Proper Etiquette for High Tea

I can't remember when I have heard someone say "No" more often than last night when Hugo Vickers again tried to school Stephen Colbert in the proper etiquette for high tea and for meeting The Queen. I could tell you about the "Do not hug her," and the "gauche faux pas". I could explain what Stephen means when he says, "I'm just not buying it," or who Stephen employed as a stand-in for The Queen. And I could tell you about Stephen's grand entrance after he is properly kitted out.

But as they say, one picture is worth a thousand words and, video is probably worth a million words. Go watch Stephen from last night, and the previous night at Colbert Nation. Stephen tries his darndest to be British, but it's not as easy as it looks. You have to see it to believe it.

And I need to get something off my chest. My mom called last night. She said it is rude to accuse someone else of being rude. And so I apologize for the "less than kind" things I said about Stephen in my previous post "My Fair Colbert." He tries to do things right, but sometimes it's difficult for him. We should all applaud his willingness to try new things.

Moving on.

Interesting guest tonight. Jeff Greenfield was there to talk about his new book. "Then Everything Changed." What if one little event in history had happened differently or if it had never happened at all? Who knows what the effect would have been? There's many instances of people who were sick and did not go to work when something horrible happened. Or someone budges in front of you in line and buys the losing lottery ticket and the next one, the one you get, ends up being the winning ticket. If that person had waited for his turn in line, he would have gotten the winning ticket instead of you.

So, his book is about lives and politics of JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford and Reagan. It sounds like a really different take on history, examining it based on what almost happened. Go buy it, then read it.

My Fair Colbert

Rumor has it that Stephen Colbert actually has very bad table manners, generally. This includes dunking his biscuits or scones into tea, licking the spoon, clinking the spoon, and even stealing the spoon.

This all became very obvious to the thousands of Colbertians watching The Colbert Report tonight. Stephen had hoped to learn enough manners to not make a complete fool of himself when he goes to the Royal Wedding (where is his invitation anyway? time's a wasting!).

He joined up with an expert on British protocol for meeting Royalty at the soon to be very famous Tea and Sympathy. Basically he made a fool of himself and frankly, Stephen Colbert embarrassed the entire United States of America.

Now. To see what I expect will be a very quick correction of the many errors I have made in this posting, check out the website icorrect.com. If anything I said was untrue or if it was true but unkind, then corrections should show up soon to set the record straight.

If corrections do not show up there, then we will know that Stephen needs to do a little bit more work on his table manners before he meets The Queen.

Overheard at Tea and Sympathy:

"You're doing everything wrong."
"No, you don't steal the spoon."
"No dunking."
"Put your pinkie back."
"No."
"Don't"
"No."
"No, no, no."