While America’s flyover country was being ravaged by tornadoes, the President was yucking it up overseas. Apparently, he finally found something he and the Brits can agree on – drinking expensive wine! I’m not sure if the awkward moment came before or after too much vino. When the president toasted the Queen the orchestra misunderstood a pause and what seemed to be a cue from the president for “God Save the Queen” to begin playing.
“Ladies and gentlemen please stand with me and raise your glasses as I propose a toast,” the president said, putting down his note cards and grabbing his glass. “To her majesty the Queen.”
The president paused, the guests stood, and the orchestra prepared to play.
But the president wasn’t done speaking.
“The vitality –“ the president said before the orchestra began.
Then the familiar tune – you might know it better as “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” – started up.
The president kept going: “ — of the special relationship between our peoples and for the words of Shakespeare to this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,” the president said as the awkward moment played out.
The Queen looked ahead as the UK anthem played.
Read it all and watch the video. “Kind of weird” sums it up pretty well. Another thing that was kind of weird is the way President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron likened themselves to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, while comparing the mess in the Middle East to winning the cold war.
In a sternly worded column in The Times of London, the two leaders liken the effort to free Arab people from authoritarianism to the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in the 1980s.
They liken their personal efforts to two leaders who came before them: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
“We will stand with those who want to bring light into dark, support those who seek freedom in place of repression, aid those laying the building blocks of democracy,” they wrote.
“We will not stand by as their aspirations get crushed in a hail of bombs, bullets and mortar fire. We are reluctant to use force, but when our interests and values come together, we know that we have a responsibility to act.”
No word on whether Obama will send video of his strange toast to the Queen for her iPod. Oh, but he did sign her guestbook, while reliving the best year of his life in his mind.
