If the Shoe Fits of Rage

Muntadhar al Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who tossed his shoes
at Bush the Lesser over the weekend. Yeah, I know,
it's an odd choice for me, but I'm impressed with the chutzpah it took.
(And yes, I realize the irony of complimenting a Muslim
with a Yiddish word.)

And his sense of proportion. Doing nothing would have been weak, frustrating, and possibly considered tacit approval. A bullet would have been too much, both in terms of punishment and retribution and also in the way it would have made a martyr of the C-plus President, putting him into the same class as Lincoln, Kennedy, and the almost-forgotten James Garfield.

But flinging shoes was perfect. To most USAmericans, it looks like a desperate, almost ridiculously ineffectual act.

But in Islamic cultures, the bottom of the foot is considered incredibly profane. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, when the corpo-news showed us people rubbing their shoes over photographs of the man, that was an incredibly insulting act for those people. An equivalent here in North America would have been if we'd used the photos for toilet paper. That's the level of insult and disgust the act of shoe tossing conveys to the Iraqi people.

Muntadhar al Zaidi may have made himself a joke for Jay Leno, but I'm sure he's become a cultural hero in his country.

As for making him the Man for Monday, I'll get back to the pretty, muscular boys next week.

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...if I leave out the comma

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