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We always knew that he had a few quid to win on himself, as my Grandmother would say, but whilst Obama was hosting the Irish Prime Minister, the following occurred:
'A teleprompt blunder has led to Barack Obama thanking himself in a speech at the White House in a St Patrick's Day celebration.
Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen was just a few paragraphs into an address in Washington when he realised it all sounded a bit too familiar.
It was. He was repeating the speech President Barack Obama had just read from the same teleprompter.
Mr Cowen stopped, turned to the president and said: "That's your speech."
A laughing Mr Obama returned to the podium to take over but it seems the script had finally been switched and the US president ended up thanking himself for inviting everyone to the party.
Mr Obama is an accomplished orator but is becoming known in America as the "teleprompt president" over his reliance on the machine when he gives a speech. '
I find this last paragraph odd. Obama messes up, makes a rather amateurish mistake - fair enough, we've all been there. But the article still feels the need to shower him with praise, in spite of the blunder.
Almost as if to say 'still, remember how lucky you are!'
I think that is a little creepy, myself. If it had been Bush, it would have ended by reminding us that not only is 'Dubya' the most stupid man on earth, he likes the death penalty, and to top it all off, he's a Republican. Then they would have produced a photographic montage of all his other blunders.
There's another rather curious thing about this incident - I simply can't find a video of it anywhere. Again, if this was George Bush, the footage would have been repeated about 90,000 times by now.
If anyone knows where there is a video of this incident, I'd be grateful if you could leave the link in a comment.
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4 comments:
In The Telegraph, it seems that Brian Cowen made a hash of things, but not to worry, good old funny President Obama made light of the situation, and "pretended to carry on the confusion".
It's been written about elsewhere, but again it's Brian Cowen who is portayed as being less than sharp, while Obama is a funny guy who comes to his rescue.
Although they do say in that article that Obama doesn't appear to know the difference between Region 1 and Region 2 when it comes to DVDs.
Maybe he just assumed Gordon Brown would know how to set his DVD player so he could watch American DVDs? I mean it's 2009, and you'd expect a "world leader" to be able to handle a fairly routine technical task like that, wouldn't you?
Nick:
Thanks for the links. Still can't seem to find a video of it, though.
My post was based on the original article from Sky News, but it does seem to have been revised.
Isn't 'pretending to carry on the confusion' a step away from doing it just to 'test' people and how on the ball they are?
As in the days of Noah
You appear to be right, no video available. Maybe I'm being cynical here, but was a precedent not set on O's opening day when the guy fluffed his lines and had to redo the acceptance speech later in a closed "ceremony"? A photo was all we got. How do we know that the actual swearing in took place second time around? (If the first one wasn't done correctly, then was it even legal? If the second one didn't take place, then ...)
Nick:
I'm still unable to find a video of this. You'd think with him being the greatest guy who ever lived and everyhting someone would film his every move!
But seriously, you're not being cynical - for me the tone for the presidency was set.
People were making all sorts of escuses about him having the eyes of the world on him, it was an important day - but those excuses were never used for Bush.
Besides, if that bothered him, why did he run for PotUS? It's hardly a wallflower's ideal job.
If the second ceremony did not take place, constitutionally he is not President, because the oath uses very specific language and must be repeated exactly - I too would have liked to see a video, just to be sure.
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