Leaving Room For The Holy Ghost Poem by gershon hepner

When you hug a lady who is not
your wife you have to leave a lot of room
for the Holy Ghost, and not assume
it doesn’t matter whether she is hot.

When you hug a gentleman who’s not
your husband, try to be a tad contrary;
look behind you, just like Mrs. Lot,
to make him think that you’re the Virgin Mary.

In “To Have (as a Running Mate) , and to Hold (Politely) , ” Elisabeth Bumiller in the NYT on September 9,2009 writes about the hugging protocols of presidential candidates:
When Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, came out on stage to congratulate his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, after her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul last week, he gave her a hug, not a handshake. Ms. Palin got another hug at a rally here outside Kansas City on Monday. The same McCain-Palin embrace — businesslike, to the point — was on display at a rally over the weekend in Colorado Springs, but this time Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, was on stage. Moving quickly after his clasp of his running mate, Mr. McCain took a short side-step and planted a peck on his wife’s cheek. It has been nearly a quarter century since Walter F. Mondale almost never touched Geraldine A. Ferraro in public when they shared the Democratic presidential ticket in 1984, and it is safe to say that times have changed. Back then, Mr. Mondale had a strict “hands off” policy and did not even put his palm on Ms. Ferraro’s back when the two stood side-by-side and waved with uplifted arms.Anything more, and “people were afraid that it would look like, ‘Oh, my God, they’re dating, ’ ” Ms. Ferraro recalled in a brief telephone interview on Monday, of what now seems like a political Victorian age…. Comfort level is a major factor in hugging protocol. When Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton made their first joint appearance after their bitter fight for the Democratic nomination, in Unity, N.H., in June, Mr. Obama placed his hand on Mrs. Clinton’s shoulder but held back from a full hug. Still, the two did share a few whispers, and Mr. Obama placed his hand squarely on Mrs. Clinton’s back when the two stood for the classic side-by-side political wave. So far, the McCain-Palin hugs have been brief and a little stiff, in part because Mr. McCain cannot raise his arms up high because of injuries sustained as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. But Ms. Palin, too, appears to keep a distance. She “seems to be cognizant that she is wandering into the danger zone, ” Christopher Buckley, the novelist and longtime satirist of the ways of Washington, said in an e-mail message, “with the result that as she hugs him, she leans away from him so as to inser some chaste space between them.” Mr. Buckley added, “As the nuns used to say before school dances, ‘Leave room for the Holy Ghost.’ ”


9/9/09