you’ve certainly seen the video

You see it; I see it; everyone who watches it sees it.  Except Robert Gibbs…..

Yet even this proficient dissembler is clearly uncomfortable with the absurdity of this lie.

So in the face of such compelling and clear documentation, these intelligent people realize how absurd they look as they stand up and lie……And yet they continue to do so.  Which means either, they have such a low regard for the intelligence of the American people (and disregard for the contempt that will engender in others around the world) that they dismiss it with the standard eye roll; or there is something deeper which terrifies them.

The risk in not being straightforward is that we must speculate about what could be so terrifying.  And it runs the gamut.

It could be that they are so invested, personally and collectively, in the COWOBAMA narrative (remember this is a special guy who wrote not just one, but indeed two memoirs of his life before he was 45) that they have created an aura of Obamal Infallibility.

More importantly, though, it resonates in the area of character.  This is the amorphous topic which was repeatedly raised and repeatedly dismissed during the campaign.  What is in the man’s heart?  What lingering affect does his seeking out affiliation with radicals as a student in NY have?  (Ask any middle aged man about his time in the Marine Corps when he was 18 if you doubt that experiences as a young adult are formative.)  How about years spent studying in a madras in Indonesia?  The years (whether you believe that he never heard any of the particularly inflammatory Jeremiah Wrong quotes) immersed in Black Liberation Theology and the dinners and coffee with Ayers, Khalidi, etc. had to have some impact.

So, perhaps what they are so petrified of (to the point of appearing patently absurd in their phony concocted denials) is that the reflexive instinct to subsume admirable American and Judeo Christian ideals to a panoply of hostile philosophies and entities was inadvertently reflected in the bow.

and yes, he bowed.