steepholm: (Default)
steepholm ([personal profile] steepholm) wrote2010-07-22 03:22 pm
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Stupidest PM comment since we helped Napoleon whap George Washington's backside?

This simply isn't the kind of thing David Cameron should be making a "slip of the tongue" about. For someone in his position, especially, forgetting what happened between Dunkirk and Pearl Harbour is like not knowing one's ABC.

But, since 1940 has evidently been forgotten, are we now doomed to repeat it?

[identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com 2010-07-23 01:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Not as iconic in Britain, no - though D-Day as a whole certainly would be. Omaha was an American beach, iirc: it might well have been an equivalently-bad slip had an American politician made it. Even as it was, it was a first-class goof, I'll happily admit. But Cameron not only got it wrong, he took a date synonymous with Britain's "standing alone" and used it as an exemplum of Britain's being a junior partner. Coming from a British Prime Minister, that's about as bad as it gets.

[identity profile] calimac.livejournal.com 2010-07-24 09:30 am (UTC)(link)
I understand the profound awfulness of this. But I continue to believe it was a crude and egregious attempt to flatter his hosts, rather than a clumsy stumbling over his own tongue - a Brown thing to do rather than a Cameron thing - and surely not an actual case of forgetting or of not knowing. That last would require intelligence on a Sarah Palin level, and I doubt you have politicians of such aggressive ignorance in Britain.