A tempest in an iPod

I have been agog at the hullabaloo over the fact that President and Mrs. Obama included in iPod in the gifts that they took with them to London last week. You'd think that they gave Her Majesty a pile of dog poo or something. I got myself involved in a discussion of it on the politics mailing list I belong to and the insanity goes on and on.

Aside from the particulars of this gift-giving, which I'll get to in a moment, I have been informed that if someone gives two objects, no matter how unrelated those object might be, it is one "two-part" gift and not two gifts. And the gift that is lesser than the two is the one by which both are judged. Really. You don't believe me, do you? Well, this is a quote from a post to the list:

Or, you select a well-thought out wedding gift, say a silver bowl with a
particular pattern. Your husband thinks that's not enough and on the way to the wedding, buys a set of three dish towels. And leaves the tag on. Bowl, OK. Bowl and towels, cheesy.

The existence of the towels negates the OK-ness of the silver bowl. O-kay.

This all came up because, of course, the iPod was supposedly a cheesy gift. The fact that the Obamas also gave Her Majesty a rare autographed Richard Rodgers songbook didn't matter. The existence of the iPod made "the gift" (remember, even though there were two objects, there was only one gift) "cheesy."

Except for several things that have been ignored. Well, the fact that there was a Richard Rodgers songbook was ignored in most news reports, but there are still other other things. First, Her Majesty requested the iPod. Yes, that's right. She already had an audio iPod, which she seems to use quite a bit, but she wanted a video iPod, so someone from Buckingham Palace let it be known that Her Majesty would appreciate an upgrade. Second, while it was mentioned that there were a couple of speeches by Obama on the iPod, few reports mentioned that there was also video of Her Majesty's trip to the US in 2007 and even more video of a trip that she made to the US in 1957. It's nice to have film of one's travels.

Finally, there is the reaction from Buckingham Palace. Her Majesty wouldn't be likely to say that she didn't like the gift(s) she was given, but she could just not say anything, or say something noncommittal. A spokesman for the Queen said, "The Obamas, they scored a hit, particularly with the iPod, loaded with footage of the state visit from two years ago." That sounds like a successful gift to me.

Above all, though, is the focus on minutia like this in the midst of truly severe problems in our country and the world. I know that the conservatives are just trying to pretend that Obama is the oaf that his predecessor was, but it ain't gonna work.