[Tax-chick]

There's nothing rude about being tall. However, this: stumbling as she tried to bow, shake his hand and curtsey at once and hugging Mrs. Abe would have been avoided if she had asked the State Department's local protocol adviser to explain the appropriate etiquette.

[trisham]

Agreed.

[TontoKowalski]

...hugging Mrs. Abe would have been avoided if she had asked the State Department's local protocol adviser to explain the appropriate etiquette.

I don't get all this hugging of strangers.

Who does that when you first meet someone, or greet someone who is merely an acquaintance, rather than a close friend? And even if you did think it might sometimes be appropriate, why would you do that in a non-social setting?

I suppose she saw celebrities doing it on "The Tonight Show" and assumed that's what people do.

[Boogieman]

I can’t imagine she could stand to be told what to do by the protocol officers, even in the gentlest way possible. She thinks that she knows best, about everything, so she probably doesn’t even get advised by them anymore.

[litehaus]

“asked the State Department’s local protocol adviser”

He/She was on leave back in Chicago overseeing a “Club Assassination” on the South Side....,

[EDINVA]

“... dwarfed the Emperor in her silver stilettos,”

That’s where the problem arose. She wears flats all the time, to wear stilettos on this occasion was beyond a protocol breach; it was just ignorant idiocy. Since these people have no innate “class,” you’d hope the Protocol Office would save them (and the country) this type embarrassment.