My first reaction was: What happened?
When I read what happened, my reaction: No big deal (but I bet a lot of people will make a big deal of it).
It’s a still. I’d have to see video to make a judgement.
So if you tried to go the wrong way, and someone grabbed your sleeve to tell you that, you won’t mind at all? I’d be annoyed even if my girlfriend did that.
Like Bush was helping him to his spot.
What bothers the heck out of me is not the fact that Bush has been uncouth in any way, but the fact that the leader of CHINA, one of the worst human rights abusive countries, a country that is at economic war with America, is being lead to a photo op and not to GITMO!
HU is a bad bad man. BAD PRESIDENT BAD! NO COOKIE FOR YOU!
And now, because a day has passed, none of the links to this pic in the thread show it anymore. Sigh.
I saw the picture and my first thought was “if someone did that to Bush the Secret Service would be on them like white on rice.” I’m sure it was just a second long thing and the still picture makes it look worse than it was, but it just shows a large lack of tact. Which Bush isn’t exactly know for anyway. No big deal.
I really, really dislike Bush.
Yes, please inform us of your vast knowledge of the Great Firewall of China.
It’s visible…as is all of CNN.com and BBC.com. In fact, it’s hard to find web sites that are filtered out here. I think I saw the photo on Xinhua even.
I just can’t take stills to seriously anymore, as photographers seem to have an uncanny knack for catching people at their most imbecillic…even if that imbecile moment lasted a tenth of a second. How many stills of someone speaking have I seen that make brilliant intellectuals look like drooling vegetables with a bad case of Bell’s palsy. If it’s a boxer connecting with a guy’s face, that’s one thing. But it seems almost guaranteed that if anyone steps anywhere near a lectern, a photographer will manage to capture their most unflattering likeness and reproduce it for publication.
I’ll add that Bush is actually correcting Hu because he’s walking down the wrong stairs. He was probably reaching for his arm and ended up getting the cloth only.
What is that? Velvet?
Honestly, I find it hard to muster up a lot of empathy for the great indignities suffered by the suit jacket of Hu freakin’ Jintao. :rolleyes:
I didn’t see it until Larry Mudd posted a direct link, but the image I had in my head after reading the responses was a lot less obnoxious than the real photo. I hope that was just an unfortunately timed shot, because he’s really doing what it looks like he’s doing, that’s just plain tactless and rude.
Still, one of the first things that popped into my head was
Ancient Chinese secret, huh?which is probably why I never pursued a career in diplomacy.
“Have you been working out?”
“That’s all me, baby.”
Yeah, I’m never going to be a diplomat, either.
Hmpf. By the time I pulled up the OP’s original link the photo was gone. There was this headline though:
“Reilly seizes on Patrick’s tie…”
[okay, there was more, once I scrolled down: “…to lender”]
But what a great first impression, considering the subject.
The officer commanding the honour guard lived to regret the shouted order “Slope…arms!”, after the president made a grab and whooped, “Yee-haw! I got me mine right here!”
-cough- As a professional, I take umbrage at that. Photographers- unless they are employing post-shoot manipulative software such as PhotoShop- capture a moment in time that appears before them. They do not manipulate it, they do not taint it, they do not post the President to fit their agenda. They take a photograph. Period.
Pity… that somehow a Republican President’s faux pas becomes the fault of the Evil Media. Sounds a lot like he was trying to keep the gentleman up on the dias with him, and didn’t quite catch him by touching his arm. ( Just going by what people who saw it live on t.v. say up there ).
It does not mean the photograph was taken at a wrong moment. It simply means that it was a moment in time. YMMV.
Cartooniverse
What would be the big yank if Hu went down the “wrong” stairs? Did Bush say, “I’m the decider! We’re taking these stairs!”?