by BooMan
Wed Jul 19th, 2006 at 04:46:35 PM EST
That's the Bild.de headline. You can watch the video there too. Bush walked up to Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, and started giving her a massage. She threw up her arms in self-defense, made a face, and then drew up her hands into angry fists. Bush moved on. Here is how the Los Angeles Times chose to cover the incident.
Bush gave a less formal greeting to German Chancellor Angela Merkel when he encountered her Sunday in the more modern pavilion on the Konstantinovsky Palace grounds where the afternoon meeting of the G-8 leaders was being held.
It was a lesson in body language.
On his way here, the president spent much of Thursday with Merkel in her Bundestag district in northeastern Germany, building on a friendship that began with her earlier visit to the White House, a welcome guest after her conservative coalition turned Gerhard Schroeder out of office last fall. Schroeder's opposition to the war in Iraq had made him a thorn in Bush's side.
It's safe to say the former chancellor never got the treatment Merkel received from the president.
Entering the meeting room, as relayed by a Russian television camera, Bush headed directly behind the chancellor, reached out and, placing both hands on the collar of her gold jacket, gave her a short massage just below the neck.
She smiled.
See. That crazy liberal press is always slanting things to make Bush look bad.
[hat tip to Jessica of feministing]
