But this is Dubya we're talking about. Worst. President. Ever. Surely he deserves better. Surely he deserves something a bit more ... thoughtful? Profound? Ironic? After all, while a shoe is nice, it's also terribly cliched. Boring, even.
Of course, I officially endorse none of the following far more appropriate, delightfully hurl-able options. Do not ever throw anything at President Bush, because you could get shot or perhaps go to jail for a very long time, which, despite how you'd be hailed a hero worldwide forevermore, would just be no fun at all. Don't do it. Throwing is wrong. OK?
1) Rainbow flag
Obvious, but effective. What better way to say, "Thanks for keeping the last fundamental civil right in hateful lockdown for another 20 years by kowtowing to the sexually ignorant and the religiously malformed, you sad lump of homophobic lint."
Bonus suggestion: Attach small photo of Bush's new son-in-law and Rove sycophant, Henry Hager, to the flag. Implied rumor: Henry's secretly gay! Just like half the GOP and all televangelists and John Travolta! The AP photogs will eat it up.
Note: Be sure to fold flag tightly for ideal trajectory, lest it unravel mid-flight and accidentally land on the head of the Saudi Arabian reporter, inducing horrified screams and spontaneous combustion. No one wants a scene.
2) Book about science
Clever! Something this president has actually never seen before: A real book full of complex ideas written by people who actually understand that humans didn't ride on the backs of dinosaurs, the Earth is not a giant litter box made of Cheez-Whiz and Jesus spittle, and that the Bible is basically a violent little children's fable. Amazing. Make it a soft paperback, because those hardbacks are a bitch and you don't want to hurt anyone. Remember, science is your friend.
3) Birth control pills
Turns out those little pink plastic saucer things actually soar quite well when hurled like little Frisbees o' Female Empowerment. It's a nice way to thank Bush for sucking the sour teat of the sexist religious right and Catholic church, front-loading the nation's courts with misogynist judges and stabbing at the heart of women's rights for nearly a decade.
Alternative: Load individual RU-486 pills into a large straw and blast them at Bush's head like Divine Spitwads of Cervical Righteousness. It's more sustained fun, and might get you in less trouble overall. Don't forget to aim a few at Jenna, in the honest hope she will never, ever breed. Hey, it's for her own good. Didn't you know her husband is secretly gay? I swear I just read that somewhere.
4) Crayons
Back in the early days of the Worst Presidency Ever, Bush used mostly Burnt Sienna with the occasional Purple Pizzazz. But lately Dubya's been turning to Mango Tango and Beaver, with a bit of Neon Carrot -- saying that one aloud always makes him giggle -- to sign all those laws, last-minute enviro rollbacks, sweetheart deals to Big Oil, final bitch-slaps and FUs to the conscious and the hopeful.
Did you know the Crayola company officially replaced Teal Blue with a color called "Wild Blue Yonder"? That makes George feel proud to be an American. He says to himself, "You think that damn Al Qaeda would ever use a color like that? You're gul-dang right they wouldn't! They're use some stupid America-hating color like Terrorism Turquoise or Suicide Bomber Sepia. Jerks!"
5) Dick Cheney
Cheney, thought to be made up entirely of black tar, razor blades and cold, glowering evil, certainly looks like he weighs as much as a tumescent water buffalo, and therefore would be just impossibly difficult to raise over your head and heave at Bush with any sort of accuracy or distance.
Turns out, however, that Dick is merely a phantasm, a collective nightmare, a little smear of something slimy and gray and unidentifiable, like you find on a dark road after it rains. Deeply unpleasant, but also nearly weightless. Easy to fling, after all! Warning: Do not to get any on your fingers or anywhere near your eyes or other mucus membranes. He may be an ephemeral hellbeast, but he's still one enormously toxic Dick
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/12/17/notes121708.DTL
Mohamed Makhafa, a retired school teacher, says he considers the size 10s a 'medal of freedom and more valuable than everything he owns', Al Jazeera news channel reported.
Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who became famous overnight in the Arab world, had thrown his shoes at President Bush during a joint press conference of the US leader with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad.
"It is more precious than all my property. I will bequeath it to my children and display it in a museum and call it the Medal of Freedom," Makhafa told AlArabiya.net.
http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Saudi-man-bids--10-mn-for-shoes-hurled-at-Bush/399684/
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They hate us for our shoes. Somewhere in what passes for the deeper regions of President Bush's mind might come that reassuring giggle of a thought as he once again rationalizes away Iraqi ingratitude for the benevolence he has bestowed upon them. Ever at peace with himself, despite many obvious reasons not to be, Bush quipped, "I didn't know what the guy said but I saw his sole." But the lame jokes no longer work.
The shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist is now a venerated celebrity throughout the Mideast, and his words to the president - "this is the farewell kiss, you dog" - will stand as the enduring epitaph in the region on Bush's folly, which is the reality of his claimed legacy of success in the war on terror. That and the shoe-thrower's devastating follow-up as he threw his second shoe, "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq," a reminder that we have used much deadlier force than a shoe in the shock-and-awe invasion once celebrated in the American media as a means of building respect for democracy.
This was more than a presidential photo-op gone wildly awry. One might suspect that the weekend event was designed originally to draw attention from the Friday release of the long awaited Senate Armed Services Committee's report on Bush's torture policy. A report that unanimously concluded that it was the White House and not a few bad apples that "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority." The report, endorsed by all Republican senators on the committee, including ranking minority member Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., cited former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora's testimony that "the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq - as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat - are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."
