Indeed, down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, President Bush is in the middle of the traditional handshake season, pressing the flesh with thousands at holiday events, including the White House's annual media reception (and we know firsthand how germy those guys are). The White House's communications office wouldn't say what, if any, precautions the president takes to avoid germ transmission. We do know, however, that Vice President Cheney would sometimes rub his hands with sanitizing lotion after particularly vigorous handshaking sessions on the campaign trail.
President Bill Clinton, a man who loved to wade into a crowd to shake hands, used the germicidal hand wipes, too. But Clinton, according to an Associated Press account, was too hungry to worry about germs one night during the 1992 campaign when he stopped at a watering hole in Dorchester, Mass. On the way to the car, a woman handed him a home-baked pie. "He was hungry and he just tore into it with his hand,'' said a close Clinton friend who was there.
Donald Trump, signing autographs in October, wrote in 1997, "The only good thing about the act of shaking hands prior to eating is that I tend to eat less."
(Jeff Roberson -- AP)
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Item: In Vermont, Bishop Kenneth Angell has urged 130 Catholic churches with 148,000 parishioners to abstain from shaking hands during Mass until Easter Sunday, prompting priests to suggest "flu-free" greetings. At one service in Brattleboro, worshipers waved and smiled at each other, although a few spouses pecked each other on the cheek . . .
Perhaps the most famous handshake phobic of the 20th century was Howard Hughes, the billionaire inventor-filmmaker-aviator-entrepreneur-playboy and drug addict. Today, we recognize Hughes's bizarre behavior as a result of a cluster of mental illnesses, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, but in his time he was merely considered "eccentric" and, later, "reclusive." In his declining years, Hughes -- the subject of the new Martin Scorsese movie "The Aviator," opening today in Washington -- not only declined to shake hands, but insisted that any object passed to him be swathed in a tissue. He also used to bottle his urine and store it in cupboards (which probably squelched the desire of visitors to shake hands with him, anyway).
Hughes's germophobic contemporary may be real estate mogul and reality-TV caricature Donald Trump. In his 1997 book, "Trump: The Art of the Comeback," Trump wrote, "To me the only good thing about the act of shaking hands prior to eating is that I tend to eat less." During his short-lived run for president in 1999, Trump kept antiseptic wipes in his limousine, and passed out little bottles of Purell hand sanitizer stamped with his campaign Web address. He told an NBC interviewer that year that he wouldn't be doing much gladhanding on the campaign trail. "You catch colds," he said, "you catch the flu, you catch this, you catch all sorts of things."
It sounded a little odd then; nowadays, it just sounds prudent.
Taken to extremes, handshake phobia could prefigure a revolution in social custom analogous to the way the outbreak of HIV/AIDs in the 1980s affected sexual practices. The standard American greeting would be forever altered. But to what? The alternatives might include bowing, curtsying, nodding the head, saluting, patting each other on the back, or hugging. Other cultures, of course, are already there. The Hindu namaste greeting (a composite of the two words that means, roughly, I bend or incline toward you), for example, is simple, elegant and touchless: a slight bow with hands pressed at the palms near the heart.
On the other hand, you could simply follow the advice of the CDC, which sounds suspiciously like the same advice Mom and your kindergarten teacher gave you years ago. Wash your hands with soap and warm water, and do it frequently. Don't touch your eyes, nose and mouth unless your hands are clean. Stay home when you're sick. Use a tissue when you sneeze. If you don't have one, don't sneeze into your hands. The state-of-the-art method now, for adults as well as preschoolers, is to sneeze into the crook of their elbow.
It also pays to practice some defensive germ awareness. Consider this anecdote: Many years ago, a young enthusiast supposedly rushed up to James Joyce and asked, "May I kiss the hand that wrote 'Ulysses'?" Joyce allegedly replied, "No. It did lots of other things, too."
Or this "eeewwww"-inducing factoid: The CDC estimates that one in three people don't wash their hands after using the bathroom.
Try -- just try -- not to think about that next time you're shaking hands.
