Nelson Mandela's memorial service brought together world leaders of all political stripes, and unified Democratic and Republican politicians in remembrance of the South African leader. Nevertheless, members of the American media and Congress did their best to turn the memorial into a farce, spawning a ridiculous faux-controversy over the fact that President Obama shook hands with Cuban President Raul Castro. 
 
 The "handshake heard round Twitter" (not to be mistaken with the "selfie heard round Twitter") rankled some on the right who felt Obama should have spurned the Cuban leader for presiding over a communist country with a dubious human rights record. 
 
 Over at National Review, Mona Charen wrote that the handshake "makes the stomach turn" and that "the nature of the Cuban regime should be enough to cause our president to find some way to avoid a handshake." 
 
 "Shameful day to be an American," she added. 
 
 Meanwhile, Fox News spent a chunk of time discussing the handshake, with anchor Bill Hemmer saying an unnamed fellow journalist told him it "would not have been in the spirit of Mandela, it would have been disrespectful to the spirit of Mandela." (It should be noted that Mandela was not only a great conciliator, but a huge fan of the Castros.) 
 
 And here's Breitbart's John Nolte: 
 
 Obama enthusiastically shakes hand with dictator Castro and the media in unison screams NOTHING TO SEE HERE!!! Y'all are freakin' pathetic. — John Nolte (@NolteNC) December 10, 2013 
 
 Dishonest media's false choice: Be rude or shake hands with dictator. No. Obama could've been formal instead of visibly excited. Matters. — John Nolte (@NolteNC) December 10, 2013 
 
 On the congressional front, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) piled on, saying, "If [Obama] was going to shake his hand, he should have asked him about those basic freedoms Mandela was associated with that are denied in Cuba." And Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) made sure at least someone trotted out a Nazi reference. 
 
 "Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Hitler," he warned. 
 
 The outrage, of course, was predictable in the hyperpartisan atmosphere that dominates Washington. 
 
 That said, the idea that the president should avoid this most basic form of decorum is absurd. Presidents routinely shake hands with world leaders with whom they disagree. To wit, here's a sampling of pictures of Republican presidents doing just that. 
 
 That's because handshakes are a purely ceremonial act that don't in themselves represent official government policy. "Unlike in the case of, say, sanctions, handshakes are purely symbolic," wrote The New Republic's Isaac Chotiner, adding that "no American president, including Obama, will consistently shun unsavory world leaders." 
 
 The same goes for members of Congress. Consider McCain, who infamously tweeted about his pleasant experience meeting former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. In fairness to McCain, he didn't say anything about shaking Gadhafi's hand, so who knows, maybe he drew the line there. 
 
 Handshakes are a mere civility. But from all the outrage, you'd think Obama had sealed a deal to give Florida to Cuba. ||||| President Obama was caught taking a selfie with the prime ministers of Britain and Denmark at the Nelson Mandela memorial in South Africa, creating a small uproar online. 
 
 President Obama took a selfie with British Prime Minister David Cameron and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt while seated in the audience at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service in South Africa on Tuesday. 
 
 Yes, you’re right, that’s a lead sentence that we did not really envision writing when we got up this morning, but we go where the news flows, and there you are. 
 
 Photos of the smiling trio taking their self-portrait are all over the Internet at the moment. Many of them show Michelle Obama looking off to one side, as if she can’t believe the misbehavior of her seatmates. 
 
 Some critics thought that the world leader photo-op was in poor taste given the context. “So Obama & Cameron & Danish PM displaying similar levels of gravitas today as 14 yr olds on the school bus,” was a typical Twitter comment. 
 
 Some journalists thought the mass coverage of the photo event was worse than the event itself. 
 
 “You guys know this makes the media look bad, right?” tweeted Politico’s media columnist Dylan Byers. 
 
 At the risk of looking bad, though, we’ve got these thoughts. 
 
 It was a memorial, not a funeral. The massive event was meant to celebrate the great life of Mr. Mandela. There was singing, dancing, jumping throughout the crowd. When Mr. Obama spoke, spectators swayed and clapped behind him. The atmosphere was anything but stiff and funereal. 
 
 Leave Michelle out of it. Look, it’s impossible to really tell if she’s peeved, not paying attention, or (most likely) just got snapped at the micro-second she was looking in another direction. We’ve seen enough photo meetings to know it’s easy to construct a narrative where none exists. We don’t really have any idea what the first lady is thinking at the moment. 
 
 The president is always on stage. For those who think the shot irrelevant, we’d say the US president is always in the public eye. His every public move is captured on film, his every public action surveyed for possible meaning. Look no further than Obama’s handshake with Raul Castro at the memorial; was he too friendly to a repressive Cuban leader? Was he just he trying to put Mr. Castro off-balance? Was it just a handshake? Inquiring minds want to know. 
 
 Most presidential moments are predictable, preplanned. The selfie moment was not. It was a bit of genuine ad hoc get-togetherness among world leaders. It’s interesting to see that such powerful people can act like three friends at a sporting event. The media’s not going to cover that? Right. 
 
