Hope and Fail

Searching the bargain DVD rack for gift to British PM

President Obama gave British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a box-set of 25 DVDs.

Is there not a protocol office somewhere near the White House to make sure the president doesn’t embarrass himself and the country with stupid mistakes like this?

After snubbing British Prime Minister Gordon Brown by canceling a joint press conference because of the weather, Barack Obama gave Brown, as a gift, a box of 25 DVDs of classic American films. Brown, on the other hand, gave the president a thoughtful gift the speaks to the relationship between our two contries.

According to Time:

Obama allegedly gave Brown a “special collector’s box” of 25 classic American DVDs while Brown gave the U.S. President an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the Victorian anti-slave ship HMS Gannet and a first edition of the seven-volume biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert, among other things. 10 Downing Street reportedly tried to keep Obama’s gift to the PM a secret. Once the gesture was made public, they declined to say what movies were included in the set.

The British press, thankfully not as mesmerized by Obama as our own, is going nuts.

Update

Turns out, because of the different ways DVDs are encoded, the box set won’t play on a British DVD player. So Brown couldn’t watch them if he wanted to.

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