The Queen’s Visit
She’s here for the Kentucky Derby, okay. She’s a dyed in the wool horse person and owns some very respectable stock. Her granddaughter [Princess Anne’s daughter, Zara Phillips] is currently ranked as the best dressage rider in the world.
It is highly doubtful she will appear anywhere near the Shrubbery as she wants to kill him for what his visit to Britain did to her mother’s garden. What kind of idiot land’s helicopters on the Queen Mum’s roses – the Shrubbery.
She can’t be all that pleased about having to put up with the tourist stuff in Virginia and listening to Darth Cheney, but it’s the price she pays for another chance to see Derby, and maybe buy some horses.
Update: She’s forced to attend a state dinner on Monday. That must be annoying. If I was on the Secret Service detail I’d be worried.
10 comments
She should say she had an attack of sun stroke and needs to go back home, immediately, for medical services.
There’s a picture of her and Cheney, and it looks like she wants to have him thrown in the dungeon.
She came over to watch a race, and I bet she bought some horses. She done this before, but not “officially.” I wouldn’t blame her if she decided she needed to see her grandson before he left for Iraq and went home tomorrow.
I wonder if Dubya will wear those “God Save The Queen” cowboy boots?
I just hope there’s no embarrassing incident involving a seafood fork used as a deadly weapon or dribbling at dinner.
I can’t believe the man doesn’t ride. He went to Philips Andover Academy, they use to teach those skills. He lives on a “ranch” and he’s apparently afraid of horses.
The woman has a gazillion interests, you would think that anyone could find something to talk about without making the US look like jackasses. We have people on the government payroll to advise on protocol, but he wouldn’t listen.
thank god he’s afraid of horses and doesn’t. if he were a true horseman, i’d have to like something about him.
I have a feeling he doesn’t like what he can’t control, and horses don’t respond well to pushy people.
Quite right there Bryan but I would term it more like “Horses don’t suffer idiots well.”
Seriously, horses sense insecurity or fear in people and it makes them uncomfortable and uncooperative. Some even try and take advantage of it. My daughter is a horse trainer and she is of the “horse whisperer” school. Making a horse work for you is cooperation between you and the horse not domination. Bush only knows domination.
You’re right, Fallenmonk. The people around him never tell him anything he doesn’t want to hear because he rebels at the word “no.” The first horses I knew were draft horses. I wasn’t about to argue with them as I wasn’t interested in becoming a grease spot under one of their shoes.
Well, with all these rules of etiqueete surrounding the Queen’s visit,
you’d think we were still British subjects! Call her “Your Mahesty”?
Not me. Call Philip “Your Royal Highness”? Not me. They are on American
soil and. last I heard, we broke from their yoke in 1776. Neither of them
are royalty on this blessed soil. The white-tie dinner is a joke. Neither
she not Dubya wanted it. She because she can’t stand the man and he
because the feeling is mutual.
The title stuff is just protocol, like calling the Shrubbery, Mr. President. The rules are pretty much the same for all heads of state. Because she’s the nominal commander-in-chief of a friendly power, you owe her a salute if you are in the US military.
It is extremely silly to be going through all this, but there are “forms and formality” that must be complied with.
Be happy we don’t have to stage an event like the formal dinner at Windsor Castle for the French President and his wife that include a stage show. They did a BBC special on it and it was a military campaign involving about a thousand people and cost tens of thousands of dollars. They apparently have someone on staff who tracks allergies of guests to know who shouldn’t be seated near flowers. It’s totally absurd. Not like World War I when everyone was a first cousin and these things were family reunions.