Cancelled By The First Lady
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
Presidents, past and present, have always been fair game for political commentators, especially this one, but usually their wives are off limits. I suppose this is not quite true for Melania, but their marriage is hardly what anyone would call normal and he certainly isn’t.
Having said that I am afraid I have a bone to pick with one of the First Ladies, Michelle Obama. I guess it really wasn’t her fault but she and her daughters cost me a beer, and not just an ordinary beer, a real beer, a Guinness.
I know you are shocked and wondering why the First Lady, (this was in 2013, her husband was the President at the time) would be so mean, so spiteful, she would deprive a fine young gentleman like Mr. Foster, a pint, or, depending on who was pouring, an imperial gallon of one of the great beers of the world.
Well, I guess I’m being a little unfair since technically Michelle didn’t do it to cause us grief, but if she hadn’t been there this never would have happened.
Mary and I were in Dublin with a busload of Australians (long story) and we were just starting out on a tour of Ireland, both the Republic and Northern Ireland.
Without bothering to check our schedule, Michelle decided to pack up the kids and visit Dublin. Normally, a lady and her two girls landing in a foreign country would grab a room in some fleabag hotel, and head for the nearest pub, but not Michelle, the First Lady of the United States. Granted, she was important and would probably have needed at least a queen-size bed and a couple of roll-a-ways for the girls if she planned on staying for a few days.
Plus, as the wife of the President of the United States she would have her own security team with her. I thought she could have survived with perhaps a maiden aunt who had been there before and knew her way around, apparently not. She also needed some bozo to carry the luggage although there shouldn’t have been much, a small carry-on for each of the girls and a backpack for Michelle, maybe a Walmart bag with her make-up, clean underwear, and a good pair of rubber boots if they planned to go wading through the peat bogs.
Oh, and an umbrella, it rains a lot in Ireland. We found that out, I left Mary’s brolly in a pub and she was still crabbing about what it did to her hair when we landed at Pearson a week later. Better still one hockey bag would have held everybody’s stuff, as long as it would fit in the racks over the seat. I doubt they would pay extra to check the luggage since they are Democrats and wouldn’t be blowing money like a drunken sailor.
Now this is where the unfairness comes in. Our tour was to start Monday at the Guinness Brewery. I was up at 5:30 and lined up at the bus along with 32 Aussies badly in need of a drink.
And then, without so much as a by your leave we were bounced. No one called and asked if we would mind if they let this chick and her kids go ahead of us. Ireland gave our place at the brewery to Michelle and the girls. Can you imagine the beleaguered tour guide trying to explain this to a bunch of thirsty Australians, and one parched Canadian (Mary doesn’t count since she doesn’t drink beer). I was worried since the guide was a good guy and I was a little afraid of what the Australians might do to him. They aren’t that far up the evolutionary scale and he could have ended up with a giant didgeridoo up his bum.
So what did the tour company do to make us happy? They sent us to a cemetery where some saint was buried just after the Romans left in 500 something. Big deal, there are saints buried all over the place in the Republic of Ireland. That is one good thing about living in a Catholic country, make some egg salad sandwiches for a parish funeral and you’re in. Shoot an Englishman and they make you a Cardinal.
The Emerald Isle is an interesting place, with the Republic of Ireland to the south and Northern Ireland (guess where) yes, to the north. They are not close friends, some maybe, but certainly not all. When we arrived back in Dublin I had a handful of British coins left over from our visit to Belfast and handed them to our bus driver. He said, “Thanks, but I don’t know what I can do with them. I never go there. In fact this was the first time I have ever been across the border.”
You can drive the whole Emerald Isle, from top to bottom, in a day and he had never done it. Odd, to say the least.
More about that next week.
(Image Supplied)
