Yesterday in Iraq, Dubya got what he deserved as a furious local journalist tossed two shoes his way as the rest of the world gasped and guffawed.


Shoe One came with this note:

This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog.

Shoe two was delivered thusly:

This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.

Bush, obviously a Wii Fit fan, artfully dodged both shoes because, obviously, he knew they weren’t soccer balls.

In Arab culture, shoes are considered, “filthy,” and tossing them at the American President is a grave show of disrespect.
What I want to know is what took so long?

Why did it take an angry Iraqi journalist to finally do after eight years what should have been done long ago by the mainstream American media?

22 Comments

  1. David!
    Shame on that reporter! He should have practiced his aim. Still, somebody needs to give the man a medal.
    You’re right though, that the American media should have done this and done it better and more effectively a long time back.

  2. Yes, Dananjay! There are many ways to “throw a shoe” — it’s so disgusting that MSNBC all morning has been calling Bush “brave” and “how awful” it was a shoe was thrown at him and that people celebrating should “shut up and go back to bed.” Then you have to remember NBC is owned by GE and GE is owned by, and beholden to, their billion dollar military contracts. Nothing NBC says about Bush and the war should be believed. They are his co-conspirators.

  3. True, David!
    Are other Television News Networks less biased in America? I’ve heard that Fox News is the worst of the lot followed by MSNBC and CNN and the rest.

  4. Dananjay —
    Yes, they’re all corrupt — they’re too scared of FCC regulation to do any daring news coverage — so we’re left to get the real news from bloggers and the international media to tell us the truth we miss from our mainstream television news.
    Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch. They’re ultra-conservative and have no bones about openly hating anything liberal or democrat.
    MS/NBC and CNN tend to be on the left — but they’ve done zero important, critical, analysis of the war.
    ABC and CBS are sort of lost in the soft middle. Their main concern is to not be outrageous. They are only in survival mode. You learn nothing from them.

  5. I can only hope that journalism will improve substantially with President Obama. His having a weekly youtube address seems indicative of a positive change.

  6. Oh, once Obama is president, Gordon, the mainstream media will eat him alive just as they did Clinton and Carter before him! They feel they are required to pick apart Democrat presidents while Republicans get a pass. It’s quite an amazing disconnect.

  7. Hi David,
    Yes, there are “many ways to throw a shoe”, but I think Bush deserved this literal one.
    I still think the “Dubya” was secretly thinking about whether the shoe was branded or not!

  8. I think you’re right, Katha. He deserved this humiliation. He has ruined our economy with this war and created so much animosity abroad. His reckoning cannot come soon enough.

  9. That’s interesting, David. Do FCC regulations actually prevent daring and critical coverage and analysis of events?

  10. Dananjay —
    If you want to buy more stations or get a waiver to buy a newspaper or a radio group, you need to get FCC approval. You can be turned down for any reason, so that means the mainstream broadcast media are cowed by their government overlords.

  13. David —
    It seems that the internet is the only place left where we can search and find different voices and viewpoints that differ from manufactured mainstream opinion.

  14. I think you’re right, Dananjay. The internet is where you can find the truth and analysis you need to make informed decisions. The mainstream media washes out all the subtlety and meaning from their reporting.

  15. We cheered when we saw this – I will offer lessons to anyone who wants them – throwing shoes is one of my pastimes – including making allowances for those who try to duck and dive.
    You have already discussed that it does not PAY to criticize the powers that be – you soon loose your funding.

  16. Nicola!
    I love it! You should write up an article on effective show throwing! Do you hold the heel or the toe? The guy did some pretty good tossing — he had some real velocity. Bush was extra fast and responsive. Cheney would have been knocked cold.
    We’re being shamed here all day on American television — and that tells me there’s lots of cheering for the thrower:
    1. We’re told we should never cheer when anyone throws anything at our President.
    2. We should be thankful our President is so fit and he wasn’t injured.
    3. We should be insulted that the shoe thrower was really throwing at US and not the President.
    4. Violence of any sort is unseemly.
    I feel like I just quoted a piece from the book 1984!

  17. I will see what I can do 😉
    The News is on here at the moment – there are protests in Iraq demanding that the shoe thrower be released immediately. It seems the whole of Iraq is cheering – and quite a few other nations. A huge cheer went up in the UK for starters.
    1 – Surely you can cheer when they missed – you “might” be cheering because they missed ( yeah right!)
    2 – I would argue that he is not fit to govern in the first place.
    3 – I think the recent election has shown that a large proportion of Americans feel insulted by the actions taken in their name by their government.
    4 – Pot kettle Black – what about the violence he has sanctioned.

  18. Right on, Nicola! I hate when the mainstream media hectors us and tells us how to behave when they dropped the ball on the entire WMD debacle that took us into the war.
    Cheney just said that even if they’d known there were no WMDs in Iraq, we still would’ve gone to war. That conrfirms that war was the whole plan from the moment Bush was elected.
    There are rumors today that the shoe thrower was severely beaten and that they can’t release him until his wounds heal. I have no idea if that’s true or not but there were reports of him screaming while being beaten in a back room immediately after the pitching.

  19. I think the stocks or the pillory would be a good idea for him – and a crowd armed with rotten eggs and over ripe tomatoes …….. the shoes will suffice though!
    Shocking to hear about that beating if it is true 🙁

  20. I agree, Nicola! Something must be done! We can’t let them get away with ruining the world for military profit! I, too, hope the beating and torture rumors are untrue.

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