The Atlantic's James Fallows quotes a "U.S. government official who was on the trip" characterizing Obama's reaction to the criticism he received for the bow. He was just being polite, as opposed to terrified that America's status as a superpower will disappear down the toilet if its president stops being a dick all the time:

Obama's attitude was, this is an elderly gentleman in a country where this kind of greeting is customary. It does not seem extraordinary to show this kind of gesture to him. The Fox news poll said that 67% of Americans thought it was a good thing for him to have done. When the president heard that some people had complained, I'd characterize his reaction as: The notion that the United States is somehow humbling or humiliating itself by showing respect for a local custom, when it is transparently the most powerful country in the world, leaves me speechless.

Rule No. 1 of being an unnamed White House adviser is Don't Put Words Directly in the President's Mouth Unless You Know What You're doing, so this was either a deliberate presidential pushback or a rogue element telling the truth. If it were the former, though, we'd imagine the White House would choose a more mainstream outlet to get the word out through than an Atlantic blog. Either way: If you have a problem with the president bowing to old Japanese men, Barack Obama personally thinks you're an idiot.

Just as an example to illustrate this economic principle, we're going to use Japan, as I hinted in the last sentence. Handily there is a story about them in the newspaper today that applies to just what we're discussing here. "Once Slave to Luxury, Japan Catches Thrift Bug." From slavery to buggery. They just can't win!

Why is it that they can't win over there, in Japan? It all has to do with economics, as I mentioned, if you were paying attention. Instead of going Up from Slavery, a la Booker T., the Japanesans went—where?—down from slavery! Down, to thriftiness! Wrong way, kids!

Here is where we roll out the principle itself, or "economic way to be": You have to spend money to make money. Sounds counterintuitive, right? Then you must be Japanese, or just not a rich person at this moment in time, due to economic ignorance. All you have to do is read the LA Times, a popular newspaper in America, where it says very clearly that if all you "savers" out there don't turn into "spenders" right quick, we're going to be going right down the same path as Japan, economically, which is not a good one in case you haven't picked up on that particular fact.

"But hey," I hear you whining hypothetically while motivated by economic ignorance, "isn't saving money good, since spending all our money and not saving is what got us into this mess?" You might think so as a layperson. Well here's another thing an economic layperson might think is "cool": a broken coffee maker that busts a water line and next thing you know it one community college is out $150k in repair bills thanks to a god damn coffee maker some asshole left on.

Funny? Sure. But not economic. This illustrates what's know as "The Fallacy of the Layperson." You don't know what's good for the economy. You're the type of person who would lose the "opportunity cost" of a shitload of repair bills in order to "Laugh" at a whole school getting busted up because of a stupid coffee maker. This is why we have scientists, and, thankfully, economists around. Spend your money, people. Japan is our enemy.
[Pic via]

Though most people are fascinated by the economic and political repercussions of Japan's latest election, we're more intersted in Mrs. Hatoyama and how she will no doubt forever change what it means to be a first lady.

In a book published last year, Hatoyama readily admits that she met her husband while she was still married to her first husband, discusses her time in an all-female theaterical troupe and, yes, spills the beans about her time on a space ship:

While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus. It was a very beautiful place, and it was very green.

So cute! In addition to space travel, Mrs. Hatoyama enjoys pottery, cooking and Tom Cruise. Apparently she and the Hollywood star met in a previous life, when he was Japanese. Hmmm, perhaps that shit movie, The Last Samurai, wasn't so off the mark.

For years Japanese hostesses, girls who provide conversation and companionship to lonely men in red-light district cabaret clubs, have been the victims of societal scorn. Now, however, with jobs, especially jobs for young women, extremely scarce, Japan's hostesses are being celebrated, to the point that young girls are openly expressing their desires to become hostesses when they grow up. Some hostesses have even reached celebrity status in Japan.

Reports the New York Times:

Young women are drawn nonetheless to Cinderella stories like that of Eri Momoka, a single mother who became a hostess and worked her way out of penury to start a TV career and her own line of clothing and accessories.

"I often get fan mail from young girls in elementary school who say they want to be like me," said Ms. Momoka, 27, interviewed in her trademark seven-inch heels. "To a little girl, a hostess is like a modern-day princess."

Popular culture is also fueling hostessing's popularity. TV sitcoms are starting to depict cabaret hostesses as women building successful careers. Hostesses are also writing best-selling books, be they on money management or the art of conversation.

