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knewshound
knewshounds blog
Posted on 03/07/2009 5:55:47 AM PST by kellynla
British 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.
I would make a modest prediction that in 2012, after four years of the man who was supposed to heal America’s relations with a world sick of all that swaggering cowboy unilateralism, those relations will be much worse. From Canada to India, the implications of the Obama ascendancy are becoming painfully clear. The other week Der Spiegel ran a piece called “Why Obamania Isn’t the Answer,” which might more usefully have been published before the Obamessiah held his big Berlin rally. Written by some bigshot with the German Council on Foreign Relations and illustrated by the old four-color hopey-changey posters all scratched up and worn out, the essay conceded that Europe had embraced Obama as a “European American.” Very true. The president is the most European American ever to sit in the Oval Office. And, because of that, he doesn’t need any actual European Europeans getting in the way — just as, at his big victory-night rally in Chicago, the first megastar president didn’t need any megastar megastars from Hollywood clogging up the joint: Movie stars who wanted to fly in were told by his minders that he didn’t want any other celebrities deflecting attention from him. Same with world leaders. If it’s any consolation to Gordon Brown, he’s just not that into any of you.
What Mr. Brown and the rest of the world want is for America, the engine of the global economy, to pull the rest of them out of the quicksand — which isn’t unreasonable. Even though a big chunk of the subprime/securitization/credit-bubble axis originated in the United States and got exported round the planet, the reality is that almost every one of America’s trading partners will wind up getting far harder hit.
And that was before Obama made clear that for him the economy takes a very distant back seat to the massive expansion of government for which it provides cover. That’s why he’s indifferent to the plummeting Dow. The president has made a strategic calculation that, to advance his plans for socialized health care, “green energy,” and a big-government state, it’s to his advantage for things to get worse. And, if things go from bad to worse in America, overseas they’ll go from worse to total societal collapse. We’ve already seen changes of government in Iceland and Latvia, rioting in Greece and Bulgaria. The great destabilization is starting on the fringes of Europe and working its way to the Continent’s center.
We’re seeing not just the first contraction in the global economy since 1945, but also the first crisis of globalization. This was the system America and the other leading economies encouraged everybody else to grab a piece of. But whatever piece you grabbed — exports in Taiwan, services in Ireland, construction in Spain, oligarchic industrial-scale kleptomania in Russia — it’s all crumbling. Ireland and Italy are nation-state versions of Bank of America and General Motors. In Eastern Europe, the countries way out on the end of the globalization chain can’t take a lot of heat without widespread unrest. And the fellows who’ll be picking up the tab are the Western European banks who loaned them all the money. Gordon Brown was hoping for a little more than: “I feel your pain. And have you ever seen The Wizard of Oz? It’s about this sweet little nobody who gets to pay a brief visit to the glittering Emerald City before being swept back to the reassuring familiarity of the poor thing’s broken-down windswept economically devastated monochrome dustbowl. You’ll love it!”
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”? Oh, perish the thought. The prime minister flew 8,000 miles for dinner and a movie. But the president says he’ll call. Next week. Next month. Whatever.
And then a few days later our great ally from the media rich state of Hollywood, Mr. Brad Pitt, came in to town to great fanfare.
Hmmm, I hadn't heard that one either. (Wonder why??!! </sarc>)
Very interesting. But the treatment of the PM is a deliberate snub, and it isn't being reported as such on this side of the Pond. Anyone notice that?
Wonder if Obama deliberately snubbed the Brits because they're just sooooo white?
Oh, but of course he wouldn't ......
</more sarc>
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.”
Our narcissist in chief gave the finger to our best and oldest friends. Ping.
Thank you, America, for putting a fool in the White House. Had Bush done this the MSM would be all over it, declaring how embarassing this was, how crude it was of Bush to have done such a thing. But of course we cannot criticize our first black president, especially since he’s so busy implementing hope and change for the country.
I can see why Charlie Gibson of ABC news loves this guys so much ( and hates Sarah ) - cut from the same “looking their noses down on everyone” cloth.
This deserves it’s own post - I’m sure there are other pictures that read his visage well...
If the US is not the dynamic economy that climbs out of the downturn in a big enough way to pull the other economies out with us, then it will have to be China or India. I don’t think they are big enough yet to do it — and everyone else is too “European” in the way they run things (read “socialist”).
The simpler explanation, which I find more persuasive, is that he's just too narcissistic: He's the star and these foreign prime ministers are rather dreary extras. And unfortunately he's not a good enough actor to conceal his lack of interest in them. And his courtiers take pretty much the same line, which is why it never occurred to them that some no-name Brit would be insulted at not getting the multi-flagged joint presser.
A couple of weeks ago, the Fox TV show Lie to Me featured some great pix of celebs expressing contempt (like Condi Rice at a press conference -- as well she should). One of the video clips was of Obama subconsciously "flipping off" John McCain after a McCain challenge during one of the debates. Tim Roth's character explained that such gestures are more common than one would think, and showed another example featuring another celeb.
But the clip nailed Obama as into contempt, waaay into contempt, in a venue in which contempt had no place, where he was asking the American People for the most powerful job in the world.
There's also an e-mail going around I haven't been able to either validate or evaluate, in which "someone" claims that Obama is clinically narcissistic. As in, David Koresh and Jim Jones.
“...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....”
Obama couldn’t give a rats-ass about history or tradition in this country. He sees no value in it, even sin.
That is why we are in deep trouble.
“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.”
With the level of thought put into that “gift”, it is virtually guaranteed that they are encoded for the wrong region.
I am more and more impressed by Gordon’s gifts every time I hear about them. Literally nonesuch gifts, perfectly matched to the office of the recipient: a real compliment.
Unfortunately, when choosing a gift for a guy like Obama an immense rose-tinted mirror with “I AM THE GREATEST” written on it would have been more appropriate.
It is absolutely not being reported. As my father said when I told him “It must not be too big of a deal, they aren’t talking about it on the news”. And I think YOU are the typical American. If it isn’t in your face on your TV, it doesn’t exist. Or it doesn’t matter.
Ugh.
Regarding the symbolic gesture of giving a pen from an anti-slavery ship: I guess the brits didn’t get the memo that Barry isn’t really an “African American” with no history of slavery in his ancestery. Though Barry allows the “African American” deception to be perpetuated, he probably doesn’t even qualify to be classified mulatto (white/black) He’s white/arab .. with a pinch (6%-12%) of african black. As usual, Barry relies on the ignorace on his fan club.
Therein lies the rub. He was raised and educated in his formative years in a Muslim country and later mentored by an avowed communist in Hawaii. I'm sure everyone recalls the production of "Roots" that catapulted Oprah into stardom. Well because of Obama's formative years and background, he has no "Roots," or love of this country, the Constitution nor the reasons for our country's success.
That's why we are soooooooo screwed!
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