Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Much ado about nothing
In the South, we call it being polite
IT MUST be something in the water. Something besides the usual two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Because it can cause folks to lose their faculties when the opposing political party is in power. And it doesn’t matter if the political fight is in Eureka Springs, Ark., or Washington, D.C.
Remember how Dick Cheney was listening to folks’ telephone conversations in the middle of the night as Aunt Agnes gave her key lime pie recipe to Aunt Jenny? To hear the Michael Moores of the world tell it, that was Amerika circa 2001-2009. An ideologue’s version of American history can be different from that of other folks.
Ronald “Ray-gun” was an amiable dunce. George W. Bush couldn’t say anything without getting it all over his shirt. And his father, Bush I, was a wimp. Barely 20 years old at the time, George H.W. Bush was a naval aviator when he was downed by Japanese flak in the Second World War. Oh, yes, he later became the director of the CIA before becoming a wartime commander-in-chief during Gulf War I. Some wimp.
Both sides of the political aisle are susceptible to this kind of distemper. If you think otherwise, listen to all the ado about a handshake this week.
It seems President Obama, while attending a memorial service for Nelson Mandela in South Africa on Tuesday, appeared to be going through a receiving line when he shook hands with . . . .
Raul Castro! Yes, Cuba’s latest caudillo. On CNN, the usually urbane Christiane Amanpour implied that the handshake was proof that Nelson Mandela brought people together. Others saw it differently. Media folk from right to righter, from Fox News to Glenn Beck, called the handshake unsettling, questioning why the president of the United States would shake hands with Fidel’s little brother and current tyrant of Cuba.
Here’s one theory: The president had no idea who Raul Castro was before extending his hand. That is, Fidel’s consigliere and enforcer—in effect, Top Thug No. 2. The one who did the dirtier work while Big Brother delivered three-hour harangues about the imperialist danger. Ergo, Raul Castro is nobody the president of the United States should be shaking hands with. Too much blood on those hands.
But these days, the regime’s lord high executioner who compiles lists of People Who Would Not Be Missed looks more like a frail little old man. (More proof that the good die young.) So when the clearly younger president of the United States bounded by quickly, shaking the little despot’s hand en route, he might have mistaken Castro the Younger for the uncle of some unrecognized dignitary who happened to be on stage.
For their part, White House PR types claimed the handshake was not planned. Maybe it was just an instinctive impulse at a funeral.
It’s not as if Barack Obama picked the man out of a crowd for special facetime and a hug. By the time the president had whisked by, the handshake was done. The thought might even have passed through his mind a moment later: “Oh, Lord, was that a Castro? I hope the cameras aren’t running yet.”
They were, Mr. President.
AH, WELL. The unplanned does occur. Trust us. We’ve had to run enough corrections on this page to know that much. But the next presidential news conference would be a good time to remind the rest of the world about the Cuban regime’s crimes against humanity. How agents with the regime only this week halted a Human Rights Day demonstration before it started, hauling away 20 or so protesters. How an American citizen—Alan Gross, 64—has been held in a Cuban prison for four years for the “crime” of giving telecommunications equipment to a handful of Jewish Cubans a while back. And so dictatorially on.
Those who want to criticize the president of the United States these days have no shortage of reasons for doing so. (Read this column from time to time for details.) But give the man some slack on this one. Maybe he was just being polite. And that’s still allowed, isn’t it?