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Our anchors seem to be falling into a London Fog. Tuesday CBS' Katie Couric turned into quite the courtier as she worried about the protocol of President in the presence of Majesty. Now ABC's Charles Gibson takes a stroll down The Mall to Buckingham Palace to muse that "when you visit the Queen, she does not come down to the door to say Hi! even if you are the President of the United States." Gibson rehearsed the p's-&-q's of a royal audience and shared gossip about the exchange of gifts. Barack Obama gave Elizabeth Windsor "a rare songbook signed by composer Richard Rodgers." As a follow-up to Couric's report, Gibson did not share whether the tunes included the supposed royal favorite The Lady is a Tramp.
This obsequiousness is quite unbecoming a republican nation. Can you imagine how refreshing it would have been if Gibson, instead, had--accurately--described Obama's trip to the Palace as a meeting with the "monarch under whose imperial lash his black-skinned kin had been subject a mere generation ago"?
UPDATE: next day, NBC anchor Brian Williams dodged the courtiers' curse by filing a suitably wry--and brief--observation about the "purists in British society" who "positively huffed" when they saw Her Majesty and First Lady arm in arm: "The reacharound hug was a mutual thing, a sign of affection not at all a breach of protocol, so we can all breathe a bit easier."
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