BritDopers, are you upset with the Obamas?

[FriarTed]

@Quartz

… An American Republican would be on the far right of the Conservative party.

Thank you for not saying BNP.

[tomndebb]

When Blair loaned Bush the bust of Churchill in 2001, it was with the understanding that the loan was for the duration of the Bush presidency. Had Obama hung on to it, it would have set the stage for someone to forget its provenance and move it to storage or to some other location in the White House or the Capitol in 2013 or 2017 or whenever. Then, some Brit would have “remembered” that it was stuck in the States and there would have been a future hullabaloo over the disrespect shown to Britain or Winnie for not returning it at the end of its actual defined loan period. Handing back “Bush’s” loan avoids all sorts of future problems with the clear explanation that it was being returned at the promised time.
Any other explanation amounts to recreational outrage.

[tomndebb]

As to the DVDs: Will Brown be permitted to keep them? The pen holder will be moved to the Smithsonian or National Archives or some warehouse by law–the president is not allowed to keep anything “he” receieves as a gift to “the president.”

(I suppose it is too much to ask the offenderatti to be thankful the movies did not include The Patriot and V for Vendetta.)

[elfkin477]

@Equipoise

2. President Obama’s gift to Prime Minister Brown was insulting.

PM Brown gave President Obama a nice pen holder made from wood from the sister ship of the Resolute, plus a set of books about Winston Churchill. That’s from memory but I think it’s right. President Obama gave PM Brown a set of American DVDs. (the American Film Institute Top 25 American movies)

I have a question for UK dopers about this: has the British press said whether or not the movies are in the correct region code? Conservative press has made it seem like Michelle Obama had someone run down to the White House gift shop and maybe Best Buy for the gifts, so I wonder if the thought that went into the gift is under reported. Surely Obama knows that DVDs on the shelf of stores here won’t play in UK DVD players, right?

[Ximenean]

@Wallenstein

If/when David Cameron finds his way to No. 10 I would expect Obama to be a pit more pally.

The same David Cameron of whom Obama remarked “what a lightweight!” after meeting him, reportedly. So maybe there would be a slightly strained atmosphere.

I also liked the “Shelley O” thing, Lo-Slung Denim

[Ximenean]

@elfkin477

I have a question for UK dopers about this: has the British press said whether or not the movies are in the correct region code? Conservative press has made it seem like Michelle Obama had someone run down to the White House gift shop and maybe Best Buy for the gifts, so I wonder if the thought that went into the gift is under reported. Surely Obama knows that DVDs on the shelf of stores here won’t play in UK DVD players, right?

It’s dead easy to make them region-free. All Gordon has to do is Google the model number of his DVD player and find the hidden remote control code to do it. Then all he needs is NSTC output and a TV that can handle it, both pretty common. I’m sure Downing Street staff can nip down to Tottenham Court Road for the necessary gear.

[seodoa]

The idea of Downing Street region-hacking their DVD players makes me giggle for some reason. I have an image of Brown with a laptop opened up to some hacking site, remote in hand, mumbling, “Menu… down… down… enter… 7, 3, 5… reset and… dammit!”

[Quartz]

@Equipoise

Thanks Quartz. Why is Cameron scary?

I fear that he’s simply not up to the job. Thus far, he’s been very much a lightweight. And he, his friends, and cabinet colleagues have made some rather poor judgements. Further, there’s been a distinct lack of policy from him. Part of that’s due to not wanting to reveal them before the election, but I’d prefer a politician with the courage of his convictions. Unlike Brown who has neither.

If we are to have a Conservative government, I’d much rather have Boris Johnson as PM. At least he’d be fun.

[Lo-Slung_Denim]

@Quartz

If we are to have a Conservative government, I’d much rather have Boris Johnson as PM. At least he’d be fun.

If BoJo gets in as PM, consider me out of the country. It’s bad enough having that buffoon as Mayor of London.

[Petrobey_Mavromihalis]

@Lo-Slung_Denim

If BoJo gets in as PM, consider me out of the country.

And I’d wouldn’t be coming back!

Not that I can at the moment anyway.

[Lo-Slung_Denim]

I wouldn’t come back either, even after his term finished. He’d make such a pig’s ear of it, the plce would be in ruins.

Anyway that’s totally off topic. But it does make me bring these two strands together - The Obamas are going to be hugely popular when they visit London, because it’ll be a welcome change to see a politician without his brains up his arsehole, which is what we are bombarded with most frequently here in the big smoke.

