The Nature of Shoe-tossing

An Iraqi reporter was caught shooting a shoe at President Bush and the leader naively remarked that it was like getting jeered at. Little does he know about the symbolism around the Islamic culture that he could make a statement like that, the chief of state was a target for not one but two shoes. I had a similar fate when teaching in an Arab-speaking republic ten years back, a school owner staged a kangaroo court and the only crime I committed was that the school security guard helped me come in the school with some heavy books. The owner, a local sheik, assumed that I was taking advantage of the man enough to slap on his shoe faced in my direction. Then I understood that he considered me to be beneath him. I was soon glad to leave the school and the country for a safer haven.

The President had to reason that calling for a continued presence of American soldiers for a continued length in front of an Arab press was going to aggravate an already tender situation among their journalists, as was illustrated by this singular event. A day later, the shoe-tossing event was televised around the Middle East and the world as protesters carried their shoes in front of Iraqi television, in indignation. Showing the sole of the shoe stands as an insult to whoever is on the other side and in the case of Bush it meant that he was very poorly regarded because of the bungling in the Middle East and elsewhere. The shoe-tossing event even appeared again on the Hour in Canada to show how the common people want the arrested person to be released from custody. I hope that Obama will earn greater respect when he travels abroad.