Our President has done it again. When meeting Japanese Emperor Akihito, President Obama was overcome with a sudden weakness in his spine that cause him to bend over in what sure looked like a deep bow. Or maybe he dropped something and bent over to pick it up?
Recall a similar incident, when Obama met Saudi Arabian King Abudllah earlier this year:
If bowing is no longer dramatic enough, maybe Obama should consider kneeling in front of the next king he meets?
For over 200 years, showing excessive deference to royalty has been a taboo for American leaders. In 1994, when President Clinton “inclined his head and shoulders forward” when meeting Akihito at the White House, the New York Times wrote about the incident and the traditions of American etiquette toward royalty:
“If I see another king, I think I shall bite him,” Teddy Roosevelt once growled. Offered that opportunity with the Japanese equivalent last week, Bill Clinton turned out to have had quite something else in mind.
It wasn’t a bow, exactly. But Mr. Clinton came close. He inclined his head and shoulders forward, he pressed his hands together. It lasted no longer than a snapshot, but the image on the South Lawn was indelible: an obsequent President, and the Emperor of Japan.
…
But the “thou need not bow” commandment from the State Department’s protocol office maintained a constancy of more than 200 years. Administration officials scurried to insist that the eager-to-please President had not really done the unthinkable.“It was not a bow-bow, if you know what I mean,” said Ambassador Molly Raiser, the chief of protocol.
White House officials described Mr. Clinton’s tilt as something of an improvisation.
What is it with Obama and royalty? We understand at this point that he goes around apologizing to the world for America’s “sins”. He feels sympathy for repressive governments and believes that gosh-darn if we just sit down with them and treat them nice, they will become our friends. This belief has been colliding with reality lately in places like Iran, North Korea and Venezuela where the dictators seem encouraged toward bolder actions by Obama’s posture of weakness. But kings and emperors just don’t seem to fit the Obama-stereotype of the poor, oppressed left-wing dictators or the Islamists who cannot get over a few hundred of the worst terrorist being held in Guantanamo.
At home, Obama has been often treated as royalty and, in many cases, more like a cult figure. He can’t be blamed for every Obama maniac who worships him as a Messiah although a humbler person might try to more actively discourage such gestures.
One wonders: could Obama’s behavior to kings and emperors abroad be connected to how he likes to be treated at home? I’ll end with this thought and a reminder of one weird incident of Obama worship: school children chanting “MMM, MMM, MMM, Barack Hussein Obama”.
