Stupidest PM comment since we helped Napoleon whap George Washington's backside?

[steepholm]

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?

Comments

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I think not. Stumbling over names is of variable levels, and that particular stumble revealed an awesome clumsiness matched only when Jimmy Carter eulogized Hubert Horatio Humphrey as "Hubert Horatio Hornblower."

I could read Cameron's "1940" as a slip for "the 1940s", which is far less awkward than the above; or as a cool acknowledgment of the fact that, US material assistance to the UK already being well under way, the junior partnership had already started; or, and I think this by far the most likely, as a way of buttering up his hosts.

The last fits in far better with the image of Cameron as slick and smarmy (see the above reference to him as "Smoothiechops") than as clumsy and stumblefooted like Brown, which is what treating it as dumb ignorance paints him as.

[sheenaghpugh]

Oh, I can well believe he is both smarmy and ignorant, certainly of history, since he wouldn't see it as a commmercial subject. And I can also believe he would be sycophantic enough to suck up to his hosts by misrepresenting history. I don't see how anyone could say "1940" and mean "the 1940s" though. I think he simply wasn't aware of the history.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The Daily Mash puts it in historical perspective.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I don't see how anyone could say "1940" and mean "the 1940s" though.

Same way one could say "Obama Beach" and mean "Omaha Beach" or "Hubert Horatio Hornblower" and mean "Hubert Horatio Humphrey."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

If 1940 were just any old date, then I'd agree - but it's got an iconic status that makes a mistake with reference to it more than just a mistake. It's rather as if Obama had referred "to the terrorist attacks on 912".

[sheenaghpugh]

Or even on 11/9....:)

[calimac.livejournal.com]

And Omaha Beach is not iconic?

And in the US, I assure you that at the time of his death Hubert Humphrey was also pretty damned iconic.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

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.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

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.