A magazine that features hostess fashion has become wildly popular with women outside the trade, who mimic the heavily made-up eyes and big, coiffed hair.

The Times story says that hostesses can easily bring in as much as $100-$300k per year in income, with the lowest paid of the profession still making at least $20 per hour, which is double the amount that a starting assistant at William Morris Endeavor gets paid. Just saying.

Young Japanese Women Vie for Once-Scorned Job [New York Times]

I saw that the swine flu is also killing the stock market right after I finished writing this and I was just like, geez, what will these finance guys think of next?

Meanwhile, in Japan: the economy will shrink 3.3% this year. If they could confine that shrinkage totally to the video game and cell-phone book categories, it might not be such a bad thing.

But what's happening in New York City, you ask? Balducci's went out of business and to top it all off restaurants are now charging us for bread and water. Hey thanks guys, thanks for that. We'll just grow our food on the roof if that's okay.

The real question: with all of this strain, are Americans prepared to handle sickening, mawkish oversentimentality? Mitch Albom was apparently off today so Dan Barry stepped up to tell us all about the soup made with a little bit of love:

The cook measures not by the quart but by the heart, so if you ask exactly how much water, the answer is: exactly the right amount.

This is not just any soup, you see.

But the soup she is making now, this Portuguese soup she learned from her mother, is for a working-class city with 16 percent unemployment, nearly double the average in Massachusetts and recently raised by the layoffs of dozens of police officers and firefighters.

Yea that's actually the long name for "kale soup." But is the big-hearted woman also a character?

When asked if she takes a drink now and then, the saintly, knife-wielding Ms. De Costa snaps, "Hell, no."

Soup's good but unfortunately the story of it makes you throw up. Recessionomics.

Japan knows what time it is. The country is rounding up jobless urbanites and sending them out in the countryside to become farmers. They make $1,500 a month and get dirty and complain and are probably as useless as Peace Corps members when they first get there, but at least they're increasing the national supply of precious radishes, rather than drawing it down while wasting days in Tokyo coffeeshops playing with digital pocket pets and dreaming up get rich quick schemes involving new forms of pornography.

Can we here in America the Once Beautiful say the same? I fear not. Our wealthy money managers are locked up in fraud cases, and our toniest real estate is dropping into alarmingly affordable territory.

So who, who will have the economic strength to challenge the Japanese and their bean farming powerhouse? The Swiss? Their biggest bank is cutting thousands of jobs. The South Koreans? They're all looking for work. The Spanish? They're totally out of money, period.

It's up to you, affable New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan. Swing your hammer, sir. Not just for Jesus—swing it for justice. Bean justice.
[Pic via]

According to the American media (consisting of reporters who are high, mostly), Japanese authority figures are totally peeing their pants right now because marijuana arrests are on the rise among Japanese youth. Even among athletes! And famous people! And most disappointingly, among college kids! Dude, it's a nation of lightweights:

While hard numbers are difficult to come by, marijuana use in Japan appears to be low compared with other countries. In a survey of 85,000 households from 17 countries published last year by the Public Library of Science, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco and Cambridge, U.K., only 1.5% of Japanese respondents said they have used cannabis, compared with 42% in the U.S. and 18% in Germany.

You. Ess. Ay. Baby. That's right. Japan simply cannot hang. They banned a famous sumo wrestler for life, for being caught with weed. They'll jail you for five years for simple possession. And when an "elite private college" in Tokyo caught some kids growing hydro in the bathroom, the entire nation's educational philosophy was shaken to its very core:

"We thought university students had more conscience," said Juichi Shimomura, a director in the bureau of welfare and public health of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. "Now we realize they have to be taught just like everyone else."

Japan does, however, retain its world title in "Embarrassingly Drunk Businessmen." [WSJ]

It seems that the Japanese—not just the gays, but all of 'em—have a special fondness for Herrington's butt-smacking wrestling videos and the way he says certain American phrases ("you got me mad now", 'Like embarrassing me, huh?") that sound like something completely different in Japanese ("you are not distorted" and "you are sloppy recently", respectively). So Japan being Japan, in 2007 they decided to honor this curious Mr. Sparkle the best way they knew how: by creating whacked-out, aural-seizure-inducing internet video mashups, that were uploaded to their insane Japanese version of YouTube, Nico Nico Douga.

