The Random Yak

As TRY reported Saturday, Washington Post staff writer and NPR media-celebrity Roxanne Roberts insulted Queen Elizabeth at a reception in the British embassy last week and repeated her insult on National Public Radio’s news quiz program “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.” Standing in front of the elderly and revered Queen of England, the classless Ms. Roberts turned to the male embassy official standing next to her and remarked that “The Queen is stacked.” Ms. Roberts reportedly gestured to the NPR panelists and studio audience to make her crass anatomical meaning perfectly clear to all. The theme of the NPR program was lambasting President Bush for purported breaches of etiquette and for mangling the Queen’s English, but nothing was said about Ms. Roberts’ appallingly impolite insult about a matronly and highly repected woman on a state visit, an insult made at a reception in her honor at the British embassy no less.

But there’s more. When the British embassy official to whom Ms. Roberts’ inane observation was addressed discovered that she is a Washington Post reporter, he was aghast and begged her not to repeat her tasteless comment (or the official’s polite refusal to take this impolite guest and usher her immediately out the back door into the alley, as her behavior deserved) as a news story. So what did she do? She immediately broadcast her insult and his horrified reaction on National Public Radio. Add ethical lapses to lack of etiquette on Ms. Roberts’ resume.

That cacaphony of media outrage you should be hearing would be the calls for Ms. Roberts’ to apologize and then to be fired from the Post and NPR.

Two queries from TRY: First, I did not hear all Ms. Roberts’ may have said on NPR. Could someone else who listened to the program or who has access to the transcript confirm whether or not Ms. Roberts also called the Queen “nappy-headed”?

Second, could someone at the Post or NPR please provide TRY with an appropriately accurate and equivalently insulting description of the upper torso anatomy of Roxanne Roberts?