If you watched Barack and Michelle Obama at their rally in Minnesota on Tuesday night, you may have noticed a cute moment in which the two had a brief fist-pound (or “dap,” as the kids call it).
All things being equal, it wasn’t exactly the most the newsworthy moment of the night. Was it a sweet moment of affection between the two? Sure. But I wouldn’t characterize the brief gesture as important.
But I’ve clearly misjudged the media’s radar on this. The Obamas bumping fists has become quite the subject of scrutiny the last couple of days.
Barack and Michelle Obama show that you don’t have to be a teenager or an athlete to look cool while executing a fist bump. […]
Obama told NBC’s Brian Williams Wednesday night he is proud of that magical moment. “It captures what I love about my wife, which is that there is a reverence about her and a sense that for all the hoopla that I’m her husband and sometimes we’ll do silly things. “She’s proud of me and she gives me some credit once in a while, but I actually pull some things off.”
The affectionate 11-second exchange before Obama claimed victory as the Democratic presidential nominee Tuesday emphasized Obama’s youth and ability to transcend the stereotyped political gestures of campaigns past, experts said.
“I would imagine to a young voter, this was another sign that these people are one of us,” said psychologist Drew Westen, author of “The Political Brain: The Role Of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.” “People saw their willingness to display their affection in the way they really do – at home, or in private moments.”
Yep, this really is being taken seriously. So seriously, in fact, that conservative media voices have begun to attack the affectionate gesture.
At Human Events, one conservative went so far as to write, “Michelle is not as ‘refined’ as Obama at hiding her TRUE feelings about America — etc. Her ‘Hezbollah’ style fist-jabbing…”
(Originally, I believed this was in Cal Thomas’ column. It wasn’t; it came from a Human Events commenter. I’ve corrected the text.)
Regardless, the media really seems to be enjoying this.
It was the fist bump heard ’round the world.
As Barack Obama walked onstage in St. Paul, Minn., to claim the Democratic nomination Tuesday night, he and wife Michelle hugged and then, gazing into each other’s eyes with knowing smiles, gently knocked knuckles.
He also gave her a playful little pat on the butt, but it was the bump that got everyone talking. “That is the picture!” exulted one poster on the Jack and Jill Politics blog (which offers “a Black bourgeois perspective”). “When I saw them give each other dap, I was like ‘Hell yeah!’ ”
Dap, fist pound, whatever you want to call it — it’s definitely something we’re not used to seeing on the national political stage.
“It thrilled a lot of black folks,” said author and commentator Ta-Nehisi Coates, who blogs at ta-nehisi.com. Why? Because it’s the kind of gesture that, while commonplace in the African American community, was generally stifled by earlier generations of blacks working their way up into the corporate or political worlds for fears “about looking too black,” he said. But Obama “is past that. . . . He wears his cultural blackness all over the place.” (Remember his aping of Jay- Z’s “dirt off your shoulder” move in a recent speech?) “It’s liberating to be able to run for president as a black man. . . . Barack is like Black Folks 2.0.”
Meanwhile, Karen Bradley, a visiting professor of dance at the University of Maryland, was struck by the “intimacy” of the moment. Bradley, who studies the body language of politicians, said the fist bump seemed more spontaneous and authentic than the hug, which “looked like they talked about it first.” While Obama generally has contained gestures and his wife has broad ones, this was a moment “where they both shifted” and mirrored each other, fists close to their bodies. “He’s looking right at her, she’s looking right at him — it’s a partnership, it’s ‘We did it.’ ” (More so than the infamous Al- Tipper smooch at the 2000 Democratic convention: “She seemed more invested in it than he did.”)
I have to admit, I never saw this level of interest coming.
Post Script: By the way, for what it’s worth, this fist-pound wasn’t exactly ground breaking in presidential politics — Wesley Clark featured a dap in one of his ’04 commercials.
