Protocol Fail
When Gordon Brown came to Washington, he brought a thoughtful gift with him—a pen holder made from the timbers of the HMS Resolute to match the White House’s famous desk. Barack Obama, by contrast, got Brown a set of DVDs. And as if that gaffe wasn’t bad enough now we learn:
Alas, when the PM settled down to begin watching them the other night, he found there was a problem.
The films only worked in DVD players made in North America and the words “wrong region” came up on his screen. Although he mournfully had to put the popcorn away, he is unlikely to jeopardise the special relationship – or “special partnership”, as we are now supposed to call it – by registering a complaint.
In order to permit price discrimination between different markets, you see, DVDs and DVD players are region-restricted. Normally, a North American disk won’t play in a European player and vice versa. They do, however, make some “universal” DVD players that can play disks from all regions. Maybe the embassy in London can get one for the PM.
One assumes this won’t actually shatter the foundations of the US-British relationship, but still it’s a pretty sorry showing.
77 Responses to “Protocol Fail”
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March 20th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
It’s really quite inexplicable — the kind of diplomacy one would expect from Bush, not Obama.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
First of all, is a terribly lame gift, compounded by the DVD region mistake. It’s also interesting that somebody in Gordon Brown’s office (probably starting with Brown himself) deemed it appropriate to leak this DVD region issue to the press. I think Brown was pissed!
March 20th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
In order to permit price discrimination between different markets
I always thought part of the reason was to allow a film to be released on DVD in one market before the film had even been released in another. Back in the day, summer blockbusters in the USA would be released for the Christmas market in Europe.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Sorry, “…it was a terribly lame gift…”
March 20th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Should’ve given Brown the “Girls Gone Wild” set. There’d be no complaints.
March 20th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Its not a price discrimination issue, its a TV resolution issue. European TVs run PAL at 625 lines of resolution, while American TVs are NTSC which run 525 lines.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
In one way, it is worse. According to something that I read in the Guardian online (it may have been in a comment, not an article), Brown is losing his sight. I assume that means more than his eyesight is not as good because he is getting older, but I do not know.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
The gift from Obama to Gordon was lame but that doesn’t mean that Gordon’s gift was altogether thoughtful. Gordon’s gift was very PC.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
It was the sister ship to the one the Presidents desk was made of not Resolute or maybe I am wrong I am going on what the article you linked to said. Anyway it would have taken Obama a fair bit of planning to offer as good a gift as the one the Prime Minister gave. Still its both sad that he gave region locked DVDs and sad that such things even exist. Maybe Obama and the PM can bully companies into putting an end to this nonsense.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Hey, at least they didn’t have to translate anything.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Brown’s gift to Obama was *awesome*. How did this administration screw up so spectacularly? Seriously, someone ought to ask Gibbs about this. The region thing is just insult to injury. This is like someone giving you an incredibly thoughtful gift, and then you giving them a pack of cigarettes. And they don’t smoke. And their mom just died of lung cancer. WTF? And I voted for the guy, and still think he’s a great president.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
If you read the story you find that the reporter was unable to confirm the report.
So as it now stands this is an unconfirmed report from an unnamed source.
Is there a second source on this story?
March 20th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Does anyone buy anything but an all region DVD player these days?
After all Brown would have the same problem with his Australian Lifeguard porn.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
This is not to do with NTSC vs PAL. Most uk Dvd players have NTSC Playback. Also Brown has only one good eye due to an accident as a teenager.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
calipygian: its a TV resolution issue
No. PAL/NTSC is not the problem, modern DVD players can do rate-conversion. It’s an intentional restriction to allow differing release schedules and prices, as people have said. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
While Obama has a keen understanding of the fact that winning the weekly news cycle isn’t that important, it would help if he put at least the occasional thought into avoiding handing out ammunition to the news-cycle-drivers.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
So far the only movie in the bunch that I found a title for is “Psycho”. Perhaps they are all American/English collaborative films.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Unfortunately reminiscent of the reset button fiasco, in which the Russian word was not only misspelled, which might be forgivable, but written in the Roman alphabet rather than Cyrillic, which is a devastating demonstration of incompetence for the State Department.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
по теме…
When Gordon Brown came to Washington, he brought a thoughtful gift with him—a pen holder made from the timbers of the HMS Resolute[...]…
March 20th, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Unfortunately reminiscent of the reset button fiasco
One had to wonder, there, what the problem was with looking something up in a Russian-English dictionary. Or running something by the Russian-speaking staffers that you’re working with in the runup to the meeting. I don’t even understand how that could have happened.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
Personally if you offered me a choice between a fancy pen and a set of 25 classic movie DVDs I would take the DVDs in a heartbeat. Am I the only person who feels that way?
