A Global Embarrassment: Do We Now Need A Hospitality Czar?

I remember not so long ago this sort of stuff was mocked and considered an embarrassment to all the culturally aware and sophisticated Americans in the country. Just the very site of Bush’s “strut” was known to cause some to faint and kill over with disgust. The brutish rube was at times too much to bear for book readers everywhere.

For those who took notice to that stuff, I believe it is appropriate to go ahead and say, “Now, If President George W. Bush would have done that…”


We can call this one, “Lost in Translation”

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton presented Russia with a gift towards highlighting the Obama administration’s willingness to “hit reset” with Russia. The exchange was a monumental embarrassment to say the least. It went something like this.

She handed him a palm-sized box wrapped with a bow. Lavrov opened it and pulled out the gift—a red plastic button on a black base with a Russian word “peregruzka” printed on top.

“We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” Clinton said as reporters, allowed in to observe the first few minutes of the meeting, watched.

“You got it wrong,” Lavrov said, to Clinton’s clear surprise. Instead of “reset,” he said the word on the box meant “overcharge.”

Clinton and Lavrov guffawed. “We won’t let you do that to us,” she said.

No, I suppose not. Because the administration is too busy overcharging the rest of us, Madam Secretary.

No really, we love you guys!
(White House door prizes, here)

The hits don’t stop there. President Obama has raised more than eyebrows after the revelation that he obviously has a problem with the British. The first sign was the ghastly show of disrespect that went against all forms of statesmanship between two democratic nations — but more than that in this case with two trusted and storied allies — when he chose to voluntarily return the bust of Winston Churchill back to the Brits.

Here was the reaction from the Brits over PM Gordon Brown’s recent visit.

President Obama has been rudeness personified towards Britain this week. His handling of the visit of the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to Washington was appalling. First Brown wasn’t granted a press conference with flags, then one was hastily arranged in the Oval office after the Brits had to beg. Obama looked like he would rather have been anywhere else than welcoming the British leader to his office and topped it all with his choice of present (*) for the PM. A box of 25 DVDS including ET, the Wizard of Oz and Star Wars? Oh, give me strength. We do have television and DVD stores on this side of the Atlantic. Even Gordon Brown will have seen those films too often already.

And where there is him, there is always her:

This was coupled with Michelle Obama’s casual choice of gifts for the Brown sons - matching models of the helicopter which ferry her husband around. While Sarah Brown had spent time choosing gifts for the Obama girls, Michelle had clearly sent an aide to the White House gift shop at the last moment.

Yep, it is sooo refreshing to finally have some culturally-sophisticated, Ivy League, intellects in the White House for a change.