Frankly, I thought it was one of my funnier posts making fun of the media's over the top tendency to make something out of nothing. I continued with two more examples of media hyperbole and ended with a serious thought that President Obama's Chief of Protocol should be fired for failure to inform the President/First Lady about British protocol regarding the Queen.

I hoped to point out how things that seem ridiculous to one may be important to someone else; it's Obama's Protocol Chief's job to keep this straight so that embarrassment does not occur. I thought I did it with humor.

Somehow it turns out that I'm a racist, have hurt or insulted thousands, and am a failure as a Francophile for not considering Marie Antoinette. How we got here I'll NEVER know.

And just when I want to explain my post, it's shut down.

I know I have a different sense of humor that is not everyone's cup of tea. I am NOT a racist; I apologize to all I have offended; and I feel terrible about Marie Antoinette, especially when I heard how many turtlenecks she had to throw away.

Before this is shut down, let me apologize to all with neck problems.

Yes, Vendome, I'm constantly puzzled by what's OK and what isn't in this forum, but will doggedly keep trying to learn, and apologizing when I mess up. Your post seemed to be fine until somebody took offense...after several others didn't. I respect those people, but in their political correctness they read more into your post than you intended. If I'm guessing right.

None other than the 100% politically correct mainstream media maven, Katie Couric, asked then-Sen. Obama to his face:

"If things go your way on Tuesday and you become this nation's first African-American president, what will that mean to you personally?"

His race was greatly emphasized during his campaign and on Inauguration Day. Mrs. Obama has already gone down in history as the first African-American First Lady. Their race is a big deal.

Friends! Let us all strive to write as inoffensively as possible, and also to read in the same spirit.

I dunno, Vendome, it just seemed un-necessary. You've been around here long enough to know that the admin and moderators try as hard as possible to keep things very UN-controversial. You had to know that people would get their hackles up over the title you gave. There's millions of places on the Internet that you could have posted what you did without complaint but it just so happens that here is not one of those places.

I'm pretty much as non-PC as they come and, mate, you've had much funnier posts than that.

I went off to my other life after posting, but didn't stop thinking about it, and now returning to set down some thoughts, I find these other nice answers.

After "smoking my pipe," I see I'm the one who missed my friends' point. I still agree with what I said before, but their point was that the touching episode had nothing whatsoever to do with race or colors, so, why inject it?

(Maybe I'm catching on here. I'm the kind who needs to talk and listen all the way around the circle before figuring out in what direction I'm headed.)

Que, if the post had been titled "First Lady Hugs Queen" chances are there would have been a good discussion, for and against, about it. It just obviously put a bad taste in quite a few mouths and put the whole post on the wrong foot from the start.

The problem ends up being that we can't tell what is/isn't meant in jest over the internet because we can't see your facial expressions. (That's why I usually end up having a bunch of smileys in my emails/posts.)