What I find most interesting about all the barking and biting about President Obama bowing to the Saudi monarch is that the White House denies what everyone can see on the video: “a full-blooded and deeply reverential half-body bow,” as described in the London Telegraph.
According to the White House,
“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.
If Obama grasped the king’s hand “with two hands,” he has two right hands … because his left hand is clearly visible held low across the front of his body.
But almost as unbelievable as the White House’s denial of what everyone can see is Politico’s Ben Smith assertion of something that everyone, or just about everyone, must know to be false:
The reason Obama’s alleged, denied bow to King Abdullah — it was, however one describes it, a warm gesture — has been the source of controversy is the general American enmity to Saudi Arabia.
That is simply not true. Whatever one’s feelings, or the general feeling, about Saudi Arabia, the widespread revulsion to the president’s bowing is the belief that the President of the United States should never engage in even symbolic subservience to any foreign leader.
UPDATE
Even CNN is upset (though mildly) at the Obama bow and attempted White House denial of same.
