In my brief recount of Wednesday's State of the Union address, I mentioned an embrace between Mr. and Mrs. Norwood of Texas, a couple who lost their son in Iraq, and an Iraqi woman named Safia Taleb al-Suhail. To be perfectly honest, I was writing the "Ask Banshee" column during that portion of the speech. For this reason, I missed much of the emotion of the moment. However, this embrace apparently had quite an impact on many observers. Dick Cheney could actually be seen wiping a tear away from his eye as Bush resumed speaking.
News programs and talk radio have been buzzing over this embrace. One hot topic was the accusation that "the hug" was staged by the Bush administration. Many on the left just could not believe that a genuine emotion could exist without prodding by political operatives. The rumor of the staging apparently started on Chris Matthews' program immediately following the speech. Matthews brought up the topic with conservative columnist Michelle Malkin. Malkin is not really a Bush insider, but disagreed with Matthews' assertion. In the days following the speech, both the Norwoods and Ms. Taleb al-Suhail have denied that there was any staging whatsoever. In fact, the Norwoods said that they did not even know who Ms. Taleb al-Suhail was prior to Bush's recognition of her just moments earlier in the speech.
The cynicism of the left never ceases to amaze me. I suppose that people just believe about other people what they know about themselves. A good portion of the Democratic party no longer believes in anything except their own power. Almost everything they do is calculated to gain political advantage. They rarely do anything genuine and therefore assume the same about the rest of us.
