Journalism Happens

. . .and I am shocked. Seriously, SHOCKED!

Disclosure: I am not black. I don't live or work in an atmosphere where I can overhear/participate in frequent conversations with blacks about current events. In fact, I have not even talked to one black person about Obama's trip to the Middle East.

But that doesn't mean I'm wrong:

Today CNN ran a story that not only called Pres. Obama's gesture to the Saudi King a bow, but also took Press Secretary Gibbs to task for trying to play cute with a direct question. (h/t: HotAir)

Now I never expected "the bow" to get ANY coverage in the MSM. Not. One. Lick.

On this score, I am happy to be wrong.

Here's why I didn't think it would ever happen: how do you think this is going to play among certain numbers of the black population?

Obama got elected, AT LEAST IN PART, because he was a symbol of black pride. There are hundreds of blacks--maybe even thousands or millions--who voted in November because they couldn't wait to see a black person in the most important role in the world. They wanted to see him change politics.

Be careful what you wish for!

Forget about Obama's head-of-state place in the world (please! :)) for just a second. To this audience--the color-before-creed audience--it doesn't matter that it was the President who performed this act.

The everlasting optic of the exchange to this (hopefully small) part of the population that helped put Obama in the oval office will be nothing other than a black man--ANY black man--bowing before someone else.

And the whole business would have been kept off the radar screens were it not for the administration's belief that they can get away with saying anything to anyone at anytime. Honestly, how foolish does this WHOLE GROUP OF POLITICAL HACKS look because they tried to play jedi mind tricks at the press conference on Wednesday? There might be a lesson in there somewhere. . .

So I ask you: what kind of message does "the bow" send to the black population?

If anybody EVER has "made it", it's Obama. He is now in a position only held by 42 other people in the history of man, a position that ever since it was created has been pretty much the top job in the whole world. . .

. . .and yet there he was, bowing to a person who runs an oppressive, deeply unenlightened country.

I just can't imagine that this is going to play very well in every corner of black America.

And that's why I never thought a story about the bow would see the light of day. There is no REAL way to spin this in a good manner for Obama.

But that doesn't mean they won't try. In the story by Jeanne Moos (very evenhanded, I must say), she gives camera time to one black woman who thinks Obama's act was a result of his extraordinary knowledge of "their culture". And I don't doubt that such logic is the mantra being muttered all over the liberal world right now.

Call me crazy, but I'd prefer a President who was knowledgeable enough of OUR culture to know that the President does not bow to anybody.

ANYBODY!

I guess that just makes me one of those bible-quoting, gun-toting folk that so bedevil this country, eh?

Damn straight! And proud of it, too!

And I have a funny feeling there's more and more of "me" out there every day. . .