Eight Feet Deep

There he goes again! One won­ders if the U.S. right-wing will fusti­gate Pres­i­dent Obama for what appears to be a bow to a child of U.S. Embassy work­ers in Tokyo. (Offi­cial White House Photo by Pete Souza)

 My col­lege friend and some­times IT guru, Paul, offers via e-mail a bit of Japan­ese per­spec­tive in wake of “The Bow Heard Round the World.” I face­tiously speak of the uproar over Pres­i­dent Obama bow­ing to the Japan­ese Emperor dur­ing the former’s offi­cial visit ear­lier this week. Paul lives in Tokyo where he has taught Eng­lish for a num­ber of years. He is an astute observer of his sur­round­ings per­haps either because of or despite — per­haps a bit of both — the jour­nal­ism classes he and I had together at Stephen F. Austin State Uni­ver­sity. I still think the name of the insti­tu­tion should be short­ened to “Steve.”

 Paul observes that the left­ists in Japan, who object to the Impe­r­ial sys­tem, are the ones both­ered by Obama’s bow to the Emperor as com­pared to the Amer­i­can right-wing who are ticked off because they con­tend the pres­i­dent is being servile.

 My opin­ion, of course, is that any­thing Obama does pisses off the right wing. I used the old adage in response to Paul about the mat­ter:  “Some peo­ple would com­plain if they had a loaf of bread under each arm.”**

 Paul also points out that the Japan­ese left sees the Obama bow as “giv­ing sup­port to an out­dated and super­sti­tious system” although the Japan­ese on the street sup­port Obama and “can’t under­stand what the big deal is.”

 The Japan­ese view the bow as a hand­shake and con­trary to what Amer­i­cans might think is not wit­nessed that much in Japan nowa­days, accord­ing to Paul.

 “The Japan­ese don’t care if (Americans) do (the bow) because we always f**k it up,” Paul said. “It’s a Japan­ese thing. They are pleased to take the cul­tural first dance to prac­tice the handshake.”

 Given that a seem­ingly small por­tion of Japan­ese left­ists have their nose out of joint, the clamor over a bow­ing Obama is just a whole trunk load o’ noth­ing that the Amer­i­can right-wing class can use to get a few days of media. Okay, you got it. Now move on to the next ridicu­lous mat­ter you can find to crit­i­cize Obama and the Democrats.

 It all is just mean­ing­less dri­vel from peo­ple whose point of view becomes increas­ingly less rel­e­vant in a soci­ety that has tired of all the bulls**t.

**I’m not cer­tain where this say­ing orig­i­nated although I have heard it most of my life. I’ve also heard the vari­a­tion “pig under one arm and a loaf of bread under the other.” Both apho­risms, or plat­i­tudes if you pre­fer,” would nicely fit the Great Depres­sion era. Or per­haps, for some, the say­ings might work these days.