Power Line - Why is this man bowing?
Obama has now done it again. Andrew Malcolm asks (and reports): “How low will he go? Obama gives Japan’s Emperor Akihito a wow bow.”
Obama’s breach of protocol is of a piece with the substance of his foreign policy. He means to teach Americans to bow before monarchs and tyrants. He embodies the ideological multiculturalism that sets the United States on the same plane as other regimes based on tribal privilege and royal bloodlines. He gives expressive form to the idea that the United States now willingly prostrates itself before the rest of the world. He declares that the United States is a country like any other, only worse, because we have so much for which to apologize.
Nothing our servile Apologist-in-Chief does surprises me any more, certainly nothing that diminishes the stature and freedoms of the country the rest of us love.
Thank god he’s not my President. I hope he fails in all his works - so that the America I love can survive.
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God, I wish this idiot would take some of his golf time to cover international relations 101. If you are not a native, it is not correct form to attempt to use their protocols. He should stand upright, look the other party in the eye and make a firm but not overly so handshake. That is it. From what I see in the photos from Saudi and now here, the man is a subserviend ass and is acting like one.
Let me be blunt.
FUCK the “protocols.”
Americans, leaders or not, bow to nobody, no matter what the fucking protocol calls for. We are not serfs. We are not slaves. We do not bow for protocols, for politeness, for dipomacy, for form, for anything. Period.
Is that clear enough?
Absolutely clear and absolutely right. Are there no American adults in his administration? Anyone? Bueller?
Americans don’t bow NOW because it happens to be out of fashion. It’s not part of our standard collection of gestures.
If you happen to look at a book of etiquette written a hundred years ago in America by Americans, there are precise instructions on how to bow, when, and to whom. The handshake as the standard greeting is relatively new. If they were like any other real Americans in their time period, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson bowed to other Americans.
Whether you think it’s appropriate to try to adopt the manners of a culture you weren’t born to or not is your own affair. I subscribe to “when in Rome, do as the Romans”. So if you go to Japan, bow to the Japanese. If they come here, they can shake hands.
Azure shows the usual pathetic misunderstanding of the “When in Rome” saying.
The saying originates back in the 4th century CE, regarding local church customs within Italy. Italy is Catholic, but certain dioceses have different customs concerning fasting on saints days. The bishopric of Rome, however, is the dominant bishopric - the seat of the Bishop of Rome. The Pope. So when you are in Rome, you follow the lead of the traditions of that bishopric.
Needless to say, this concerns substrata from within a distinct culture, and has absolutely nothing to do with the propriety of the President of the United States bowing before the Japanese Emperor.
Bill is entirely correct, Azure. Presidents do not bow. Period. To do so sends a signal and sets a precedent. It signals that the people he supposedly represents are willing to be subservient to the whims of the rest of the world.
Now, an assclown such as yourself may feel that we citizens of these United States should be the frightened bitches of the UN, but I must disagree.
The United States and its people are still the last, best hope of this planet. They may have fallen for the con job of the cult of Ω, but a lot of us haven’t.
We don’t appropriate the manners of others in their countries, because we represent ours. Ωbama has decided to reverse over 200 years of diplomatic tradition in order to be liked. Or so he supposes. In reality, he is trotting about the globe, revealing himself for the ignorant naif he is, and leaving a wake of destruction behind him that makes Jimmy Carter look like a fucking diplomatic genius.
Chef:
How do you insert Greek letters into the text?
I really like using the omega as shorthand for Obama; it literally means “big O” :-)
Two hundred years ago, perhaps, but not a 100. Most histories of etiquette or manners in the US make note of the big division between ante and post bellum America, the war in question, of course, being the American Revolution.
Prior to that, Americans, as British subjects, (at least Americans of certain social stratas) subscribed to a code of etiquette that included actions designed to reinforce the relationship between inferiors and superiors - the same system that allowed for an aristocracy of ruling nobles, and the subjects they ruled. Intricate rules for bowing were part of that code.
After the war, some of that did indeed persist, as much out of habit as anything else. So some men bowed to some women in some situations, for instance. But after the Revolution, all Americans (barring slaves) became equals, and while bowing as a matter of politeness persisted, especially among older folks of the higher social strata, it died out even there. We are an egalitarian nation, and we don’t bow, not even to each other. Not any more.
For you to equate this with Americans bowing to other nationals, and especially those who officially represent our nation and our citizens bowing before foreign aristocrats betrays only your own ignorance and urge to justify servility in a most servile and embarrassing President who no more understands America or the meaning of her history than you do.
deanz1, there are two ways to get the non-standard symbols into comment text.
If you’re on Windows and have Word, the easiest is to open up the Symbols dialog box, copy the one you want, and paste it into the comment. This almost always works. There may be other widgets in Windows that will bring up a similar chart of special characters. I don’t know and can’t check since I’m on a Linux box.
The second method is to type the HTML “entity” into the comment text. These entities always start with ‘&’ and always end with ‘;’. Within that pattern, you can type special symbols, characters from non-English languages, and so on. You can get a list of available HTML entities at the World Wide Web Consortium’s site. (That gives the list, but it’s hard to read. Check a search engine for “html entity symbols” and the like. I’d give some links but my ISP is having problems today.)
To enter Ω as an HTML entity, you’d type
Ω
in the comment, just like any other word.
A final note, though: check both the preview when entering the comment and the final, rendered comment to make sure your symbol came out properly, or at all. Stock WordPress and Clayton’s customizations both filter out potentially dangerous entries and sometimes filter too much.
Thanks, SteveF, I’ll be using the second method since I’m also posting from Linux (Ubuntu).
Testing: Ω ω
Yeehaw!
As far as I know, there is no filter upon entities. All that I can think of that might possibly interfere with your choice of whatever ωзιяΔ characters you please is Wordpress’s rather uncritical code that attempts to supply “smart quotes” and the like.
Another reason I like Ω as a symbol for the President formerly known as Barack Obama is that it is often used in Aristotelian philosophy to designate a final cause, that is, the goal toward which all are striving. This is almost sufficiently hagiographic to be worthy of Ω’s self assessment.
deanz1 - I often use ⌘C ⌘V • and HTML character set . Very handy.
Nixon’s bow to Hirohito, the proper bow of equals. Via ABC’s Political Punch.
Big government has a nice video showing various people greeting the Emperor. Notice none of them does the servants bow.
Nixon is a fuck, too. He shouldn’t bow at all.