Why is this man bowing? by Scott/Powerline
We criticized Barack Obama when he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia. Americans do not bow to royalty. When the royal is the ruling tyrant of a despotic regime, the wrong is compounded. Obama's bowing to the King was deeply offensive.
When the story emerged from the shadows of the Internet, Ben Smith ran an item on Politico with the White House denying the bow. "It wasn't a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he's taller than King Abdullah," said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Bill O'Reilly ran a bemused segment on it once the White House denied what Obama had done.
A reporter asked Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs about the bow. Under his own name and on the record, Gibbs denied what any fool could see. Indeed, one astute observer commented on CNN that "Ray Charles could see that he bowed."
Obama did it again when he met up with the Emperor of Japan. Andrew Malcolm asked (and reported): "How low will he go? Obama gives Japan's Emperor Akihito a wow bow."
Yesterday Obama did it yet again, this time bowing to the Communist Chinese President Hu Jintao during the official arrivals for the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington.
Insofar as I am aware, Obama has not been asked directly to explain his behavior and he has not done so. ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper sought comment on Obama's bow to the Japanese Emperor, not from Obama or one of his spokesmen, but rather from "[a]n old friend -- an academic with expertise about the Japanese Empire[.]" State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters that the bow was "a sign of respect to the emperor."
Whence the source of Obama's "respect" for the King of Saudi Arabia and the president of China as opposed to other heads of state? We are left to speculate on the meaning of Obama's bowing and scraping for ourselves.
Obama 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, royal bloodlines and one-party rule.
Obama 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. When it comes to the United States, he has a serious case of what Peter Wehner dubs denigration reflex.
Despite his obsequiousness to tyrants, Obama is not a humble man. On the contrary, Obama is a man of extraordinary arrogance. He seeks fundamentally to transform the United States. With him, a new age begins.
For all links: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/04/026057.php
The bows: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/04/023230.php
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024948.php
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//100412/480/urn_publicid_ap_org52d493edeb0243ef84cbfc87f58f4b6a/
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