After two years of bizarre internet fame, Herrington was finally invited to come to Japan a couple of weeks ago to appear on an internet talk show. He threw his shirt into the audience, slapped a few asses, and said his famous catchphrases ("You are sloppy recently!!"), to the shrieking delight of its manga-weened audience.

I'm not sure what, if anything, this says about Japanese people and their culture. But it is interesting to note that while the internet fanboy culture of Japan was giving rise to near-softcore totally gay Nico Nico Douga sensations, our snickering pizzafaces were still mired in the outre-heteronormative playground of "2 Girls, 1 Cup." So... put that in your non-phallic pipe and smoke it, socio-techno-genderpunk scholars.

More coverage on (NSFW!) Fleshbot.

If Alexandra Penney is any indication (note: poor example), the American response to losing tons of money is to become a hilarious blogger. And why not! Over here we generally have a national understanding that money comes and goes, and if you're not wagering more than you should on bets that are too risky, what kind of cowboy are you? Losing money is not the sort of thing we're ashamed of. We're more angry. But no guts, no glory, etc. Big swinging dicks! Greed is good! Bet the farm! Let it ride!

Elsewhere shame seems to be felt much more deeply. Hell, Merckle surely wasn't likely to have gone hungry even if he did dissolve his entire financial empire. Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, the French hedge fund guy, was so ashamed of losing other people's money with Madoff he felt he had to off himself. It's safe to say most American hedge fund guys would be relieved they lost someone else's money.

And the Japanese! Shame is an essential business skill over there. So much so that Sen. Chuck Grassley figures we need to emulate them, or something:

“I’ve suggested it wouldn’t be a bad thing that the leadership of these [US] institutions would take a Japanese-style approach to corporate governance, and I’m not talking about going out and committing suicide as some Japanese do in these circumstances, but I am talking about scenes I’ve seen on television where in belly-up corporations the CEOs go before the board of directors, before the public, before the stockholders and bow deeply and apologize for their mis-management."

Good luck! All groveling in American business is done with the strict subtext that it's not sincere. They'll apologize, but don't ask for more than they're prepared to give, or fuck you, they're calling the lawyers. Does the US have a shame deficit? Do we need to be more like these guys? Should losing tons of money be considered a morally horrible act?

Nah. Unless you're an actual morally repugnant criminal like Madoff, losing money should be its own penalty. There's not need to press it. And there's certainly no need to kill yourself over it. Save that for the terribly embarrassing revelation of some sexual proclivity that doesn't fall squarely in the Puritan mainstream, okay.

They problem is that in this country, CEOs are only too happy to trade the scorn of the public for a pile of money. Most Americans would do the same! (Unless the revolution comes, in which case it's up against the wall with all of you). So you can bitch all you want about golden parachutes that can top $100 million for executives who didn't do shit except lose shareholder money the entire time they were employed, but that CEO will chuckle to himself, have his flack issue a statement, and then go enjoy his millions and millions of free dollars on a private island somewhere, full of untold numbers of prostitutes.

So America has worked out its own ways to humiliate these CEOs without their consent. The media trumpets their salaries all over the place, hollering louder about them the worse their company does. Their kids are shunned and forced to go to special, expensive schools. Actually, nobody sympathizes with CEOs except for other CEOs, and politicians.

Now, however, every company is doing poorly. So our system for determining what executives to focus our class rage upon is broken. The American public is spread too thin. That's why we need to import some sort of Japanese-style public shaming ceremony here. CEOs can apologize for their sins and wallow in misery, we can all enjoy the schadenfreude, and then we can all focus our allotment of hatred where it belongs: on Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. And the CEOs will join us.

America is unity!

This song is about fucking:

This isn't so much inappropriate as much it is astoundingly weird:

Boomp3.com

The 'stache-tastic Robert Downey Jr — along with Japan's very own Iron Man, Hal —went off on a few barrels before the premiere of Iron Man. According to Downey Jr, the barrels were asking for it and got what they deserved. Downey said, "Those barrels were mouthing off. Saying some nasty things about my performance in The Shaggy Dog and now they're going to pay." After having such a blast demolishing the barrels, Downey and Hal agreed to team up on a live action version of Donkey Kong, possibly to be helmed by Wong Kar-Wai.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

*A Call To The Bullpen is a work of fiction. Although the pictures we use are most certainly real, Defamer does not purport that any of the incidents or quotations you see in this piece actually happened. Lighten up, people ... it's a joke.

• Hole In The Wall [Fox]