The conservative U.S. journalist and blogger John Rosenthal criticizes the American media and defends Chancellor Merkel and German public opinion. In TCS Daily he focuses on a comparision of President Bush’s reception in Germany on his first and his latest visit, but also finds fault with the NY Times coverage of Chancellor Merkel’s statements on the Middle East.

And in his blog he writes:

George Bush’s brief massage of Angela Merkel’s shoulders at the G-8 summit in Saint Petersburg last week has provoked a sort of fit of mass hysteria in those parts of the American media, both old and new, whose authors and editors were already the most severely afflicted by Bush-Derangement-Syndrome.

Many Americans seem to consider the German press very anti-American, in particular anti-Bush and anti-Republican. For one of many recent examples see this comment by Eric R. Staal, chairman of Republicans Abroad Germany. However, the massage was not used for Bush-bashing and did not make big news in the German media. Some papers wrote about the international coverage and the popularity of various videos of the undiplomatic incident on Youtube. John Rosenthal writes:

The episode might have passed largely unperceived in Germany were it not for a brief front page article with large accompanying photo in the tabloid BILD and then he translates the extremely positive article (This political love is literally palpable!) in Germany’s most popular tabloid.

Christy Leonardo wrote this post about the incident for Anglofritz. President Bush probably thought Chancellor Merkel would appreciate the massage, which she clearly did not. Likewise, Bush probably thought that his comment on German TV about seeing Merkel’s soul would be considered a compliment and win some support in Germany. Hopefully, he won’t be so nice and present Merkel with a pair of cowboy boots, when she gets to visit him on his ranch. That would neither improve his nor Merkel’s image in Germany.