 It's all about us. However, we will note that the US media is (unsurprisingly) US-centric, so wherever the president goes, the story is framed through their experience. At Mandela’s memorial that means Obama’s speech and action will be the central aspect of many American stories. 
 
 This provincialism can be seen in the fact that some US broadcasters at first said the woman in the selfie shot was unidentified. Then some expressed surprise the Danish PM was a woman. 
 
 Ms. Thorning-Schmidt has in fact been the head of government of Denmark, a NATO ally, since 2011. Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg is also a woman, by the way. Then there’s Angela Merkel, German chancellor. 
 
 So perhaps a northern European leader who is a women shouldn’t be, you know, a shock? ||||| There was no hint in December 2013, when President Barack Obama shook hands with his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro, that something bigger was afoot between the U.S. and its Cold War nemesis. 
 
 Their encounter at a memorial service in Johannesburg for South African leader Nelson Mandela happened as Obama strode through the dignitaries’ area. While the event created media buzz, it was dismissed at the time by Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, as nothing more than a handshake. 
 
 What the world didn’t know was that secret negotiations had already been under way for months, with Obama pursuing a deal to change the most fraught diplomatic relationship in the Western Hemisphere. And the man leading the talks? Rhodes, who’s one of Obama’s most trusted aides. 
 
 “These 50 years have shown that isolation has not worked,” Obama said in Washington on Wednesday as he announced the rapprochement. “It’s time for a new approach.” 
 
 Related: 
 
 The move toward normalizing relations means not simply the opening of an American embassy in Havana but the easing of restrictions on limited travel and commerce that have blocked U.S. investment in the island nation and kept aficionados from legally bringing Cuban cigars to U.S. soil. The thaw was wrapped into the release of American aid worker Alan Gross and the exchange of a U.S. spy for three Cuban intelligence agents. 
 
 Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with Cuban President Raul Castro during the official memorial service for former South African President Nelson Mandela at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, on Dec. 10, 2013. Close U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with Cuban President Raul Castro during the... Read More Close Open Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images U.S. President Barack Obama shakes hands with Cuban President Raul Castro during the official memorial service for former South African President Nelson Mandela at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg, on Dec. 10, 2013. 
 
 Secret Meetings 
 
 Obama in early 2013 authorized the senior-level talks toward restoring diplomatic relations that were severed 53 years ago, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic matters. He designated two White House aides -- Rhodes and Ricardo Zuniga, the senior director for Western Hemisphere Affairs on the National Security Council staff -- to try to work out a deal. 
 
 Initial contacts were conducted through diplomatic interest sections, maintained under Swiss auspices, and through U.S. and Cuban missions to the United Nations in New York. The effort was backed up with help from Canada and the Vatican, Obama administration officials told reporters on Wednesday. 
 
 There were about seven secret meetings between U.S. and Cuban officials starting in June 2013 in Ottawa, the Canadian capital, according to an official familiar with the talks, who asked not to be named or identified by country. While Canadian officials didn’t participate in the negotiations, Ottawa was a diplomatically attractive meeting place. 
 
 Pope Francis 
 
 “We have unbroken diplomatic relations with Cuba, friendly relations with Cuba, and very intimate and close relations with the United States,” Brian Mulroney, who was prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993, said in a telephone interview. 
 
 In recent months, Pope Francis appealed directly to Castro to release Gross and to Obama to free the imprisoned Cubans as a way to spur broader rapprochement. The first Latin American pontiff wrote the leaders urging them to “resolve humanitarian questions of common interest, including the situation of certain prisoners, in order to initiate a new phase in relations,” according to the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. 
 
 The accord began to take final shape at an encounter between U.S. and Cuban envoys hosted by the Vatican where issues including the prisoner transfers were resolved, according to an Obama administration official. 
 
 Cuba came up in the first meeting that then-U.S. Senator John Kerry and Obama had in early 2013 to discuss the prospect of Kerry replacing Hillary Clinton as secretary of State, a State Department official said. The two men agreed that existing policy was hurting U.S. interests, the official said. 
 
 Kerry Role 
 
 Four times this summer, Kerry had unannounced phone calls with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez that focused solely on Gross’s release, according to a State Department official. In at least one, Kerry told his Cuban counterpart that if anything happened to the ailing Gross, who was detained in 2009, the island nation’s relationship with the U.S. would never improve. 
 
 The five-year standoff over Gross is just one part of long-complicated relationship with Cuba, established decades before Fidel Castro’s rise to power. 
 
 The U.S. controlled Cuba for four years following the Spanish-American War until its independence in 1902. Successive governments ruled the island until military leader and former Cuban President Fulgencio Batista seized power in 1952. His authoritarian regime fueled a rebellion led by Fidel Castro. 
 
 Expectations for democratic change after Batista fled in 1959 were dashed as Castro executed or imprisoned thousands of opponents and seized land and sugar mills owned by Cubans and Americans. His embrace of the Soviet Union established Cuba as a U.S. adversary in the escalating Cold War. 
 
 Cold War 
 
 That led President Dwight Eisenhower to impose a partial embargo on exports and sever diplomatic ties, followed by bans on travel and commercial transactions set by his successor, President John F. Kennedy. The U.S. also waged covert attempts to destabilize the government -- including at least eight assassination plots against Castro. 
 
