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This has been bugging me for a few days now.
So many headlines and articles have been mentioning as a ‘fact’ that Americans don’t use the word ‘queue’ – thereby ‘proving’ there was something suspicious about President Obama’s “back of the queue” comment.
Only one problem. Americans do use the word ‘queue’.
Here’s an article from the New York Daily News:
Here’s a San Francisco blog:
And this is from the Ronald Reagan airport website:
Here’s The New York Times:
And you can’t get more American than Jeb Bush:
Obama himself has used the word before more than a few times. Here’s an extract from a 2013 speech of his – a speech he was making to a US audience:
Yet more lies from the Brexit camp …
P.S. The Sun’s Westminster correspondent Harry Cole clearly doesn’t speak to many Americans. Must be hard breaking out of that Westminster bubble:
Pride's Purge 
This is utterly pathetic!
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Even without this evidence [well found] I thought it was a VERY tenuous extrapolation. Obama says ‘queue’ not ‘line’; therefore Obama’s speech [presumably spoken against his will?] must have been scripted by Downing Street. If I were to go to America and make a public speech citing pavements or lifts, I think I’d be clued up enough to talk of sidewalks and elevators. It says something about the paranoid and illogical mindset of the Brexiteers who have tried to make something of this. Maybe that’s how their thought processes and understanding of the world comes to be so ‘interesting’. It might explain a lot 🙂
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” … about President Obama’s ‘back to the queue’ comment.”
————-
WRONG
He spoke about being at the back OF the queue, did he not?
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Do these people seriously believe that Obama (or any other US President) would read a script prepared by Downing Street?
They are turning into a cult.
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All that work to disprove something trivial, obvious and irrelevant! What IS relevant is that Obama was clearly lying in order to help Cameron. Are we seriously expected to believe that the US would put North Korea ahead of the UK in the queue?
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Reblogged this on sdbast.
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So Brexit supporters like Boris and Nigel allege that Obama is being secretly scripted by number 10 and therefore we can ignore what he says. This conspiracy theory gets wide publicity in the usual places, designed to change public opinion on the base of spurious evidence and spurious inference. Tom Pride does a bit of spadework to show this is all false. Then you come in with Tom Pride’s evidence being Trivial, Obvious and Irrelevant.
I disagree. Spurious propaganda needs to be shown up for what it is, and that’s important.
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crabramblings – “Spurious propaganda needs to be shown up for what it is”
…and Obama’s statement was exactly that!
P.S. I’m intending to vote #remain, but I’m waiting for (without much hope) some serious discussion about the issues. I doubt that I’ll see any of it here.
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Thanks for that.
Well, I thought Obama came across as quite reasoned in what I’ve heard him saying, but maybe we heard different bits. 🙂
It’s true there IS a lot of propaganda around. There’s some truth [not that much] in the Brexit lot saying Cameron and Osborne are running ‘Project Fear’ but I had to laugh the other day when I heard Gove pushing that line [queue?!?] and, hardly pausing for breath, telling us that the UK had been kidnapped into the boot of a car which was now hurtling towards the edge of a cliff. [Or something like that; to be honest I was unable to focus on the exact words! 😀 ]
By the way, re ‘serious discussions’, I find this site has a very congenial [to me] mix of humour, and exposure of hypocrisy and misdoings. Not unlike Private Eye in its way. 🙂
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crabramblings – Awwww, bless….. you completely missed the first point, and in doing so proved the second!
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Most striking about Obama’s words is that he made the IN case as blandly as the Remain perspective yet bumps the cause up massively. On top of that his belief that we are afraid NOT to get TTIP was cringeworthy and should have been a massive own goal to the IN campaign. Speaking here as an IN voter despairing of many EU issues but who susses neolib-Out would be far worse than neolib-In and that is the corporate-serving state-annihilating intention of Gove-Johnson-Hannan-Grayling etc.
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Sussex Sue, that’s gone completely over my head, but rest assured I do feel suitably patronised.
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crabramblings – I’ll try in simple terms for you…
The UK would be at the “back of the queue” in any trade deal with the US if the country chose to leave the EU – True or false?
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Sussex Sue. … unless you are referring to your FIRST posting? The one with “Are we seriously expected to believe that the US would put North Korea ahead of the UK in the queue?” I genuinely stand to be corrected but I can’t find any reference to this by Googling. I hope that’s not your own extrapolation from ‘back of the queue’. Otherwise we might as well say Obama implies he’ll put the UK behind the Vogons in the queue while we’re at it.