March 20th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Tyro, my understanding is there’s not really agreement on what the correct word would have been. A Russian-English dictionary isn’t going to be the best place to find out what a Russian reset button says, and it won’t necessarily give you the right translation for that specific context. The incomprehensible part is how the button got labeled in the Roman alphabet. I would (naively) have thought that anyone at all in the State Department, even the lowliest intern, should know that Russian uses a different alphabet.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I think it most likely that this “mistake” was intentional and leaked by the administration.
As with Obama’s stupid Special Olympics insult it is intended to get us talking trivia rather than the revised deficit forecasts (82% of GDP in 2019) or administration lies about their approval of the AIG bonus scheme, or…
March 20th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
Somebody made a dumb mistake, but somehow I imagine that the DVD set was of some movies that Brown REALLY likes.
I ran into the stupid region code problem – bought a DVD as a souvenier/memento of my honeymoon trip to Iguacu Falls in Brazil/Argentina.
Wrong region. I can watch on my laptop, but then I can’t watch US movies on it. The DVD software is confined to switching regions 5 times (including switching back and forth between 2 regions).
So, I got a nice-ish frisbee. Hopefully I can get my hands on a universal DVD player one of these days.
The DVD-region coding thing is annoying horseplop. They should learn to order DVD’s for foreign dignitaries from the amazon site in the foreign dignitary’s homeland. (www.amazon.com.uk for example)
March 20th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
I would (naively) have thought that anyone at all in the State Department, even the lowliest intern, should know that Russian uses a different alphabet.
I’m pretty sure they did know, but thought that a transliteration would be sufficient, seeing as how it was a public prop. That didn’t phase me at all. Even I know at least a few Russians or Russian-speakers I could call up and ask if I had a question like, “what does it say on a ‘reset’ button in Russia?” There weren’t any Russian experts, or at least Russian-speakers, on staff at the state department who were putting this project together? Though I suppose it’s possible some intern/personal assistant to Clinton came up with the idea, and she approved it, and it was done outside of the normal “channels” involving lots of Russia-specific-staffers who normally handle these meetings.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Gosh, Obama the Chicagoan-turned-Anglophobe? Never would have thought!
But more seriously, this stuff pisses British people off. And not just British people you see. Usually even when the British are pissed about something, the establishment (mostly Toryistic) are fine with the Yanks.
But this is the sort of thing, breach of protocol, tradition, dignity, you name it, that pisses off Tories even more than it pisses off Labourites. And the next PM is going to be a Tory.
Think about it. This is not going to make David Cameron’s job any easier with the American relationship. The Tory ultras, the country party types, are going to breathe fire down his back.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
And I really couldn’t understand why Obama would want to go pissing off Tories. Because once they are pissed, they are pissed and there is no turning back. They aren’t like Labour; nothing hurts more than an insult to their imperial nostalgia.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
These guys are really the “A” team we were promised.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j_8-HBsaslF15NKsAmFTougghuWQD96SVSEO2
Brazil leader takes regional clout to White House
By BRADLEY BROOKS – Mar 12, 2009
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — His meet and greet with the U.S. president was bumped to Saturday, and when the White House announced his official visit, they misspelled his name.
But when Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva becomes the first Latin American leader to sit down with President Barack Obama this weekend, he brings undisputed clout.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
In fact, when I was talking with my friend, a Tory ultra, at St. Andrew’s, this shit has already turned him from a Eurosceptic to a EU supporter. He is sick of this stuff. The only thing stopping U.S. breaching protocol is the counterweight of the E.U.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Given Brown is blind in one eye and is losing his vision in the other (his speeches are now printed up in 36 point,and he’s has trouble recognising people more than a couple of feet away) the ‘gift’ of dvds was treated here in the UK as an insult.
The fact (if true) that they are not even playable in the UK is not likely to discredit that view.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
sorry, that should have read “his documents” rather than his speeches.
