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.
The proper term for this behavior is “niggardly”.
I don't understand your post -- do you think I am oblivious? Are you attacking me?
Sorry - but the black slavery heritage extends to almost all blacks - and to most Arab cultures. They were either slaves or slavers. And the Brits? With us they were the first groups to FIGHT slavery. I believe it was outlawed in the last middle east country in the 1960’s. Yep - there was still legal slavery in arab countries when Kennedy was President.
He should be happy that the gift wasn’t an autographed picture of “The One”, with maybe a DVD of Jeremia Wright’s greatest hits thrown in.
It doesn’t surprise me. He very seldom has Michelle on the stage or even mentions her, nor the girls.
He likes to be the sole source of attention.
Oh no, I’m sorry, I didn’t reference it right. I meant that about my father, the person I was quoting.
Sorry about that!
true
Maybe Mark Steyn should change the title of “America Alone” to “And Then There Were None”.
In the sense of being stingy or cheap, yep. Personally I see it as he being low/no class. Perhaps just plain stupid. I suppose they kind of go together.
There are other expressions for doing such a thing on purpose.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Brilliant Steyn piece. Thanks for posting.
PAL DVDs have 576 pixels of vertical resolution, vs the NTSC standard which has only 480. Every DVD drive can handle both formats, but some DVD players sold in the US won’t accept PAL format discs, even if they’re region free, just as some sold in Europe won’t accept any NTSC discs, even if they’re region free.
Off brands are usually the ones which don’t really care what format disc you use in them, and there’s several brands that don’t even bother reading the region code.
But yeah, there’s a difference in format. I’d better know this, my wife lists 450 DVDs on eBay each day and she’d probably kill me if I got that wrong. :)
The only countries that he wants to heal relations with are the enemies of the US. Our allies? Thrown under a bus.
Mark
It's a different thing. The issues with video tape were more due to technological issues. With DVDs, it's more for copyright protection. DVDs are composed with "regional encoding" to ensure that a DVD created for region 1 won't play on a player set up for region 2. Most DVD players can be set for a specific region, however there's a limit to the number of times you can change that region setting. Once you've hit that maximum number, you can't change it again. This allows a manufacturer to make a single DVD player but sell it anywhere in the world.
But some DVDs are also "non-region" encoded, so they'll play on any DVD player, anywhere in the world.
Mark
Obama is such a punk.
A classless punk.
Actually there is a difference between Pal and Ntsc DVD’s. The scan rate and audio track freq’s are different and unless you have a Muli system Player and TV you are pretty much out of luck.
While over here all tv’s and players are multi player, in the US if it aint Ntsc, it is not available.
“Great article...typical Steyn.”
Is there a Mark Steyn ping list as I enjoy his articles?
In real life, in Europe dvd players and tv’s generaly can handle it, in the US the systems cannot.
It is not the reigon code, it is the scan rate and format for the audio track. For instance, my laptop can handle the scan rates fine, but Pal plays without the audio track as it is in a different place in pal from ntsc.
Reigon codes are easily bypassed, but scanrates are another beast altogether.
For the purposes of this thread, I am sure the Dvd’s could be watched in Europe, but the reigon code would have to be hacked, an easy thing commonly done over here.
The gift was crass however, not class and degrades American influence overseas rather strongly. Obama just is not Presidential material.
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