Not only has the Bush administration subverted the image of the United States' commitment to the rule of law and justice, but it has done similar damage to our reputation for economic efficiency. On Sunday, the New York Times reported on an unpublished 513-page federal history of the Iraq reconstruction that it termed "a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure."
This invasion, which according to then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, was supposed to be financed by Iraqi oil money, but instead has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $1 trillion. The results, as the Times' account of the report put it, are abysmal: "The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed."
No wonder then that we are perceived as blundering bullies by so many in the region that we claimed to be interested in modernizing. That an Iraqi journalist, whose family had been victimized by Saddam Hussein and who was kidnapped by insurgents while attempting to work as a journalist, came to so loathe the American president, as does much of the world, should serve as the final grade on the Bush administration. It should also serve as a caution to President-elect Barack Obama, as he seeks to triangulate withdrawal from Iraq with an escalation of the far more treacherous attempt to conquer Afghanistan.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/16/EDHB14OLK5.DTL
The man who chucked a shoe at President Bush missed -- twice! -- but Press Secretary Dana Perino wasn't so lucky. She got a black eye when Secret Service agents scrambled to stop the angry Iraqi journalist -- and she was smacked with a microphone! Perino showed off her shiner at today's White House briefing and joked, "The shoe check-in and check-out policy will begin tomorrow."
http://extratv.warnerbros.com/2008/12/bush_gets_boot_shoe_throwing_b.php
BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- President George W. Bush's trip to Baghdad was supposed to underscore recent progress in Iraq, and mark the conclusion of a long-term security deal between the United States and Iraq. But with a well-aimed pair of loafers, an Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi managed to upstage the president's tightly scripted visit.The shoe-heard-around-the-world is particularly ironic, because of the absolutely massive security operation surrounding Bush's trip here. On the day of the president's visit, U.S. and Iraqi troops were out in force, and patrols were stepped up in Baghdad's Sadr City to block any potential attacks against the International Zone, where the president and his entourage would visit.
Earlier this year, Sadr City served as the launching point for a wave of rocket and mortar attacks against the IZ (a.k.a. the Green Zone). U.S. and Iraqi forces reclaimed the southern quadrant of Sadr City in a brutal street-by-street fight; while that battle raged, combat engineers built a concrete security wall that effectively pushed insurgent rocket teams beyond the range of the Green Zone. After a cease-fire was concluded, Iraqi Army units were able to take up checkpoints inside the rest of Sadr City.
Still, forces were on high alert. I accompanied Lt. Col. Michael Pemrick, deputy commander of the Third Brigade Combat Team, Fourth Infantry Division, as he inspected the Iraqi Army checkpoints near the security wall. He also stopped outside a few shops to chat with some young men hanging out on the sidewalk: How's security in the neighborhood? Do you have any community workers around here? Did you watch the game last night -- Barcelona-Madrid?
"You used to hear a lot of noises around Sadr City -- a lot of stuff blowing up," he told them. "You don't hear that anymore."
COSTA DO SAUIPE, Brazil (AP) — President Hugo Chavez said Tuesday that an Iraqi journalist was acting for his country's people when he tossed his shoes at President George W. Bush.
Chavez said he doesn't favor throwing shoes at anybody, but that the incident could be called "the shoe toss of a people's dignity."
"One must remember that Bush has not thrown shoes at the people of Iraq — but bombs, death, destruction," he said.
Earlier, Chavez had a more jovial response to the incident — laughing and calling it "funny." Referring to the shoe-tosser, he said, "What courage!"
The leftist Venezuelan leader then hedged those remarks, however, adding: "At least it didn't hit him."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hz7R0j3P4KG158DF1rOnEWwlpJLQD9543MI00
Durgham al-Zaidi said he had been told his brother, Muntazer, 29, had appeared privately in the high security Green Zone in the heart of Baghdad.
"That means my brother was severely beaten and they fear his appearance could trigger anger at the court," he said.
It was not clear whether Mr al-Zaidi had been allowed any legal representation at the hearing.
Although he has not yet been formally charged it is expected he will face trial for "offending the head of a foreign state".
But legal experts disagreed on the length of sentence allowed under Iraqi law for the crime. One source said the maximum sentence was two years while another suggested is could be as much as seven.
Mr al-Zaidi has not been seen in public since he was manhandled out of the press conference where he threw both his shoes at President Bush while cursing.
Durgham said his brother was so badly beaten he had to be taken to the Ibn Sina hospital within the Green Zone for treatment broken ribs, a broken arm and facial injuries.
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WASHINGTON, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- The United States would have condemned the beating of Muntazer al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist who hurled shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush if that happened, State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said on Tuesday.
"Obviously, we condemn any kind of unnecessary force used against the reporter. I don't know that that happened," Wood told a news briefing when asked to comment on the allegations.
"But, certainly, if that did take place, we would condemn that," the spokesman said.
Zaidi, 29, was immediately tackled by security guards on Sunday night after throwing his shoes on Bush at a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry has issued an arrest warrant against Zaidi for "committing a misdemeanor for throwing his shoes on President Bush."
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/17/content_10515440.htm
By Mark Morford