March 20th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
But Obama has made up for all this with his teleprompter skillz – he mistakenly read the Irish PM’s speech for him
Obama Thanks Himself, Irish PM Repeats Speech in Teleprompter Meltdown
Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen reads word for word a speech that Obama had just read from a teleprompter, while the president apparently thanked himself for the invitation.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/03/18/teleprompter-gone-bad-obama-thanks-irish-pm-repeats-speech/
March 20th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
“…The films only worked in DVD players made in North America and the words “wrong region” came up on his screen…”
…They do, however, make some “universal” DVD players that can play disks from all regions. Maybe the embassy in London can get one for the PM…
This is hilarious! Not all Brits are idiots like Brown… even my 60 year old mother knows the fix!
I think this was more of the Toryrag making a dig at Brown rather than Obama.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
If it was only intended for people who know English, why bother trying to translate it at all? Why not just leave it “RESET”? (Hell, probably a significant number of reset buttons in Russia are labeled in English anyway.) But if you’re going to label it in Russian, it makes zero sense to use a transliteration.
On the DVDs, maybe this is a tricky way to undermine support for DRM.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Campesino, that Fox News smear was incomprehensible. I think I’ll wait for a competent report of the event before making any judgment.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Matt, you might want to hop on JournoList and console your buddy Ezra. At TAPPED he put up a gushy post praising the Administration’s original thinking and innovative diplomacy for Obama’s Iranian New Year’s message today.
But then someone pointed out that Bush had really come up with the idea last year.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzUwYTc4OWE3OWZmMjBhZDFhM2NlMjJmMDM0ZmJkOTI=
March 20th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
KCinDC Says:
March 20th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Campesino, that Fox News smear was incomprehensible. I think I’ll wait for a competent report of the event before making any judgment.
=============================================================
Okay, here it is in the UK Times and the Christian Science Monitor. Maybe you can sort it out
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5931422.ece
http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/03/18/chaos-in-the-white-house-obamas-teleprompter-blows-up/
March 20th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
As a Brit, I must say the whole thing is really quite amusing. The embarrassment belongs to Obama–I guess he gave the people responsible a serious tongue lashing.
Why are Brits so amused by it? I think we appreciate the assymmetry, and it is an oblique complement–clearly the mischief was grounded in the US being so relaxed about the ’special partnership’.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
I bought an upgrading Philips DVP5965K for under $40, did some googling, entered a few simple commands and it is now region free. Took about 2 minutes.
Most players can play other disks. It is just a software issue.
I’m sure Brown has access to one. It is just piling on at this point.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Initially I thought Michelle’s gifts were bad, but the region thing is even worse.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Brown can probably watch the DVDs on his PC or laptop. Most have a region-code playback option; I use it to watch several PAL-coded DVDs I’ve acquired from overseas.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:32 pm
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Wake me when something interesting happens.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Campesino, those stories are about Cowen reading a few seconds of Obama’s speech, not vice versa, and certainly no one “read word for word” a speech that someone had just given. The Fox News story seems to be completely bogus. From the CSM story, it seems like Obama’s thanking himself was a joke after Cowen’s teleprompter problem.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
The pen holder was not made from the wood of HMS Resolute. It was from HMS Gannet, an “anti-slaver” (a ship that helped shut down the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which the British outlawed in 1807).
The gift was an indication of anxiety on the part of the British over the insult that Obama had apparently taken in connection with the British offer that he might want to retain the bust of Churchill that had been lent to Bush. (Churchill presided over the suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, during which his grandfather and other innocents were beaten and imprisoned.)
March 20th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
It really is hilarious to me to see the sudden concern for protocol among our Republican hacks. … maybe Obama can make it up to Brown the next time they meet with a nice friendly surprise shoulder rub.
Burn. This is one of those moments where the above statement annoys be because I’m frustrated that I didn’t think of it first.
March 20th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
KCinDC Says:
March 20th, 2009 at 4:42 pm
Campesino, those stories are about Cowen reading a few seconds of Obama’s speech, not vice versa, and certainly no one “read word for word” a speech that someone had just given. The Fox News story seems to be completely bogus. From the CSM story, it seems like Obama’s thanking himself was a joke after Cowen’s teleprompter problem.
===============================================
Don’t worry, everything’s just fine
March 20th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Obama’s grateful, though, for the audio cassettes and laser disks he got in return.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Shut the fuck up, Lonewacko.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Why are Brits so amused by it?
I think you mean “why is the Daily Telegraph so amused by it?” for which the answer is “the Daily Telegraph still pines for the days of Empire, where jockos like Brown and half-Kenyan types like Obama knew their place”.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
“the Daily Telegraph still pines for the days of Empire, where jockos like Brown and half-Kenyan types like Obama knew their place”.
