On Tuesday, the New York Daily News ran a story about President Bush’s body language. (Hat tip: reader Joyus.) The article quoted a single source, Karen Bradley, “a certified movement analyst at the University of Maryland, College Park,” who provided supposedly neutral advice such as this:

Bradley’s guide to the body behind the language:

Raised shoulders
What it means: The President tends to tense his shoulders when he’s uncomfortable.

Point and wink
What it means: “There’s going to be a lot of unspoken drama in the room,” Bradley said. If Bush is just speaking to his supporters, he’ll point at, wink at and smile hello to particular people, rather than broadly address the room of Republicans and Democrats, she said.

Stevie Wonder head tilt
What it means: If the President is having trouble reading the TelePrompTer, he may be “listening” to his speech, either recalling the words he’s memorized or, as skeptics speculated during the 2004 presidential debates, through an earpiece. This “auditory attending” of the head is common in people who are blind – such as Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles – who rely on their ears more than their eyes to process the world, Bradley said. People who are primarily visual will widen their eyes instead.

The smile
What it means: It depends on whether the smile is combined with a relaxed leaning forward for emphasis or whether it’s in conjunction with shoulder tension – “a smile that seems to be fighting with a frown,” Bradley said. In the latter case, the President may not entirely believe what he’s saying, she said.

The conspiratorial tinfoil-hat reference to Bush being wired should have been a dead giveaway to the reporter that Bradley–”movement therapist, dance designer, and coach”–was no objective news source.

In fact, Bradley is one of the chief contributors to the far Left “Democracy Cell Project.” She cross-posts to the Daily Kos. Most recently, she fumed after producing an anti-Bush event at the Capitol on Tuesday night:

In the darkness which George Bush has led our country into, it is all too easy for people to yield to the siren song of despair and hopelessness. It does not help when someone says to you that you should not despair, that you should remain hopeful. What was powerful last night was not someone telling us to be hopeful; every person there could FEEL what it felt like to BE hopeful, to come together, to sing the praises of hope against the darkness, standing there bravely in front of the belly of the beast, mere dozens of yards away from the unspeakable foulness of the theatre taking place in the House of Representatives.

Without hope, we have nothing. With hope, we can change the world.

The Daily News did not reveal to readers Bradley’s radical, anti-Bush activist leanings.

Neither did UPI, which picked up the story.

What liberal media bias? Yeah, that liberal media bias.

***

Flashback:

I may not be a “certified movement analyst,” but I can play body language expert, too.

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