 The agreement with Cuba toward normalizing relations is the latest twist in a pattern of shifts in U.S. embargo and travel policies, which have loosened and tightened over the decades. Even as he announced the change, Obama said Cuba still needs to make progress on human rights and economic reform. 
 
 “Today Cuba is still governed by the Castros and the Communist Party that came to power half a century ago,” he said. “Neither the American nor Cuban people are well-served by a rigid policy that’s rooted in events that took place before most of us were born.” 
 
 ‘Worst Negotiator’ 
 
 Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida denounced the change, calling Obama “the worst negotiator” since President Jimmy Carter, who dropped the travel ban and let Cuban-Americans travel to the island. The ban was later revived under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, while U.S. sanctions were tightened again in 1996 after two planes operated by a Cuban exile group were shot down, killing four people. 
 
 Cuba’s current desire for rapprochement with the U.S. is rooted in economic reality. Its longtime patrons, Russia and Venezuela, are being squeezed by plummeting oil prices. 
 
 Raul Castro, speaking to his nation on Wednesday at the same time Obama addressed the American public, said “the progress achieved in the exchanges we’ve had shows that it’s possible to find solutions to many problems.” 
 
 “We have to learn the art of living together with our differences in a civilized way,” Castro said in Havana. 
 
 Intelligence Agent 
 
 Obama said that Cuba was on the agenda when he met with Pope Francis at the Vatican in March. The pope “played a very important role,” Obama said in an interview with ABC News, calling the pontiff “the real deal, a remarkable man.” 
 
 The Vatican, in a statement, said, “The Holy Father wishes to express his warm congratulations for the historic decision” to normalize relations, “with the aim of overcoming, in the interest of the citizens of both countries, the difficulties which have marked their recent history.” 
 
 Besides Gross, the accord also freed an unnamed U.S. agent who had been imprisoned in Cuba for almost 20 years. Without divulging details, Obama said the man had furnished vital information used to break up Cuban spying operations in the U.S. 
 
 He is “one of the most important intelligence agents that the United States has ever had in Cuba,” the president said. 
 
 Gross, a 65-year-old Maryland resident, was arrested in 2009 while working to expand Internet access for Havana’s Jewish community. Accused of undermining the Cuban state, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. 
 
 Corned Beef 
 
 The death in June of his mother, Evelyn, was a difficult blow, according to Gross’s wife, Judith. He had appealed to Cuban authorities for a furlough on humanitarian grounds to grant his mother’s request to see him before she died of lung cancer. He went on a hunger strike in April to protest the Cuban and U.S. governments’ failure to resolve his situation. 
 
 Cuban officials refused his request, leaving Judith Gross “extremely worried” about her husband’s psychological health. 
 
 On Wednesday morning, with the deal completed, he left Cuba aboard a U.S. government plane, and Obama called him in mid-flight to congratulate him on his freedom. Gross was joined by his lawyer, Scott Gilbert; his wife; Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, both Democrats. 
 
 On board, they’d brought along treats the aid worker hadn’t enjoyed for five years: his favorite sandwich -- corned beef on rye with mustard -- plus potato latkes and applesauce to celebrate Hanukkah, and a bowl of popcorn. As soon as they got out of Cuban airspace, he called his two daughters. 
 
 ‘Best Hanukkah’ 
 
 Upon arriving at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, Gross was greeted by Kerry, who happened to have returned from a trip to Europe to the base minutes after Gross’s plane landed. After welcoming Gross home, Kerry sat with the former prisoner, his friends and family in a hangar at the air base where they watched Obama’s speech on Cuba together. 
 
 In brief remarks to reporters in Washington Wednesday afternoon, Gross thanked Obama, U.S. lawmakers and Jewish organizations for pressing for his release. 
 
 “It was crucial to my survival knowing that I was not forgotten,” he said. “It’s the best Hanukkah I’ll be celebrating in a long time.” 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: Terry Atlas in Washington at tatlas@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net Michael Shepard, Mark McQuillan
– At Nelson Mandela's memorial, President Obama shook hands with the Cuban president, and the media is in a tizzy about it. "The handshake between Obama and Raúl Castro makes the stomach turn," writes Mona Charen at the National Review. "The nature of the Cuban regime should be enough to cause our president to find some way to avoid a handshake." At Breitbart, Frances Martel lists activists in Cuba "whose plight President Obama willfully ignores and whose oppression he embraces as he embraces their oppressor." Republican lawmakers expressed their distaste, too, with Sen. Marco Rubio saying Obama should have asked Castro "about those basic freedoms Mandela was associated with that are denied in Cuba." John McCain pointed to Neville Chamberlain's handshake with Adolf Hitler, while Politico notes that Ted Cruz walked out of Mandela's memorial when Castro spoke. But at the Week, Jon Terbush says everyone needs to chill out about this "ridiculous faux-controversy": "The idea that the president should avoid this most basic form of decorum is absurd. Presidents routinely shake hands with world leaders with whom they disagree," he notes. The Obama-Castro handshake is hardly the only gesture riling pundits; there was also this selfie.