What gets me is why anyone other than someone over 70 or a former colonial settler who still misses being attended by servants is in any way attracted to the sort of high-Tory affectations that the Telegraph caters to.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
The box set was produced by the American Film Institute, “as a ’special request’ for the White House.”
Assuming that they knew that this box set was supposed to be a gift for foreign dignitaries, the mistake was really theirs. At least, the region-coding mistake was.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
You know this obsession the right has about this non-incident and the teleprompter is just their way of telling their slack jawed base that Obama is nothing more than a shiftless n**ger.
I have a fresh $100 bill that in the next four years, one of the GOP’s heavy hitting types like Rush will be caught on tape dropping the N-bomb about our President.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Everybody knows the president doesn’t personally shop for presents, right? Must have been a slow news day.
March 20th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
wiley Says:
March 20th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Everybody knows the president doesn’t personally shop for presents, right? Must have been a slow news day.
=======================================================
Hey, no worries! We have our best people on it!
Plan to Buy Toxic Bank Assets Delayed Again
The Administration’s long-awaited plan to save America’s banks is being delayed again, government sources tell Time.
The slip is embarrassing for Treasury officials who have been assuring the media and the markets that the plan was coming, first in mid-February, and as recently as March 14 when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Bloomberg TV he would release details soon. A senior Treasury department official says the plan isn’t slipping, but other government officials say it is and could be unveiled anywhere from next week to early April.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1886729,00.html
March 20th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Campos, buddy. You’re good at flapping your gums. Explain to us how lowering income taxes will save banks from collapsing.
March 20th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Ironically, it’s usually the cheapest DVD players that are able to play DVDs from all regions. For others, there is usually a hack you can do. Unfortunately didn’t work on my particular Panasonic model
http://www.videohelp.com/dvdhacks
March 20th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Pete Says:
March 20th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
Campos, buddy. You’re good at flapping your gums. Explain to us how lowering income taxes will save banks from collapsing.
==========================================================
Dude, I don’t have to explain things I never said.
I’ve just been hearing since November that everything is going to be wonderful now that the *Smart Guys* are in charge.
It’s becoming clearer every day that the Circus has come to town – hey want to go bowling?
March 20th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
> I bought an upgrading Philips DVP5965K for under $40, did
> some googling, entered a few simple commands and it is now
> region free. Took about 2 minutes.
>
> Most players can play other disks. It is just a software
> issue.
>
> I’m sure Brown has access to one. It is just piling on at
> this point.
Except that Obama appears to be headed toward supporting the RIAA in its disputes with “consumers” (really Citizens, but who’s counting). I believe his nominee for Copyright Czar is an ex-RIAA lawyer. And it is the RIAA and its ilk that stand foresquare behind region coding among other absurdities.
Cranky
March 20th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
can you imagine what you liberals would be saying if George Bush had given such an inane gift?
Or come out with that “special olympics” comment?
Come on– fess up. Your guy is an imbecile….
March 20th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
He isn’t really good without his trusty teleprompter.
This is the scary part though
The U.S. government would run budget deficits approaching $1 trillion every year for a decade under Obama’s budget, the CBO said.
Deficits and debt that big are unsustainable over the long term, economists agree. They’d threaten to send inflation spiraling upward, threaten the nation’s creditworthiness and the value of the dollar — China’s prime minister publicly voiced concern about the safety of U.S. debt last week — and force up interest rates, as investors come to see the United States as a risky, debt-ridden economy. They’d saddle future generations with a debt payable only by cutting federal spending or raising taxes sharply.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/politics/story/64528.html
March 20th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
I have a fresh $100 bill that in the next four years, one of the GOP’s heavy hitting types like Rush will be caught on tape dropping the N-bomb about our President.
I’ll take that bet.
March 21st, 2009 at 12:19 am
Uh, I got you some socks, and some free passes.
Weak! Weak!
March 21st, 2009 at 12:22 am
He isn’t really good without his trusty teleprompter.
I thought you tools gave this line up after he stomped McCAin in all three debates by large margins last fall. “He is really very good without a teleprompter” was why he was going to lose the debates, remember”?
Srsly, you write this after the town meetings of the last two days, you look like an idiot.
March 21st, 2009 at 1:45 am
“But more seriously, this stuff pisses British people off. And not just British people you see.”
I’m sorry but it really doesn’t.
