The past year has seen Human Events add a new sub-newsletter, Guns & Patriots, another unasked for but most beautemous gem of conservative trash journalism. Care to guess what it’s about? Patriotic bodybuilders? Nice try. It’s actually chock full of phallic gun worship and military fetishism with columns by the likes of Oliver North. Fun stuff. It has however, presented me with a favorite new H.E. columnist, the wonderfully sophomoric Susan Dale.
Dale, as far as I can tell, is an historical re-enactor at Mt. Vernon, and therefore possessed of great political knowledge and foreign policy expertise. The kind of experience one can only get by pretending to be the wife/servant/cook of a dead president. Exactly the sort of knowledge and experience necessary to determine that to Barack Obama,
“…America is an evil country that needs to be torn down and rebuilt into an entirely government-controlled entity.”
Apparently, Obama’s intense desire to “destroy America” is evidenced by his bowing before foreign leaders, a sure attempt to embarrass and demean American patriots (though how that could be any worse than having the prime minister of Germany cry “Bad Touch!” at your president, I don’t know).
This is all from Susan’s debut column, American Presidents Do Not Bow, which begins with some delightfully silly patriarchal hero worship.
“George Washington was 6’4” tall…and a size 13 boot…General Washington possessed immense physical strength and fortitude, as well, with a stature and presence so impressive that it was said about him that he “put European princes to shame.”
Old George also had a blue Ox and a giant ax…oh wait, wrong American legend. In any case,
“Try as I might, I cannot imagine this man bowing — not to an emperor, king or Middle East potentate. Not, in fact, to anyone.”
So the logic, for anyone have trouble following, is as follows. George Washington was a big man, with big feet and a noble posture. He’s our nation’s Daddy and there’s no way our Daddy would bow to anybody. Obama bows to foreign leaders, therefore he wants to destroy America. Or in Dale’s words,
“…everything Obama does is either an insult to America and to Americans, or calculated to destroy the nation as created by George Washington and the other founders.”
It’s impressive in a way, that Dale is able to leap from the little bit of knowledge she has from working at Mt. Vernon, bounce it off a little primate outrage at seeing the alpha male behave in a conciliatory fashion and arrive at the apocalypse. At least it would be, if Dale knew what she was talking about.
It turns out that George Washington had an issue with physical contact with other people. I’m sure Dale and others would see this as part of his quiet, stoic, John Wayne like mystical appeal, but it was quite possibly a symptom of mild autism. In any case, it turns out that George did in fact bow, and quite often, according to www.constitutionfacts.com. In fact, he preferred to bow.
“President George Washington would bow to guests at presidential receptions to avoid physical contact and the tradition lasted through the presidency of John Adams. Washington would rest one hand on a sword and the other holding a hat to avoid the remote possibility of anyone forcing a handshake! Thomas Jefferson ended the tradition of “bowing” by shaking hands when greeting people.”
The truly sad thing about Dale’s opinion on bowing, is that it runs counter to the attitudes that Washington held in life. This was a man that refused to be crowned king or to be called by any exalted title beyond “Mr. President.” Washington fought against the mammalian instincts of his contemporaries that sought to reify him, to make him the very kind of patriarchal super-hero whose yolk the Americans had just fought a war to slip off. These United States would be very different today if Washington had allowed the precedent of new world aristocracy to take hold with that first administration. It’s too bad that Dale and others are so hell bent on deifying a man who would surely have rebuked them, even as he eschewed a handshake for a taking a bow.