Firesign Theatre:
Shoes for the dead.
HI! I’m Joe Beats.
Say, what chance does a deceased returning war veteran have for that good payin’ job, more sugar, and that free Mule we’ve all been dreaming of?
Now take off your shoes.
Now you can see how increased spending opportunities, mean harder work for everyone, and more of it, too! So, do yourself a favor, Joe. Join with millions of your friends and neighbors, and, TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES!
“For INDUSTRY!”

Posted by: biklett | Dec 15 2008 8:33 utc | 4

And then there is of course the whole shoe thing itself. As it first entered into the American consciousness during the Firdos Square staged extravaganza when the unknown Iraqi was beating Saddam’s head with his shoe, and subsequently spun worldwide in what now is commonly understood to be a fraudulent event. Billmon used to talk of such juxtapositions as a matter of a “contrast gainer”, event where one thing is shone to be superior through its contrast with another. And with this event there can be little doubt about how the contrast between the last memory of the shoe thing, and the new version. These things mean something to Americans, given their multicultural orientation. Whereby they naturally appropriate things from other cultures more redly than other people, something indicated by what Siun said about Americans (already) sending their old shoes to the white house. And underlined by how the phrase “the mother of all …..” was appropriated from Saddam himself, and is now ubiquitous in American slang. If Bush had any sense he would have allowed the shoe to hit him.

Posted by: anna missed | Dec 15 2008 10:47 utc | 6

Not sure how tangential this might be, but could anyone explain to me the custom of throwing shoes around electricity wires/phone wires? I’ve never understood that one..

Posted by: A | Dec 15 2008 13:58 utc | 8

Anyway, I think George ducked a half second too soon for me to buy this as an entirely spontaneous incident.
I had the same thought, Monolycus. but if it was staged, why? in any case, it should also be noted Dana Perino got a black eye from getting jabbed by a microphone in the melee afterwards. perfect.

Posted by: Lizard | Dec 15 2008 15:54 utc | 10

…if it was staged, why?
Drama. Total absence of mortal danger, but front page material all the way.
The American public has become too soft with/sympathetic to the Iraqis to stay fired up over the latest al Qaeda #2/lieutenant (remember what a yawner that mid-season replacement al-Zarqawi was?) and “back the commander-in-chief” when he inevitably reneges on the proposed SOFA. “Terrorism” and “security” are played out, but petty slaps in the face will keep the American public bleeding themselves to death at whomever they’re pointed.
Americans will gladly incinerate men, women and children with white phosphorus over a perceived insult such as stock footage of dancing Palestinians or the bodies of some burned mercenaries, whereas they are no longer alarmed enough by “terrorists” to turn their bottled water over to a TSA agent without grumbling nowadays. Unlike the fear response, the righteous indignation response never seems to become fatigued.
That’s the thing about barbarian cultures, they never deviate from the ethnographies, and Americans are particularly easy to play. They like to observe others oh, so clinically (“Muslims are offended by shoes, you say! Whatever next?”), but utterly fail to understand how very, very primitive their own behaviours read with only the slightest of distance from it.

Posted by: Monolycus | Dec 15 2008 16:24 utc | 12

He’s ducked everything else in his miserable life, why not a couple of shoes?

Posted by: beq | Dec 15 2008 18:15 utc | 14

ups, me #15

Posted by: rudolf | Dec 15 2008 18:42 utc | 16

I find it telling that they are giving the reporter drug and alcohol tests. Apparently, the govt consensus is that ‘sober’ Iraqis are really quite happy and therefore uncomplaining about the continuing war and the murder and maiming of their countrymen.

Posted by: Ensley | Dec 15 2008 18:59 utc | 18

I don’t follow, b. It’s the Iraqi equivalent of giving him two middle fingers and calling his mother a whore. That’s a little different than, say, throwing a pie at him.

Posted by: scarshapedstar | Dec 15 2008 19:38 utc | 20

@20 – It’s the Iraqi equivalent of giving him two middle fingers and calling his mother a whore.
Guess what, the Iraqis know how to give two middle fingers and calling Bush’s mother a whore. Throwing shoes is an escalation form that as throwing pies.
@21 – Why dump on Juan Cole? This is the second time you’ve put Juan Cole in a negative light. Just curious.
It was just a continuation of the post before this one. The base behind “Striking someone with a shoe is a grave insult in Islam” and “Iraqis are incapable to use these complicate planes without U.S. help” is the same.
It was at least the fifth or sixth time I put Cole in a negative light I hope. He deserves to stand there. While he has some interesting stuff to say, he is also quite biased towards certain streams in the Middle East and mixes U.S. platitudes into his work to keep is base covered.

