Team Obama muffs Japan visit, U.S. Leftmedia silent

From Stop The ACLU, on our nation's Apologizer-in-Chief's recent visit to the Land of the Rising Sun:

The Japanese media has reported that Obama’s recent state visit to their island nation was a big failure, but the U.S. media is mum on the mess that Team Obama made in Japan. He made multiple diplomatic gaffs and this is quite aside from the absurdly low bow that the incompetent president perpetrated upon greeting the Japanese Emperor Akihito.

Before we get to his other multiple fluffs and diplomatic errors, let’s explain what Obama was telling the Japanese people with his absurdly low bow. The sort of bow that Obama made is almost that of a “dogeza” bow. This is a sort of bow that is so low as to be considered a prostrated position. It is seen as an apology, a supplication, not a sign of respect. So, as we see, Obama once again showed that he wants to be known as the less-than president, that he is representing a prostrated people, and that he feels that to everyone he meets overseas he must apologize for this horrible U.S.A.

The inappropriate bow, however, wasn’t the only mistake that Obama committed in Japan. According to the mainstream Japanese weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun the visit was termed “miserable,” and “the worst US-Japan summit meeting in history” by Japanese insiders. Worse, the Japanese government was so upset at the visit that it retaliated at various points issuing slights right back to President Obama during his stay on Japanese soil. [emphasis added] ...

Read the rest here. Hey, we can't have the U.S. propaganda units, a/k/a the mainstream media, reporting on screwups by the HopeyChanger-in-Chief, now can we? Even when we end up damaging relationships with important allies and come off looking both insultingly crass and childishly incompetent at basic diplomatic protocols.

On the issue of Obama's ridiculous bow, having spent a bunch of time years ago in Japan on business, I can well appreciate the utterly subservient image presented to the Japanese of an American president doing such a bow to their emperor. Bowing in Japan is an art form, and such formalities are taken very seriously by the Japanese. Heck, there's even a whole ceremony for the proper presentation of business cards.

Sean Linnane (a pseudonym), a retired career Special Forces soldier with a bunch of service time spent in the Orient, concurs:

There is a right way and a wrong way to do it. What Obama did has the Japanese (and the rest of East Asia) rolling in fits of laughter, because it is the bow an employee gives to his boss, or a child gives to parents. He went WAY too low; it is only one step above a kow-tow.

Does the president travel with no one from the State Department's protocol office who can advise him on these matters? Obama made himself (and by extension, the American people) look like a weak, uncouth fool. For a narcissist like him, that can't have been his desired effect. Perhaps Obama is too arrogant -- he is, after all a self-described "citizen of the world" -- to take advice on another country's social customs from some State Department underling. After all, what could such an underling teach His Royal Fabulousness Fatuousness of Marxist Hope and Change?

Update: I think this Michael Ramirez cartoon sums it up nicely: