Obama bowing before Japanese Emperor is most un-American: Critics - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

US President Barack Obama has incited conservatives back home by bowing before Japanese Emperor Akihito during a visit to Japan last week. According to a Washington Times report, Obama has established a new precedent for how American presidents should pay obeisance to kings, emperors, monarchs, sovereigns and assorted other authentic man-made masters of the universe. According to Wesley Prudent, editor emeritus of The Washington, Obama "stopped just this side of the full grovel to the emperor of Japan, risking a painful genuflection if his forehead had hit the floor with a nasty bump, which it almost did. No president before him so abused custom, traditions, protocol (and the country he represents)." Several Internet sites have published a rogue's gallery showing how other national leaders have greeted Emperor Akihito with a friendly handshake and an ever-so-slight but respectful nod, and sometimes not even that. Some of the president's critics are giving him a hard time, and it's true that this president seems never to have studied much American history. Not bowing to foreign potentates was what 1776 was all about. His predecessors learned with no difficulty that the essence of America is that all men stand equal and are entitled to look even a king, maybe particularly a king, straight in the eye.