Obama remark offends France, is this an international incident?

Your Ugly! ... Who said that?

On November 3rd, President Obama insults French President Sarkozy to his face at the G20 summit sparking an international uproar among the news wires.

Taking a play out of the Joe Biden Gaff-A-Minute handbook, and without the aid of his teleprompters President Obama jokes about how ugly Mr. Sarkozy is.

Yep you heard that right, and it wasn't Biden, it was Obama.
Its enough to even make GW Bush say ... "What the ..."

President Obama thought he was making a gentle joke about Mr. Sarkozy, host of the summit, when he congratulated Mr. Sarkozy and wife Carla Bruni on the birth of their baby daughter on Oct. 19. Instead, Obama caused a minor international incident.

Ha the jokes on you!

President Obama said ... “I want to make mention that this is our first meeting since the arrival of the newest Sarkozy, and so I want to congratulate Nicolas and Carla on the birth of Giulia,” President Obama told reporters shortly after his arrival at the G-20, with Mr. Sarkozy at his side. “And I informed Nicolas on the way in that I am confident that Giulia inherited her mother’s looks rather than her father’s, which I think is an excellent thing.”

Huh?

Well, the sad fact of the matter is this "joke" was intended to compliment his wife, as so many of us fathers use the same punch line when speaking with other fathers.  The problem is, the comment has a backhanded slap that suggests the father, Mr. Sarkozy, is ugly, and that is exactly how the French media and many Frenchmen took the comments.


You don't say those things in a public forum about diplomats.  It always goes wrong.

Really Smart People at the State Department

Didn't someone at the State Department, responsible for international protocols and etiquette, inform the President that Mr. Sarkozy is a bit sensitive about his looks, considering he definitely married out of his league?

Oh wait thats the same person that sent back the national gift from Great Britian, a bust of Winston Churchill back to the British.  Oh and at the first state meeting in his new capacity as President of the U.S. he forgot to get a gift for the Prime Minister, so his wife at the last minute went to the White House gift shop and bought some DVD's on American history for the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.  He can't play them on British DVD players, wrong format, plus DVD's as a gift???.  Meanwhile Mr. Brown gave Obama an ornamental pen holder constructed from the timbers of the anti-slavery ship HMS Gannet, once also named HMS President.

Wow this international diplomatic protocol stuff is hard !

Where's GW Bush when you need to blame him.

Links

Obama Story on the Ugly Remarks
DVDs for the British