When
President Barack Obama greeted the Emperor of Japan recently, he bowed. There was no return bow from the Emperor.
Obama bowed slightly when he met the Queen of England. Depending on your point of view, he either did or didn't bow
to the Saudi king; critics called it a "
shocking display of fealty" to a foreign leader.
Bloggers and critics are having a field day with all of this bowing. Is it unpresidential to bow?
Zennie Abraham, a San Francisco Chronicle blogger, explains:
"There are three kinds of bows: the first is just about five degrees and is a greeting for friends; the second is about 10 degrees and is for a boss or senior in business; but the third one is at a full 15 degrees and is reserved for heads of state or The Emperor."
Judith Martin, Miss Manners, takes a dim view of Americans bowing to royalty. Earlier this year she wrote:
"But symbolic subservience to a foreign ruler is worse. When Miss Manners sees American citizens delighting in bowing or curtseying to royalty, she tries to remind herself that they are just being silly, not treasonous. When an American official does it, we can only hope it was because he was noticing that his own shoelace was undone -- and not that he recognizes the divine right of kings in general, or the authority over us of that king in particular. "
A brush with royaltyIn 1987 Princess Anne came to Nashville to ride her horse in a big steeplechase held there annually. Our governor at the time, Ned Ray McWherter, was a plainspoken, extremely popular governor who didn't take well to haughtiness or gentility. He was a sharecropper's son and worked his way through life at a shoe factory and a beer distributor.
The governor's aides repeatedly warned him to mind his manners around the Princess. They told him not to touch the Princess or speak to her unless spoken to. After the two-mile race, she brushed by him, he tipped his hat and said, "Ma'am." She didn't respond. His aides were mortified. The governor looked at me and said, "I was elected to
my office."
