"Nobody seemed to care"
April 05, 2009 1:46 pm ET by Jamison Foser
Politico, on the Obamas' trip to Europe:
And it was clear at some point that Michelle Obama could do no wrong. Take her meeting with Queen Elizabeth II.
She not only touched the Queen. She rubbed her back gently at one point - a breach of traditional royal protocol - yet nobody seemed to care. The London tabs that feasted for days on Obama's gift of DVDs to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave her a pass, as did Buckingham Palace. The Queen's arm-in-arm exchange with Obama "was a mutual and spontaneous display of affection," the Palace said. Case closed.
"Breach of traditional royal protocol," eh? Buckingham Palace seems to disagree - in the very statement Politico quoted:
A Buckingham Palace spokesman who asked not to be identified because of palace policy said he could not remember the last time the queen had displayed such public affection with a first lady or dignitary.
"It was a mutual and spontaneous display of affection," he said. "We don't issue instructions on not touching the queen."
And while Politico says "nobody seemed to care," that is, unfortunately, not true. The American media cared far too much. CNN, for example, treated video of the half-hug like Oliver Stone treated the Zapruder Film, playing it over and over in slow-motion:
Best part of this clip is the end: "What about the iPod?" As if to say, "Isn't there ANYTHING we can legitimately claim is a faux pas?"
Given how many stupid and clumsy things GWB actually did "on foreign soil," perhaps the press is trying to be fair by making the extraordinarily graceful couple now representing the US look equally bad... good luck!
Unfortunately, if they keep on doing it, it will catch fire and work.
Case in point: Jimmy Carter.
He was extraordinarily popular when he started-- remember Dan Ackroyd's affectionate portrayal, where Carter could do everything, even talk down a druggie?
But for two years the Press beat him up constantly. So did the funny guys like Johnny Carson, to the point where mere mention of his name elicited screams of laughter.
Carter got blamed for every economic problem that Nixon-Ford had presided over. So it can happen again, and easily.
I knew when Politico started a couple of years ago that they were simply a front for conservatives. They tried to pretend they were impartial at first, but more and more, they don't even try to hide their intolerance for anything that might benefit the left.
This is an example of how they try to turn a positive into a negative, just like those on the right did with John Kerry's military record. The fact that Queen Elizabeth put her arm around the First Lady is a big win for the First Lady! This is not typical Queen Elizabeth behavior. It should have been recognized as a sign that Michelle Obama was a special person to the Queen after only a short time, and those on the right had to nip that narrative in the bud!