Here’s the infamous bow that Barack Obama did for King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Many people are criticizing it because it was very noticeable. Some have tried to explain it away saying that Obama was picking something off the floor, which he clearly wasn’t.

For my own self, I find the hullabaloo about this and Michelle Obama touching the Queen a little strange. After all, we are a democracy where every citizen is supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law. It is fine if subjects of Saudi Arabia or the United Kingdom should curtsy and bow, but when the elected leaders of a democracy do it, it seems to suggest that the democratic leader is less than the monarch. Perhaps the monarch should be required to extend the hand and great his or her fellow statesman one on one as an equal. Unfortunately, that seems too revolutionary for those old world types.