Snub This!

It acquired a name sometime between 6am and 12pm as I was flying across the country. What had begun with a photo appearing to show Barack Obama staring icily at an open-faced Hillary Clinton, and a second, turned away as she greeted Sen. Ted Kennedy, has turned into something called "The Snub."

In the age of visual information, brush asides become thinly sliced character studies. Hence, if you're an Obama supporter, he was politely responding to a question from Claire McCaskill and did not know that Sen. Clinton was eager to shake his hand. If you're an opponent, you saw the "real Obama" -- not the Jesus his staff portrays him to be, but an arrogant upstart for whom "New Politics" means the Politics of Me.

Let's stipulate that Obama, being familiar enough to find his way to Capitol Hill, presumably expected to encounter his presidential rival. Let us also presume that, despite his protestations, images and impressions often matter more than words, and so he might have been a bit more sensitive to his surroundings. But let us concede that to expect a presidential candidate to know when to turn and when to stay focused is appropriate only when Roger Goodman is in his ear. (And Roger Goodman was in New York City.)

Aside from that, everyone will see in The Snub what they like. The media, driven by a bias toward conflict, has already concluded what the Snub was, but they're pretending to ask the question anyway. To be fair, the vast majority of the press's first impressions were that it was a snub.

To reporters on his press plane, Obama said he really just didn't see Sen. Clinton intending to say hello to him and meant no disrespect. Earlier today, his chief strategist said that Obama had known Clinton was there but did not not want to get in the way of an awkward moment between Sen. Kennedy and Sen. Clinton.