Is this an example of tail recursion?

[Rustom Mody]

On Wednesday, August 5, 2015 at 10:11:30 PM UTC+5:30,  wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 5, 2015 at 10:29:21 AM UTC-6, Chris Angelico wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 6, 2015 at 2:10 AM, Rustom Mody  wrote:
> > > 1 + x
> > > does not *call* 1 .__add__(x)
> > > It *is* that
> > > [Barring corner cases of radd etc]
> > > IOW I am desugaring the syntax into explicit method-calls so you can see
> > > all the calls explicitly
> > > Then it becomes evident -- visibly and in fact --that the tail call is the
> > > __add__ method not the solderdiersVsDefenders
> > 
> > Except that it *isn't* that, precisely because of those other cases.
> > When Python sees an expression like "1 + x" and doesn't yet know what
> > x is, it can't do anything other than record the fact that there'll be
> > a BINARY_ADD of the integer 1 and whatever that thing is. That object
> > might well define __radd__, so the call is most definitely not
> > equivalent to the operator.
> > 
> > And the ultimate result of that addition might not even be a function
> > call at all, if it's implemented in C. Or if you're running in PyPy
> > and the optimizer turned it into machine code. So no, even though you
> > can define addition for *your own classes* using __add__ or __radd__,
> > you can't reinterpret every addition as a function call.
> > 
> > ChrisA
> 
> Good (intricate) point.

And I continue to have no idea what Chris is talking about.
Here is C printf
>>> from ctypes import *
>>> cdll.LoadLibrary("libc.so.6")
>>> libc = CDLL("libc.so.6")
>>> libc.printf(b"%s", b"Hello")
5
Hello>>> 

As far as I can see printf is a C function and its behaving like (an 
ill-behaved) python function as well.
Likewise for anything else written ina C extension module
Or a C-builtin

If its callable from within python its python
That it may also be C seems to me beside the point
[As I said I dont get the point]