Much Ado About Hugging

Michelle Obama is a hugger. I know this personally because, the last time I saw Michelle, she gave me a hug.

So Thursday's international incidence with some of the British tabloids tsk-tsking her because she, gasp, may have hugged the Queen, doesn't come as much of a big whoop to me.

I think I'll explain my hug first.

Last year, I was on the Obama press bus in New Hampshire during the Democratic primary. We had stopped at Jack's Coffee Shop in New London, one of those quaint, picturesque New England towns so that Barack could do a photo op.

The joint was too small for all 40 or 50 of us in Obama's traveling media entourage. As usual, the campaign staff established the pecking order. TV and still cameras up front, radio and TV reporters next. I took up the rear with all the other print reporters.

I was freelancing for the Afro American News, one of the nation's oldest black newspapers. I was way, way in the back there. In fact, I was so far back that all I could really see was the backs of the other journalists' heads. I definitely couldn't see what would be going on when the candidate got off his lead bus in our three bus convoy to press the flesh with locals. I was so far back I was closer to the back door of the shop next door to Jack's, Vessels & Jewels, a quaint little gift shop brimming with arts and crafts, then I was to the inside of the coffee shop.

I ended up wandering into the gift shop, knowing I wouldn't be getting much of an opportunity to photograph Barack with my digital camera from where I stood. I hadn't been in Vessels & Jewels long enough to complete my speed-window shopping before the front-runner walked in. He'd made an unscheduled detour to the gift shop so that he could buy Malia and Sasha a little shiny something.

While the press corps were gently pushing and shoving each other for position as they waited for him next door, except for the shop clerks and a couple of Secret Service agents, I had the candidate all to myself. Obama asked me how I was doing and gave me a cordial handshake then went on to find a couple of jeweled bracelets for his daughters and a jeweled key ring for his wife. I clicked away with my small digital camera. By that time, a few of the TV and print photogs had spotted him and joined me on the shoot.

Obama paid the $36 tab with a debit card, and then headed over to Jack's. I was standing outside when I saw Michelle and her Secret Service agents coming my way.

"How're you doing," she said.

"Good," I said as she gave me the same kind of hug the Queen would get more than a year later.

I knew Michelle before I knew Barack. Back in 1993, when she was the Executive Director of Public Allies, and I was the host of Common Ground, a public affairs TV talk show, I'd agreed to address her group of young people who had been identified and were being developed as the next generation of leadership in Chicago. Back then, Michelle had greeted me warmly, but there was no hug. Instead, after I'd finished speaking, she gave me a black Public Allies sweat shirt that still hangs in my closet. She was then, and still is now, a down-to-earth, warm and friendly South Side Chicago woman who is the FLOTUS.

Now, to the Queen's hug.

You would not necessarily know from reading the British press that Michelle was just as big a deal as the Queen. The Daily Mail, for one, called the hug "an electrifying moment of palpable majesté: A breach of centuries-long protocol ..."

Other British reports followed suit, noting that protocol "has been set in stone for generations. 'Whatever you do,' courtiers are apt to warn, 'don't touch the queen.'"

The notion of the POTUS or the FLOTUS not touching the Queen is as quaint as the scenic little towns in New England. It's so... so last millennium. You know, back in the day when Great Britain had an empire and we were a colony trying to do our own thing or when our soldiers had to keep the German troopers from goose-stepping into 10 Downing Street and the Buckingham Palace.

Today, the Kingdom is not all that United and Britain is not all that Great. It's a used-to-be empire that -- save for the expense of it all -- is a nice place to visit to see the historic sites. But, in my proud-American-frame-of-mind, maybe there should be some etiquette rule that warns, "do not touch the FLOTUS."

But that's not Michelle's style or the American way. Even on the TV show, Entourage, Ari Gold, the super-jerk of an agent, likes to hug it out.

Cyber Columnist Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. You can read his blog at http://www.monroeanderson.typepad.com/

Comments

[kalerik]

Amazing to me that the Brits are so hung up on Michelle touching their queen, yet they will all load up in an EasyJet flight, fly to Southern Europe, and proceed to get drunk, fight, fornicate and vomit in the streets, leaving a disaster in their wake. Perhaps they should focus more on modern standards of good behavior instead of arcane, meaningless protocol from the last century.

[llisa]

I think there is WAY too much preoccupation with minutiae such as this and too little attention paid to the substance of the European trip.

[Monroe Anderson - Huffpost Blogger]

Ilisa: Now that's a thought!

[p-junkie]

I wondered if the Queen may have been more surprised at herself than Michelle Obama. She was obviously taken with our First Lady but I don't recall seeing photos of such public affection with her own family.

[PatA]

Why was this insane rule created in the first place?

[susanthe]

The hysteria over the hug has been created totally by the US media. According to my Brit friends, not only did it not make headlines, it was barely mentioned in the media.

This is what corporate owned media gets us - fake news = manufactured hysteria.

[Cakey4814]

Agree..it's only the MSM who bought us Dubya and Co...

[madatnewsmedia]

So, you're going to tell me that none of the newspapers covered the story! And you're saying that the papers we were shown were bogus? Please! I don't know anything about your Brit friends, but several British newspaper peoplel showed us the headlines.

[adk]

I am an American living in the UK. I agree with almost all of what you said, and know many Brits who would too. However, there is just one point on which you are dead wrong.

"...when our soldiers had to keep the German troopers from goose-stepping into 10 Downing Street and the Buckingham Palace."

Every man, woman, and child alive in Britain at the time were part of the fight against the Germans. The Battle of Britain happened before we entered the war. The British people fought heroically and effectively. To our shame, we did not step in until after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. We were a help in the fight, but we need to be careful not to drink the Hollywood Kool-Aid on this one. I know this one from the history I have read as well as from the stories of my adopted father, a captain in the Merchant Marines before and during the US entry to the war, told us. For an interesting bit of history, check out how the parents of England put their children on trains to send them to strangers in the countryside so that the war effort could proceed at full strength.

[Monroe Anderson - Huffpost Blogger]

adk:
No Hollywood Kool-Aid here. I know there was strong British resistance. I know that Churchill bombed the French warships to make sure that the Germans didn't get their hands on them. But, if the U.S. had sat the war out, the Germans would have been goose-stepping into 10 Downing Street and evidently, maybe even 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

We're a big nation. England is not. We made a big difference in the outcome of that war.

[skyshoes]

I found the French much more like Americans outgoing and friendly. I found the Brits quiet and reserved. Two sips of wine and the French will launch on an endless diatribe of Americas and les American's foibles. Toss a few back in a pub and the Brits are loud, outgoing and down right boisterous, and oh.. *burp* so ready to buy a yank a drink. Maybe Liz had a pint before the audience... Just thinkin'.

Michele is a sweetey... Oops is that proper to say?

[dowl]

FLOTUS Michelle did what Michelle and other genuine humans do. If there are no complaints from the Queen and/or Michelle, we should simply enjoy the taped moment when two important women stepped into a brief mutual display of human warmth.

Times change for the better, and thank God people do too.

[Glooscap]

Whatever happened to personal space?

[Monroe Anderson - Huffpost Blogger]

Glooscap: Personal space was last spotted someplace in Montana.