So what do you get the queen who has everything?
If you’re President Obama – and the queen in question is Elizabeth II of England – you get her a generously loaded iPod that includes video footage of her 2007 visit to the U.S. and songs made popular on Broadway.
That’s what Obama bestowed on Her Royal Highness Wednesday, along with a rare songbook signed by “The King and I” composer Richard Rodgers, of Rodgers and Hammerstein fame.
Queen Elizabeth, in turn, gave the Obamas a silver-framed photo of herself and her husband, Prince Philip, which is apparently the standard-issue gift at Buckingham Palace for visiting dignitaries.
For Obama, the high-tech gift set was clearly an attempt to play catchup, because the box set of 25 movie DVDs he gave England’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown last month was widely panned as cheap and not even useful – American DVDs don’t work in British players.
Her Majesty’s Royal iPod gift was stocked with 40 tunes from popular Broadway productions, including “West Side Story,” “My Fair Lady” and “South Pacific.”
The playlist also features “Oklahoma!” Carol Channing‘s rendition of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” “Memory” from Cats and “Shall We Dance?” featured in “The King and I.”
The new iPod from the Obamas is also very likely loaded with the most remembered moment of the Queen’s 2007 visit to Virginia – when President George W. Bush stumbled over a line and suggested that she helped celebrate America’s bicentennial in 1776, not 1976. After some giggling by the crowd, and stern look from Her Majesty, Bush joked, “She gave me a look that only a mother could give a child.”
