meaningless controversy surrounding foreign etiquette
This photograph was the lead on Drudge Report yesterday and this morning. It isn’t now: right now Drudge is hawking Hugo Chavez’s plans on seeding clouds to control the weather. I don’t know if it’s taking Drudge longer to make shifts, or if he really felt that focusing on this story was something that needed to be done.:
No fooling. Obama visited the Emperor and Empress of Japan (ceremonial though their positions may be) and, as per custom, bowed down to them. Looking into Blogoland, I see that question: “How Low Will He Go?”. The answer is pretty low: the Japanese Emperor is pretty short, after all. If he were taller, he wouldn’t have had to go as low.
During Barack Obama’s first presidential visit to Japan, he managed to work in a private lunch with Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko. The lunch, which lasted about an hour, was reported to have just been the three of them plus one interpreter. While the topics of their lunchtime conversation remain a mystery, the Japanese media delightedly reported on the event, stating how Obama made a polite short English greeting before entering the palace.
And thus creates the hub ub. The president is criss-crossing the world, bowing down to foreign leader and royalty after foreign leader and royalty.  I don’t quite get this. To compare to the similar foreign custom deference in the past Administration (and these minor controversies will pop up in every Administration, creating pointless hub ubs).:
Naturally this continues, with a bit less dramatic a flourish, with Obama (the Bush one is more striking in its symbolism) — we cannot extricate ourselves from power politics with Saudi Arabia, much as I’m guessing would have the preference of 99 point 99 percent of Americans.
But last I checked, our relationship with the Japanese Government is pretty straight-forward and simple. Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is rather complicated, and has the feel to it of a Faustian Bargain. I understood the hub ub about Bush kissing the Saudi king. I don’t understand the hub ub about Obama bowing down to the Japanese Emperor. But some people just have a wholly bizarre vision of the world – the rule for thee but not for me.
Obama “bowing down” to everyone? Just come back to me when I see him do this.:
… or was Obama giving Gordon Brown, not much of a movie fan, a large collection of dvds as a gift the equivalent? Maybe it’s best I ignore these hub ubs… Unless we want to dig back into earlier breaches of protocol — though, I don’t really begrudge Bush I of that incident, those things happen.