Actually, the Queen hugged the First Lady. Keep fighting the good fight though.

Quote:

She is not renowned for public displays of affection. Which made the Queen's decision to put a friendly arm around Michelle Obama's waist at a Buckingham Palace G20 reception - prompting the U.S. President's wife to return the gesture - so utterly astonishing.
Finding herself next to Mrs Obama, the Queen remarked on their height difference. As she did so, her hand edged towards the small of Mrs Obama's back. Mrs Obama responded - and even rubbed the Queen's shoulder - before both women moved gently apart after about ten seconds.
The sight of the Queen publicly hugging another woman astonished other guests. An onlooker said: 'It was a pretty simultaneous gesture. We couldn't believe what we were seeing.'
It was an electrifying moment of palpable majesté: A breach of centuries-long protocol when the friendly and outgoing Michelle Obama put her arm round the Queen.
It now appears, however, that it may have been the Queen who made the initial move. In any case, it was the first time that anyone can remember in her long public life that she has put her arm around another woman.
'A mutual and spontaneous display of affection and appreciation,' was how a Buckingham Palace spokesman hastened to describe it.
But the protocol concerning the sovereign has been set in stone for generations. 'Whatever you do,' courtiers are apt to warn, 'don't touch the Queen.'
Who can forget the furore that erupted in 1992 when the then Australian prime minister, Paul Keating, put his arm round the Queen's waist at Canberra's Parliament House, and found himself lampooned as 'the Lizard of Oz' for his faux-pas.
And everyone remembers the expression of frozen distaste on the Queen's face at the opening of the Millennium Dome when Tony Blair seized hold of the royal hand and shook it up and down during the singing of Auld Lang Syne.




Link


Extra credit reading:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/G20/article6022502.ece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/g20-summit/5091915/Michelle-Obama-hugs-the-Queen.html


Edited by Soopergrizz (04/02/09 04:04 PM)
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