Editorial
The Guardian, Friday June 20, 2008
In America's presidential race, a picture may be worth a thousand words - but give the phalanx of TV reporters, columnists and ever-twitchy bloggers a peek and it will yield so much more. So when Barack and Michelle Obama pressed their clenched fists together this month, just before he accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, they sent the media into a spasm. Their first question: what was it? A "closed-fisted high-five", said the New York Times; no, a "terrorist fist jab", according to Fox News (who else?). But the fist bump (or fist pound, as traditionalists would have it) has been around since at least the 70s, when basketball players used it to congratulate each other. Some say its origins lie in African-American culture; others claim that the popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters the Wonder Twins started it off by touching knuckles and crying "Wonder Twin powers, activate!" Whatever, it is a gesture that has spread; when Hewlett-Packard and Compaq announced their merger in 2001, company bosses did not give photographers the expected handshake shot, but bumped their fists. Teachers at Fujishima senior school in Fukui City, Japan, feature the bump in their class on American gestures, and suggest as accompanying dialogue: "What's up, yo? I haven't seen you in awhile (sic)." There are limits to the gesture's uses ("I would not advise fist-bumping your future father-in-law," advises a kindly woman from Debrett's) but it is more sincere than an air kiss. And far better than a knuckle sandwich.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/20/barackobama.uselections2008
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