He’s trying to downplay the bows to the Saudi Prince and the Japanese Emperor, by bowing to second class citizens (women, in his mind). We’re supposed to be fooled into thinking he bows to “everyone”, when in fact he’s reminding us over and over about the Saudi bow.
Exactly.
BINGO!
Or maybe the little boy was just rubbing Soetoro’s head for luck.
That’s what I thought. “See, I bow to everyone.”
I also wondered about culturally, do they bow in Indonesia?
His frame of reference is probably Indonesia, not Kenya as a lot of people think. Think of your life. What you do when you are young has an enormous influence on what you think of as a normal way to live. You tend to remember that music, that TV, etc. At the time, he was in Indonesia.
I think we’ve elected a person who identifies with that country as president. He certainly doesn’t have an American turn of mind. Even his time in the US was in Hawaii, which is different in so many ways than middle America.