You couldn’t have written a funnier SNL skit.
The scene: President and Mrs. Obama’s first official meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Queen Elizabeth.
The gag: A stately gift exchange, in which the Brits present their American counterparts with priceless historical artifacts, while the Obamas come bearing worthless, generic, condescendingly Ameri-centric pieces of pop culture …
Like a DVD collection of American classics. But oops! They’re not formatted for British DVD players! *laughter* And Gordon-don will have a hard time enjoying the visual grandeur of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey,” seeing as he’s partially blind! And what better way to lampoon Barack’s image as a hipster icon than for him to show Her Majesty how to rock a pair of earbuds when he gives her an iPod. As Barack busts a move, the First Lady (appearing Amazonian next to the diminutive monarch) dares to touch the Queen by putting her arm around her.
The potential for physical comedy is a gold mine.
As everyone knows by now, something not unlike this farce actually played out recently, when the heads of state met (on two separate occasions) for a publicity stunt that ruffled the feathers of Anglophiles the world over. How could a President so supposedly “in touch” make such a laughable faux pas? How could the First Lady get away with such an egregious breach of etiquette? This was the kind of foreign relations embarrassment that most Americans were hoping to avoid this time around.
But I thought of it as a perfect example of the way the Obamas are taking over the world.
Despite being embattled by multiple crises on the home front, Barack and Michelle still seem above the fray. They both embody such a confidence, you get the sense that when they walk into any room – be it filled with snarling congressmen or levitating royals – no one questions the tone they set. I’m reminded of Richard Nixon’s line in Frost/Nixon – “If the President does it, it’s not illegal.” In this case, if Obama does it, it’s not uncool.
Wherever they go, the discourse seems to bend around the force of their charisma. No longer does America seem as small as George Bush’s hunched shoulders next to the wider worldview of more integrated minds. Wherever we send our President, the focal point of the world shifts. Whatever he says, no matter how trivial, has weight. Mass. Gravity.
Another case in point (speaking of mass): during Obama’s recent visit to Istanbul, the Ecumenical Patriarch and Archbishop of Constantinople Bartholomew I – after rhapsodizing about the many great accomplishments of Obama’s trip – paused to congratulate our president on his correct prediction of the Tar Heels as America’s college basketball champs.
A complete “puff piece” about Obama filling in his Final Four bracket had been carried across the world and caught the attention of the primus inter pares.
Hail to the chief.
Posted by Greg 
