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The shoe-ing of a president

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William Crawley | 15:08 UK time, Tuesday, 16 December 2008

George Bush says this counts as one of the "weirest" moments of his presidency, and it's now a you tube sensation. An Iraqi journalist abandons editorial impartiality to hurl both his shoes at the US president during a press conference in Baghdad.

Even showing the heel of your shoe to someone is considered an egregious insult in Arab culture, because shoes are considered ritually unclean within Islam. For that reason, wearing shoes inside a mosque is culturally prohibited. (And it is not enough to simply remove shoes either; they should be left outside the sacred space or carried in the left hand with the heels together.) Other cultures, of course, of the heeling gesture, but many of these lack the deeply religious significance of the shoe. The president ducks his way out of the shoe-shoot with some grace and dismisses the incident as a bit of silliness, but there's no doubt that, in the eyes of the Iraqi people, he has just been subjected to a gross humiliation on live television.

Am I alone in being unimpressed by the speed with which the president's security reacted in this incident?

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    Bush should stand judgment under an international tribunal and be judged for crimes against humanity. Im sure it would be much tougher to dodge the attacks of a true legal system.

    As for the Shoe thrower, I wonder what would have happed to him if he threw his shoe’s to saddam husein.

  • Comment number 2.


    This idiot should have thrown his shoes at Saddam. Coward.

    The best part of this story is the fact that he was protesting the war, yet the TV station he works for is demanding he be released from jail "...in accordance with democracy and freedom of expression Iraqis were promised by the new era and American authorities."

    Hilarious. So he threw his shoes at the President of the United States as a protest against the principles of which he is now demanding should be be applied to free him! Beautiful, isn’t it?


  • Comment number 3.

    But again inst throwing both your shoes a sign of desperation and true impotence for what a foreign occupation force has one to your country.
    How many Iraqi Children have been killed, displaced because of an illegal war? Innocent people killed? Why for misleading reports and erroneous information.
    G. Bush should stand under trail and see if it was an honest mistake or something his people in the CIA cooked up for him at his own personal request.

  • Comment number 4.

    There is no doubt whatsoever about what would have happened to this journalist had he thrown a shoe, or even held one up, in the face of Saddam. He would have been arrested, stripped, tortured, half-drowned, revived, then re-tortured before being publicly executed by stoning. Then, and only then, would his body have been dragged though the streets of Baghdag by a pack of dogs (a ritually unclean animal within Islam) so that the entire city could throw their shoes on his corpse. And all of that would have been legal under Saddam's regime.

  • Comment number 5.

    I live in the United States. President Bush has been the shame of our country for a long time, and I am very proud of the man who threw the shoe. It didn't hurt our president, and it got a very powerful and important point across. Many, many of us celebrate the act for what it is: a beautifully useful gesture that breaks through the walls that surround powerholders like Bush. That man found a voice.

    We smile. We cheer.

  • Comment number 6.


    The only idiot greater than the one who threw the shoes is the one who thinks he was some kind of hero.

  • Comment number 7.

    William to answer your last question - I thought the security reaction was appalling - Bush's reactions were far quicker than anyone else around him.

    As for the actual incident - it means nothing to Bush personally - he's seen his country attacked, embassies bombed, flags burned - I think he can cope with a pair of shoes. Obama, being so much more culturally aware would, of course, have been suitably insulted.

  • Comment number 8.

    Wow, the Secret Service did a pathetic job protecting the president. They had better shape up before Obama gains office, there won't be room for error with the way people feel about him.

  • Comment number 9.

    I understand that the shoe shop through which this journalist purchased these weapons has sold over 10,000 pairs of this particular brand of shoes.
    I have to say I'm impressed by George Bush's reflexes, but not that of the secret service.


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