Posted by: b | Dec 15 2008 20:29 utc | 22

Throwing shoes is an old Hebrew insult as well: (Psalm 60). I think it indicates disdain for an enemy or a claims of conquest. Poor George. I guess the White House press corp can only get interviews bare foot now!

Posted by: Diogenes | Dec 15 2008 22:44 utc | 24

While I fully agree with b and angry arab that the rote repetition of ‘a great insult’ has grown really really tiresome, I was thinking maybe it’s better to let the US press run with the theme. Because, an insult more or less falls in the realm of freedom of expression, right? If Muntazar el Zeid survives incarceration, his lawyers can hopefully secure a lighter sentence with that argument…

Posted by: Alamet | Dec 15 2008 23:40 utc | 26

Thousands Demand Release of Shoe Throwing Journalist

telegraph.co.uk — Thousands of Iraqis have taken to the streets to demand the release of a reporter who threw his shoes at President George Bush.

I can’t say what I really want to say, it’d get me a visit by the SS and prolly land me in prison too…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 16 2008 4:03 utc | 28

badger has an alarming post

An Iraqi newspaper called AlQawat alThalitha (the third power) says today that the wave of arrests has not stopped, and has now included Sunni, Shiite and independent Arabist officers not only in the Interior Ministry, but also in the Ministry of Defense and police forces, the arrests now numbering a total of 66. The paper cites what it calls very highly-placed officials in the government and in the Green Zone, who say there is a ongoing investigation that is top-secret, based on the idea of a planned coup relating to the Awda party, which is a Baath offshoot.

Posted by: annie | Dec 17 2008 18:08 utc | 30

…if it was staged, why?
Drama. Total absence of mortal danger, but front page material all the way.
More in that line of thought…
Bush Tries to White-Wash History; Portrays Himself as a Victim

By Matthew Yglesias, The American Prospect. Posted December 17, 2008.
Even after all this time, Bush views the Iraq War with regret not over anything he did, but rather, over something that was done to him.
It’s tiresome to need to point this out at this late date but, yes, George W. Bush and his administration misled the country while making the case for war with Iraq and, remarkably, are still trying to mislead people about it. In a Dec. 1 interview with ABC News’ Charlie Gibson, Bush said that “the biggest regret” of his presidency was “the intelligence failure in Iraq.”
In other words, his biggest regret wasn’t regret over anything he did but rather regret over something that was done to him, a vague “intelligence failure” rather than a misguided decision to invade another country. Bush explained that “a lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington, D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence.”
This is, even by Bush standards, a pretty breathtaking revision of history. In fact, very few members of Congress looked at the intelligence — Thomas Ricks reports in his book Fiasco that just five read the classified version of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction capabilities. But had more members taken the time, they would have found what Spencer Ackerman and John Judis reported back in June of 2003 — that the Bush administration removed a number of caveats and contrary pieces of evidence from the classified version of the estimate when producing a shorter, unclassified version for public consumption. More curious investigators might have been further interested in the fact, reported in the same piece, that even the more accurate classified version represented a dramatic change in the intelligence community’s assessment of the Iraq situation. As Judis and Ackerman observe, when George Tenet offered his January 2002 review of nuclear proliferation issues “he did not even mention a nuclear threat from Iraq.”
The main thing that changed over the course of 2002 wasn’t anything about the intelligence, it was the fact that the Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq. Consequently, a new, more alarmist intelligence estimate was written up. Then a more alarmist redacted version was released to the public. And the administration’s public statements were more alarming still. There were real intelligence failures here, but they were and are dwarfed by the policy failure. This failure was driven by administration hawks such as Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Doug Feith who appear to have embraced the deluded conspiracy theories of American Enterprise Institute adjunct fellow Laurie Mylroie (who thanks Wolfowitz in the introduction to her conspiracy-mongering book) and Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes (who followed up his entry into the genre with an authorized biography of Dick Cheney) who placed Saddam Hussein at the center of anti-American terrorism around the globe.
MORE

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 18 2008 2:51 utc | 32