Please Stop Bowing

From Gregg Easterbrook last week:

Mr. President -- Americans Don't Bow to Royalty!
The right-wing wing-nut faction is blasting Barack Obama for bowing to His Imperial Majesty the Emperor. That's how you are supposed to address the guy; you are not supposed to speak his name, Akihito. The wing-nuts are correct in this case: Americans, do not bow before royalty! That has pretty much been our policy for the past 233 years. Only the Japanese can say why Japan should still have a royal figurehead, much less with the goofy title "emperor." The United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden and other nations can say why figurehead royalty still exists. But Americans don't bow to aristocrats. Our national spirit rejects the legitimacy of inherited positions.

Local custom, you say? [The author] does not much like Dick Cheney, but when he met Akihito in 2007, they shook hands. When Norman Schwarzkopf received an honorary knighthood in 1991, he said he would do so only if he were not required to kneel, because Americans do not prostrate themselves before royalty, even the royalty of good friends. Elizabeth II gave Schwarzkopf a box containing emblems of his knighthood, then they shook hands. If Akihito had bowed back to Obama, maybe that would have been OK as local custom. (You take turns bowing in Japanese culture.) If Obama had bowed to Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, the democratically elected leader of Japan, and Hatoyama had bowed back, that would have been fine -- Hatoyama represents the free choice of his people. For the democratically elected leader of the United States to humble himself before a royal who acquired his wealth and status entirely by accident of birth, while the "emperor" looks on smiling, is outlandish.