(Anti-Boris rant finished, please continue)

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Just for the record, Topshop is not a “trendy and important shop in London”. It is the current darling of the fashion industry because of its business model, but it’s not some sort of boutique- it’s a chain. Think of it as a British Banana Republic.

[Sitnam]

@Equipoise

One explanation for that is that Churchill isn’t the icon here like he is in England. Another (I have no cite) is that Churchill was Prime Minister when (I’m working from memory here) British forces quelled an uprising in Kenya and among those imprisoned and tortured was President Obama’s grandfather, so naturally Obama would have a slightly different take on Churchill.

I’m a bit skeptical about this, does anyone have a cite?

[glee]

@Equipoise

I hear that the British press and some British people are very upset with

1. how they perceive Gordon Brown was snubbed during his visit.

Nah. Brown is an unelected lame-duck Prime Minister who didn’t see the economic crisis coming and doesn’t really know what to do next.
Ianzin made a splendid summary earlier of this.

@Equipoise

2. President Obama’s gift to Prime Minister Brown was insulting.

It could have been a bit more imaginative, but it doesn’t matter much.

Bush awarded Blair the Congressional Medal of Honour and that was reviled here:

• because Blair lied about the war and cost us lives
• because Blair was so embarrassed to be associated with Bush that he waited years before collecting the medal

@Equipoise

2. Mrs. Obama’s gift to Mrs. Brown was insulting.

There’s far more coverage here of the children’s toy in the White House garden. A fort, a swing, a climbing frame - super!

Most voters here wouldn’t know Mrs. Brown’s first name.

@Equipoise

3. President Obama supposedly dissed Winston Churchill.

I watched the West Wing, so I know about foreign dignitaries giving the president gifts under various conditions and how they can be brought out of storage for State Visits.
But who cares?

@Equipoise

I have to say I’m kinda worried. President and Mrs. Obama are visiting London next month, and from the outrage I’m hearing, I have these visions that they’re going to be booed everywhere they go and have tomatoes thrown at them. Is it really that bad over there?

Obama is wonderfully popular all over the World because:

• he replaced Bush, who was seen as a lying fanatical idiotic torturing warmonger
• he’s capable of speaking in public (unlike his predecessor)
• it was a breakthrough against racism

Don’t worry, there will be cheering crowds wherever he goes.
We’re saving our tomatoes and boos for Bush.

[Wallenstein]

@Sitnam

I’m a bit skeptical about this, does anyone have a cite?

The Times & The Sunday Times

[yojimbo]

Obama would fill any size stadium/public area in Europe with cheering people. If he came to Ireland it would be huge. JFK/Clinton huge, and they basically brought the country to a stand still.

Bush on the other hand brought out record number of protestors and the first use of the water cannon in The Republic.

[An_Gadai]

@yojimbo

Obama would fill any size stadium/public area in Europe with cheering people. If he came to Ireland it would be huge. JFK/Clinton huge, and they basically brought the country to a stand still.

What with him being Irish and all…

[yojimbo]

Oh God…

That’s terrible

[mutantmoose]

From this article:

This is London Magazine

Obama never met the grandfather his family call Onyango - he died in 1979 at the age of 84 when Barack was still at high school. But in his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father, he gives great prominence - 35 pages - to his grandfather’s life story as told to him by his stepgrandmother Sarah on his first trip to his ancestral home in western Kenya in 1986, prefacing it as follows: “It had all started with him. If I could piece together his story, everything else might fall into place.”

When Sarah had finished, Obama recounts, he dropped to the ground between the graves of his father and grandfather and wept. “When my tears were spent I felt the circle finally close. I saw that my life in America - the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I’d felt as a boy - all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away. The pain I felt was my father’s pain. My questions were my brothers’ questions. Their struggle, my birthright.”

He tells of his grandfather’s shocking physical state after his release by the British. “When he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice. From that day on he was an old man.” At another point in his book, he describes sitting on an aeroplane next to “a pale, gangly young Brit still troubled with acne” and feeling a “flush of anger” and wondering, “Was I angry at him?”

Sounds like ol’ BO may have issues if he’s getting angry at innocent kids on behalf of an ancestor he never met from two generations ago.

[Quartz]

@Lo-Slung_Denim

If BoJo gets in as PM, consider me out of the country. It’s bad enough having that buffoon as Mayor of London.

And now consider that I’d rather have him than DC…