A bit of fun from Outlook India, via Salon.com:

This White House gets what it wants -- even from the Queen of England ... No other U.S. president has stayed inside the royal compound, and she has met 11 of them in her time...

Clearly ... her first impression of Bush [has been improved]. In 1991, Bush famously appeared wearing cowboy boots at a White House dinner given by his father for the Queen and cheerily informed her of the inscription on the heels: "God save the Queen." A frosty frown appeared on the royal brow, an eon passed, many feet shuffled all around. Convinced that understatement or sarcasm would be lost on the man standing before her, the Queen asked bluntly: "Are you the black sheep of your family?" Bush replied in the affirmative and shot back: "Who's the black sheep in your family?"...


but now I look at this anecdote, which I think I've seen before, and I realize it has a certain gestalt quality about it; to many people, myself included, there is an appreciation of how we're right to be put off by George W. Bush's conceitedness(he offended the queen yet again by bringing five white house chefs with him) and arrogance and yes, boorishness, and so we read this anecdote as validation of our view of the varmint-in-chief. And yet, I imagine millions of other Americans who see his behavior in the affirmative, as validation of their own insecurities, of their wish to twist the lion's tail and thumb their nose at an authority figure, whether the queen, as here, or say, the United Nations.

I will be back to regular posting on Monday, 1 Dec.