President Obama is okay and everything, but why is he always touching everybody? That hurts! Remember when he put his hand on that Politico reporter's shoulder? Now Politico has brought in the FBI:

... as an expert on nonverbal communication, of course! This black man even touched Senator Joe Biden recently. What is he trying to say?

“[Obama] was castigating him. There’s no other way to put it,” says Joe Navarro, a former FBI special agent specializing in nonverbal communication. “Biden got it immediately,” he adds. “It looked like a little, subtle touch, but you could immediately see that Vice President Biden was contrite after that.”


Politico also gets some anonymous quotes from members of the press who have been personally touched by Obama. Dude, it was like, he was trying to say, hey, I feel what you're saying, but I don't dig what you're saying, you know?

The contact, he said, “seemed to have a twofold purpose — to express his annoyance and also to convince you that you were wrong.”

Fascinating, fascinating stuff. [Politico]