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Sussex Sue. I see we crossed there. So that IS what you were saying. Blimey.
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crabramblings – I’ll try one last time in simple terms for you…
The UK would be at the “back of the queue” in any trade deal with the US if the country chose to leave the EU – True or false?
P.S. I hate to break it to you, but Vogon isn’t a real place, so I think “I’m waiting for (without much hope) some serious discussion about the issues. I doubt that I’ll see any of it here” was about right.
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Sussex Sue. If I can predict what you are getting at before you spell it out, I think we can take it that I understand pretty well what you are saying [though it was initially unclear which of your posts you were referring to with your “you completely missed the first point, and in doing so proved the second!” – which I don’t think is my fault].
You keep making patronising comments like I’m thick or something. Amongst other things I’ve taught for years, I used to belong to Mensa [it wasn’t for me], and I have a PhD in Psychology and Electrical Engineering. I may be many things but I honestly don’t think I’m stupid, so kindly cut it out. Thank you. (And I’m not implying that you are, just for the record.)
<
Answer: It depends how literally you take that. This whole thread was about absurd extrapolation [‘He said ‘queue’, therefore this was scripted by Number 10′]. And now you are doing the same thing. If you said ‘That was the last thing on my mind’, you don’t expect somebody to come back at you ‘Aha! I think you’ll find that the antics of Qfwfq in Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomic stories was less on your mind, you liar!’ In the same way, I don’t actually think Obama was implying that North Korea gets a higher priority in future trade deals than the UK. I don’t think that was what he had in mind. I’m surprised that you DO.
So, taken literally, TRUE. Taken using commonsense, FALSE.
Crabramblings has now left the building. Ta-ta.
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I see a quote has disappeared from my last comment. In the middle it should read ‘The UK would be at the “back of the queue” in any trade deal with the US if the country chose to leave the EU – True or false?’
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@ sussex sue. Since north korea is not in the line/queue in the first place…. I’ll leave you reach any conclusion you deem suitable
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crabramblings – “I don’t actually think Obama was implying that North Korea gets a higher priority in future trade deals than the UK.”
He didn’t just imply that all other countries would be ahead of the UK in the queue, he said it VERY clearly. Apparently you had a chat with him and know he meant to say something else!
‘Thick is as thick does’… PhD or not…
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Ctesias62 – Only a few years ago you would have said the same about Cuba. Things change…
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Vote leave
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I have heard Americans being puzzled about the word “queuing” when in the UK. We use “queuing” in the UK whereas Americans use “in line” and “get in line”.
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Some English people, I’d imagine, might go to America and be confused by ‘Sidewalk’. Others would understand, and out of consideration, use the correct local term. I’m not disagreeing with you [I really wouldn’t know] but what I find absurd is the suggestion some have made that Obama was delivering a script drafted for him by Number 10 and using a word he didn’t understand but said [parrotted] anyway. The guy’s not stupid and I just can’t see it makes any sense. I’d prefer the theory that Boris and co were desperate to find some sort of negative spin on it and this as really the best they could come up with.
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Sussex Sue. I’m back – and see you’re still as rude as before. Oh well.
Ctesias62 pointed out that North Korea isn’t even IN the queue. Your point about Cuba, IF it applied in the future to North Korea, would still mean that a post-Brexit UK would still probably be at the back of the queue until North Korea, afterwards, joined this queue, at which point north Korea would tag on the end. Think of leaving a post office queue, losing your place, rejoining the queue at the end and then a North Korean gentleman joining the queue. He might push in front of you but it wouldn’t be because the guy running the post office, Mr Obama, told him too.
So your point about Obama putting North Korea ahead of the UK doesn’t even work in your own fanciful terms.
By the way, I never said I’d spoken to Obama. Your arrow misfires. I was talking about applying some common sense. You should try it some time.
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If Obama gets his speech written for him in the US, no reason why the Brits didn’t write it for him here – I’d go further and speculate that he probably agreed to “help” Cameron with the ‘remain campaign’ if they agreed to write his script.
I think most Americans would use the well-known phrase, “get in line!” in spoken/conversational language, rather than the word ‘queue’ though this could well be used in writing – as you demonstrated so well.
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