Iraqi Journalist Throws His Shoes at President Bush

Every presidency has its defining moment. Franklin Roosevelt told Americans that they had nothing to fear but fear itself. John F. Kennedy said "Ich bin ein Berliner." Richard Nixon waved goodbye from the White House chopper pad. And George W. Bush dodged a pair of shoes.

Muntadar al-Zeidi, the journalist who threw his shoes at the President at a December 14 news conference, has a place in future editions of Trivial Pursuit, as do his employer (Al-Baghdadia Television) and his shoe size (10).

"Here is the farewell kiss you DOG!" al-Zeidi shouted. "This is from widows and orphans and those killed in Iraq! YOU are responsible for the deaths of THOUSANDS of Iraqis!"

It's not the first time that shoes have made political or pop culture headlines. Comedy writers, along with your author, have turned out an embarrassment of material.

"And we thought, hopefully that's just a one-of-a-kind episode. Unfortunately, however, the news coming out of the Middle East is that Iran is developing a long-range loafer." --David Letterman

In October 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev spoke at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. To make a point, he removed a shoe and pounded it on the podium. As the story was told, and as how I pictured things happening, he deliberately pulled off a shoe and used it as a prop. A revised version indicates he was wearing tight shoes, slipped them off, dropped his watch, reached for it, came up with a shoe instead, and got caught up in the heat of the moment.

When people of a certain age think of Nikita Khrushchev, two things come to mind: the Cuban missile crisis and The Shoe Incident.

"It's not just President Bush. Today somebody threw a pair of shoes at Sarah Palin. And she was very upset. She said, 'Do you have these in black?' and threw them back." --Jay Leno

In Islamic culture, throwing shoes at someone is a sign of disrespect. To show someone the soles of your shoes, or of your bare feet, is also impolite. Streets are dirty, and so is anything that touches them. Shoe phobia also extends to the non-Islamic world. On their first North American tour in 1964, the Beatles stayed at New York City's very British-proper Plaza Hotel. A photographer asked John Lennon to lie on a bed and show off the Cuban-heeled boots that had already become one of the Fabs' trademarks. "That's not the image we want to project," a Plaza staffer said. "Don't worry," John answered. "We'll buy the bed."

"Shoes have been added to the list of weapons that may not be brought into the United States. Visitors must remove their shoes at the border, and pick them up on their way home. Every border crossing now resembles a large shoe room." --Your Author

Adlai Stevenson was a Democratic senator from Illinois in the 1950s. He opposed Dwight Eisenhower in the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections. He was a liberal intellectual, a guy-next-door who gave voters an alternative to General Ike and conservative Republican politics.

During the 1952 campaign, he made a stop in Flint, Michigan. William Gallagher, a photographer for the Flint Journal, noticed, when Mr. Stevenson sat with his legs crossed, that the sole of one of his shoes had a hole in it. He snapped a picture. It won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for photography.

William Gallagher's by-line appeared in the Journal into the sixties. His name also appeared in reference books in our high school library, in the list of Pulitzer winners. This was huge, in a factory town where the knack for writing wasn't always respected as it should be, where only nerds read newspapers. Someone from our local paper had won the big prize.

"Mr. Bush, former managing general partner of the Texas Rangers, who traded Sammy Sosa to the Cubs for scatter-armed closer Mitch Williams, said the shoe thrower's location was good, but that his release point needed work." --Your Author

Ferdinand Marcos was democratically elected as president of the Phillipines in 1965. He became a dictator, president re-elected for life. He and his wife Imelda accumulated a personal fortune estimated in the billions of US dollars, at a time when the great majority of their country's people lived in poverty.

In 1986, The People Power Revolution toppled the Marcos regime. Found in the presidential palace was Imelda Marcos' collection of shoes, at first estimated to hold three thousand pairs.

"I never had three thousand pairs of shoes," Mrs. Marcos later said. "All I had was about one thousand and sixty."

If that total is correct, and if she wore one pair per day, over three years would pass before she got around to wearing them all.

In 2001, the former First Lady opened a shoe museum, in a part of Manila where many of the world's shoes are made.

"They went into my closets looking for skeletons, but thank God, all they found were shoes, beautiful shoes," the quotable Mrs. Marcos said on opening day.

"Federal legislation has been introduced requiring retail stores to perform background checks and impose a three day waiting period prior to any purchase of shoes" --Your Author

Conspiracy theories have already been suggested. How did he throw two shoes and say everything he said in four seconds? There had to have been a second shoe thrower.

Now, all any anti-American protesters need do is wave signs with shoes on them, or display a papier-mache model of a shoe. Everyone will get it.

The Turkish company that made the black leather shoe known only as Model 271 has received 370,000 orders for the item renamed "The Bush Shoe." Nineteen thousand orders have come from the United States. (Proof that there is, indeed, no business like shoe business.) The company has hired an additional one hundred workers to process the orders. The President has, at last, done something to stimulate the collapsing world economy.

At the end of its run, the Bush administration finally has its logo. The history of the American presidency has a new symbol, to go with George Washington's white wig, Lincoln's hat, FDR's cigarette holder, and Margaret Truman.