea and Iran to visit, to really get good at welcoming foreign leaders!
March 10th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
I bet his teleprompter was out for repair and he had no idea what to say to Mr. Brown.
March 10th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
I went to the BBC web site and searched and searched for this, and found nothing. I would think that if the Obama admin. had committed some terrible gaff with England, it would be there.
At least I know that the American right wing doesn’t control the BBC too.
What tempest in a teapot, what smear, will you try to invent next? In a way I feel sorry for y’all, but not very.
March 10th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Well, this story was reported by the telegraph, the Guardian and the Financial Times. The fact that the most liberal news agency in the entire world didn’t make a big deal out of this doesn’t surprise me. Go to any British political web page, they are talking about this.
With that said are you really so myopic that you approve of an Obama official saying that there is nothing special about Great Britain? You are a fool.
March 10th, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I like the Gaurdian they do some smart publishing and its cleaner than the London Times melange. The Gaurdian requested I fill out a survey for them and it was quite detailed and very interactive compared to others I have seen that are just too boring to do. Plus they do good international threatdown(cobert TM) coverage on the wars on terrors. The FT is surprisingly good at times,,and The Economist has just been great on its financial coverage.
March 10th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Financial Times is top notch. The nice thing about English is that for the most part they don’t try to hide their biases in reporting. Everyone knows the BBC is the liberal reporting outlet and the FT is the conservative outlet.
March 10th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Very true Bryan! Its all over the British press and I’ve noticed the Canadians are reporting it a little more than I would have expected (but then they are closely tied to the Brits). Our press won’t touch it because its hard to explain why Obama would behave so badly and make such a disrespectful statement. Even if he doesn’t like England - its not exactly diplomatic to diss an entire country - ally no less.
But Obama is the President who made his first official press conference to the Arab world on al-Arabia television rather than to his own country. He’s the guy who wants to find ‘moderate Taliban’ to have talks with. He’s the guy who is dropping charges against terrorists in Gitmo who are bragging about their participation in the attacks of 9/11/2001. So maybe, maybe its not that he’s so amateurish and ignorant of protocol, or afraid to have to carry on a one on one conversation without his teleprompter. Maybe he really does want to separate us from Western Europe and focus on submitting to the demands of our enemies so they’ll quit attacking us and threatening to kill us. He must have studied Nevelle Chamberlain’s diplomacy techniques at Harvard.
March 10th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
arch - you couldn’t have looked hard - its all over the British press. They aren’t happy. And now Obama wants to meet the Queen. I bet he thinks he’s so charming he can win her over after he insulted her entire country.
You can write here that you can’t find a story about it and that its a smear campaign against the big O - but that doesn’t change the fact that its true and anyone with half a brain can find story after story about it in the British press. I guess you hope ppl will just take your word for it and not look for themselves.
March 11th, 2009 at 3:10 am
To be fair, Brown is /hated/ by most of us in the UK. We don’t take this snub personally /yet/.
Wait about a year ’till we get a new Conservative government and see how he treats them… (Mind you personally I’m not hopeful, unlike most of my countryment I am not impressed with the chosen one, I fear he’s going to be the US’s version of Blair!)
March 11th, 2009 at 4:43 am
The Obamas need lessons in civility, protocol and humility. The are the most uninformed and least wordly wise people to ever occupy the White House. Obama’s hubris is beyond belief. He and his wifer are an embarassment to the people of the USA. He will no doubt bring about the lowest point in American history since the Depression. The MSM barely reported this but the did mention the gain on Wall Street as “skyrocketing”. During the Bush administration if the DOW lost a 100 points it “plummeted” Go figure. We will all grow sick of him. That is except for the Kool Aid drinkers.
March 11th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Beth,
Archie, could find it there because the stroy did not contain the names Barry in Charge or Bush. And it was in English.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Beth, I meant, Archie could not find the story because it did not contain the names Barry in Charge or Bush. And is was written in English.
Maybe I need some typing lessons.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Hey George - np - I was following what you were saying
March 11th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
With each day of Obama’s presidency I become more and more enraged. His audacity is stunning and the complete willingness of the American people to follow him sickens me. I have written the senator and reps of my state and declared my opposition to everything he is proposing and they are passing. Still, I feel I am trying to extinguish a forest fire with a water gun. WHAT CAN THE AVERAGE AMERICAN DO TO STOP THIS? The country that I love and have sacrificed so much for is crumbling and I feel helpless to stop it.