The fist bump: Obamas hit on a new meaning
For all of the fuss made about Barack and Michelle Obama's primary-victory fist bump last week - the overstated admiration, the mocking of clueless white folks, the right-wing suggestions that this was some sort of terrorist handshake - what's most remarkable is how the candidate himself described the move. To Barack Obama, this act of rapping knuckles was a gesture of romance.
"It captures what I love about my wife," Obama told NBC's Brian Williams, when questioned about the most-talked-about gesture thus far of the 2008 campaign, in which an ordinary pol-and-wife election night kiss morphed into a bumping of fists, a thumbs-up, and a knowing smile.
In other words, the Obamas are proposing that the fist bump, also known as the fist pound or dap, is the public-display-of-affection of change, the pucker-up of the future. And this, as much as anything Obama has espoused, is something of a mini-revolution.
However you choose to trace the gesture's origins, after all - and some have variously pointed to Jamaica, West Africa, the 1980s-era NBA, and the '70s-era Wonder Twins - the platonic nature of the fist bump has always seemed clear. It's more an expression of triumph and brotherhood (loosely defined) than a sign of passion. Especially marital passion.
But the Obamas' bump came across as something sweet and almost sappy. To David Givens, director of the Spokane, Wash.-based Center for Nonverbal Studies, it was a feat of coordination, "tender and choreographed." "It reminded me of docking spacecraft," Givens said by phone, approvingly. "You really have to plan the dock, and they did it just as precisely in tandem."
The fact that it wasn't unpleasantly oogly must have helped. Political PDAs have always been treacherous ground: Much as we want love stories, we're also good at spotting insincerity. When Al Gore kissed Tipper, long and hard, at the 2000 Democratic convention, a nation looked away uncomfortably - or groaned in disbelief. The fist bump, with its veneer of urban hipness, seems even more in peril of looking pre-planned. It's hard to imagine John and Cindy McCain knocking fists. (Even harder to picture: George H.W. and Barbara Bush. Or George W. and Laura, for that matter.)
But the Obama Primary-Victory Fist Bump of Love comes across as disarmingly genuine, which is part of the reason it gets a pass from Will Braden, a humor writer for the website TastyBooze.com. In a prescient move last May, Braden - using the pen name "Mr. Wonka " - posted on his site a list of rules for fist-bumping, inspired by a Seattle Times photo of a fist pump that seemed deeply wrong: It involved two middle-age white politicians in suits, celebrating a deal over a rail corridor.
TastyBooze caters to men in their late 20s who work office jobs but dream of being big league baseball players, Braden said by phone from Seattle, where the website is based. The sort of guy who fist bumps in Budweiser commercials.
If the fist bump goes universal, Braden said, "it does feel in some ways like it's been taken away from the guy-guy."
So he listed a set of guidelines, from "If sports are involved, fist bumping is always acceptable" to "If you are wearing a suit, you may only fist bump if you are drunk."
Well, politics is its own form of sport, and who knows if or what the Obamas were drinking while watching election returns. But the bump, in the context of falling confetti, was hardly a guy-guy move. Yet Braden says he was willing to bend his rules - to allow the fist bump to evolve. Besides, he said, Michelle was the one to initiate the move, and his rules clearly allow for all bumps initiated by "girls."
So Braden put up a new blog post, ruling that the Obamas were free to take the fist bump in a new direction. To turn it into a sort of valentine. "Bump on, Obamas," he wrote. "Bump with pride!"
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com 