I’ve been hearing about Obama’s latest dumb gaffe, all day, and was going to let it go – because he sort of caught himself, and tried to correct it with “Embassy of the UK”, (which was also wrong.) I mean, we all misspeak at times, right?
But then I was reminded that the media still wants to paint this guy as having a “professorial disposition” – almost overqualified for the job of President – the smartest guy in the room – unlike those Republican yahoos who can barely write their own names, or are “phony, pseudo- intellectuals.”
I was reminded of how Obama is already breaking fund-raising records and has a compliant MSM willing to push any narrative he wants against his Republican opponents and how 2012 is going to be the dirtiest presidential election year in United States history, and I thought, “oh, what the hell.”
The Daily Mail’s Simon Tomlinson writes:
A frenzied mob of militant Iranian students ransacked the main embassy in Tehran and a smaller diplomatic compound in the city.
They lobbed petrol bombs, stole classified documents, torched the Union flag and even tore up a portrait of the Queen.
The rioters also chanted ‘Death to England’ and threw rocks. One man held up a Union flag with a skull and cross bones on it.
In an interview yesterday, Mr Obama said: ‘All of us are deeply disturbed by the, err, crashing of, err, the English Embassy, err, the embassy of the United Kingdom.’
By calling it the ’embassy of the United Kingdom’, he got it wrong a second time.
It appears there has never been an English Embassy, although there have been English ambassadors centuries ago.
Back in 1479, John Shirwood became the first permanent English ambassador when he took up residence in Rome.
Nile Gardiner, a blogger on The Foundry who led the criticism, said: ‘In case the President is unaware, England forms part of Great Britain, which also includes Scotland and Wales, though not Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.
‘One can only imagine the kind of howls of derision that would greet any presidential contender if that kind of basic error were made before, say, the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
‘It would be nice if the leader of the free world bothered to look at a map once in a while.’
A YouTube commenter asked, I wonder if anyone at the “English embassy” speaks “Austrian?”
Obama’s statement that “that kind of behavior is not acceptable” is similar to the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s language which also called the incursions “unacceptable”. Interesting, considering it’s generally understood that the storming of the British embassy was done under the nose of the Iranian security apparatus so it must have been tacitly sanctioned, at least by some of the country’s leadership. So his statement “urging the Iranian government to hold those accountable to task” is kinda absurd.
You want to hear Krauthammer’s take? He called it an “unbelievably embarrassing statement”, focusing on the “pathetically weak” second half of it:
Hat tip: Weasel Zippers
Nice Deb 