I recommend reading through various British reporters blogs on the visits. When it looked like everything was getting cocked up (largely because Number 10 overpromised), the overwhelming emotion you sensed wasn’t anger, so much as glee.
The British media are scurrilous and dishonest. They make Fox News looks, well, fair and balanced. And there is nothing in the world that Fleet Street loves more than a great big cock-up.
On the gift thing, it’s got barely any play in this country (same goes for the Churchill bust actually), maybe a minute on the news and a couple of inside pages in the papers. The tone is generally ‘even presents go wrong for Brown’.
However it does prompt the realignment that happens every time there’s a new President. When a President’s in the middle of his term our media like to spend a lot of time thinking if Britain’s too close to America, maybe they just take us for granted, maybe we should go de Gaulle for a while. Then when a President’s sworn in and he makes efforts with all of Europe (Bush-Kohl-Mitterand, Clinton-Kohl-Mitterand-Chirac and so on) then we start to worry ‘IS THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP DYING?’
Personally I think it’s all pretty funny and that’s the general sentiment in our news too.
‘Why are Brits so amused by it?’
Because it’s funny, and it reinforces the impression that Brown’s just a living disaster zone.
Shaun
March 21st, 2009 at 1:48 am
I have reviewed this thread with interest, and I find it lacking a certain something. I shall now attempt to remedy that:
Eat a dick, Britain. You want your thirteen colonies back or some shit? These are serious fucking times, and none of us has the time to tend to you while you’re all butthurt over the contents of the gift bag.
March 21st, 2009 at 11:27 am
While I am 99.9% certain that the exchange of sweet and quality gifts is an indispensable ritual in diplomatic butt-sniffing, not to mention ultra-critical to solving the current global economic shit-rain we have brought down upon ourselves, there is a wee small part of me that thinks Big Fucking Deal and even Hurrah of BO for sending an intern to Target with some scratch from the petty cash drawer to snag some shwag for the visiting Brits. I mean, I didn’t even get a lousy t-shirt out of the visit, let alone anyone increase in job security.
March 21st, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Interestingly enough, Americans still think it’s some sort of bad joke. Well, it is certainly funny.
But the disregard for formalities is, well, disconcerting. As much as Bush played the jock, he dressed up in white tie for Philip and Elizabeth. And the shoulder rub is rather affectionate I found.
But Obama demonstrates a contempt, I find, for other Anglophone nations, that’s basically every big wealthy Commonwealth Realm, which is troubling. There is a certainly point to be made that it isn’t really in British interests to be as aligned closely with the U.S. during Democratic administrations as it has been (Franklin Roosevelt looted the entire overseas holdings of the Empire), and this just made the case for me.
A disregard for diplomatic niceties is a disregard of civilisation; what we have achieved in elevation room from primates in spirit and in character is all displayed in the diplomatic full-dress reception.
March 21st, 2009 at 1:56 pm
By the way, the Telegraph was the only quality paper to stand decisively behind the country and the Falklands War (and British rejuvenation) from day one, while the other quality papers dithered fully possessed by the Suez Syndrome.
It was a loyal paper then, and it is a loyal paper now. What do you have against the British Empire? It was far superior than the American one, for God’s sakes. At least they brought civilisation to the savages.
March 21st, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Explain to me, Myles, exactly how the people who had already notched the Rig Vedas, Bhagavad Gita, Buddhism, etc., on their belt were savages compared to the blue-painted tribesmen of contemporaneous Britain that were your (and my) ancestors.
March 21st, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Also, what I have against the British Empire:
Ireland, Amritsar, the gulag in Kenya during Mau Mau — but above all, the belief (which you seem to share) that you’re God’s gift to the world and the wogs in particular. Go fuck yourself.
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Shove it up yer ass. The gift would have been a fine present. Bush got that braying ass Blair a god damned US bomber jacket. Where is the poodle going to wear that lame ass piece of sheit? The bedroom?
March 23rd, 2009 at 6:59 am
To add insult to injury for Brown:
The Irish Prime Minister visited on St. Patrick’s Day and was given a bound volume of the Constitution. Seems someone thought ahead instead of sending an aide scuttling down to the video store at the last minute.
Who has the special relationship?
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:42 am
Gordon Brown needs to Google “DVD hacks.” With many DVD players, you can use the remote to “hack” the player so that it will play DVDs from outside your region. If kung fu movie fans in the U.S. can do it, so can the Prime Minister of Britain. Jeez, use the Google, people!