How many journalists have attended political events that are really public relations exercises and felt used, insulted and abused? All of us.

How many have the courage to stand up and protest? That’s why I am proud to nominate Muntadar al-Zeidi, a correspondent for Al-Baghdadia television, an Iraqi-owned station based in Cairo, Egypt, for a special global Emmy Award for his services to the journalism of conscience, and for going beyond the constrictive call of duty by hurling his shoes—an insult in the Arab world– at the visiting President of the United States, the rarely honorable George W. Bush.

The correspondent personally was the recipient of the brutal violence that consumed Iraq last year, reports the Washington Post:

al-Zaidi, colleagues said, was kidnapped by Shiite militiamen last year and was later released.

JOURNALIST CONFRONTS BUSH IN BAGHDAD
AN EMMY NOMINATION FOR A SHOE THROWING JOURNALIST?
MADOFF MAIMS

While Bush successfully ducked, Muntadar al-Zeidi’s accompanying remarks must be entered in the TV Hall of Fame as well and admired for brevity, although most of the news accounts truncated them, and distorted them.

He said: “This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog,” Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times reported in a pool report to the White House press corps.

Myers reported that when the man threw the second shoe, he added: “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” Needless to say outrage over Iraqi victims of this war has been missing in most of the media for most of the war.

Bush, who has been dancing around critics for 8 years, ducked as the shoes whizzed past his head and landed with a thud against the wall behind him. He can duck but he can’t hide.

“It was a size 10,” Bush joked later.

Bad joke.

David Swanson, from ‘Let’s Try Democracy,’ comments:

I don’t advocate violence, even in response to violence, much less as substitution for words, and yet it seems to me that al-Zeidi has restored the good standing of journalists in the world. He’s punctuated his brief editorial with a statement in the universal language of television. A cream pie would have helped but would probably have tipped off the Secret Service to his plans. With the toss of two shoes, this journalist communicated more honest information to more people than a thousand New York Times exposes on aluminum tubes or expert commentaries on the Pentagon paid for by the Pentagon.

Gabriele from The Cat’s Dream requests your support:

Dear friends,

The brave Iraqi journalist Montadhar Al-Zaydi has shown to the world the emperor is naked. He’s been now taken hostage in his own country by the sectarian Quisling government of the Green Zone. Not only should he be released immediately; he must be honoured by any decent human being as a hero.

Please, sign this petition in his favour now .

Thanks,

Best wishes,
Gabriele

AP reported:

“Iraqi culture, throwing shoes at someone is a sign of contempt. Iraqis whacked a statue of Saddam with their shoes after U.S. marines toppled it to the ground following the 2003 invasion.

White House press secretary Dana Perino suffered an eye injury in the news conference melee; NBC News reported she was hit in the face with a microphone. Bush brushed off the incident, comparing it to political protests at home.

“So what if a guy threw his shoe at me?” he said.”

Editors Note:The toppling of the statue was a staged event and photographs here.

AlJazeera reported:

The incident will serve as a vivid reminder of the widespread opposition to the US-led invasion of, and subsequent war in, Iraq – the conflict which has come to define Bush’s presidency.

Bush shrugged off the incident and quipped: “All I can report is that it’s a size 10.”

Adil Shamoo, an Iraqi analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, told Al Jazeera: “I think we should go beyond the shoe and think about the fact that the US should respect Iraq’s sovereignty in order to regain respect of the Iraqi people and the Arab world.

“I think Bush has increased terrorism against the United States and instability in the Middle East because of his policies.”

Comment by Blogreally.com:

Sometimes it is hard to tell what of news in the online world is The Onion and what is really news. We accept this is news.

Bush flew to Iraq? The journalists didn’t have take off their shoes like we do when we board a plane? They let ungrateful-shoe-throwers within 20 feet of the POTUS? How the mighty have fallen.

In answer to his question: “So what if a guy threw his shoe at me?” below is a video news item dated 11/26/08 from Jamal Dajani, an award winning producer and Senior Director of Middle Eastern Programming at Link TV:

The president must have missed the sight of tens of thousands of Iraqis who gathered in Firdous Square where Saddam Hussein’s statue once stood and chanted, “No, no, no to the occupiers!” He must have missed them dragging and pummeling his effigy with their shoes — a gesture of contempt in the Arab world — then jumping hysterically on it as they stamped out flames that had erupted after someone set it afire.

There he goes again! Standing in front of thousands of applauding soldiers at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, President Bush staunchly defended the US-led invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

“The consequences of success in Iraq will resonate far beyond that country’s borders… will resonate when your children and grandchildren begin to study the history of peace,” he said. “Success will frustrate Iran’s ambitions to dominate the region. Success will show millions across the Middle East that a future of liberty and democracy is possible.”

These telling images of “success” were beamed to millions of viewers in the Arab world. Are they waiting anxiously for a similar experience of liberty and democracy?

Leave it to Andy Borowitz to bring the news home.

Yankees Sign Iraqi Hurler – Shoe-throwing Right-hander Impresses Scouts

In their latest bid to beef up their pitching rotation for the 2009 season, the New York Yankees today signed Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zeidi to a three-year deal worth $32 million.

The right-handed al-Zeidi, 28, impressed the Yankee scouts with his performance in Baghdad yesterday when he threw both of his shoes at President George W. Bush. While neither of the shoes hit their target, both throws “had great velocity and good movement,” said Yankee owner Hank Steinbrenner.

“The first shoe was high and outside but the second one was right down the middle,” Mr. Steinbrenner said. The Yankee boss said that he was also impressed with Mr. al-Zeidi’s fighting spirit when Secret Service agents tackled him. “That could come in handy when we have a series with Boston,” he said.

Associate Editors Note: Good thing that I am not an Iraqi to join in solidarity to display my contempt as it pertains to this “end of an error,” for as “the Dissector” points out:

Cherie, had you been in Baghdad and had YOUR shoes on, they might have done real damage. YOUR shoes could be weapons of mass destruction:

$10,000,000,000,000.00 Hangover: a post from the DailyKos The Day the Dearth Stood Still by LithiumCola Sun Dec 14, 2008 at 02:03:01 PM PST

In the January issue of Harper’s Magazine (not online yet), Linda J. Bilmes, lecturer in public finance at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2001 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and University Professor of Economics at Columbia, describe the cost of the Bush Presidency in an article titled “The $10 Trillion dollar hangover: Paying the Price for the Bush years.” NOTE: They have written this book and have a web site, Three Trillion Dollar War:

The result of deficit spending is debt. When President Bush took office, the national debt was $5.7 trillion. Now it is $10.6 trillion — and Congress voted in October to raise the debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion, the seventh such hike since President Bush to office and the second since last July. If, as is quite likely, we reach the new ceiling by January 20, the outgoing President will have managed to amass more debt than all of his predecessors combined.

Bilmes and Stiglitz further state, “the total bill for Bush-era excess — the total new debt combined with the total new accrued obligations — amounts to $10.35 trillion.”

In that time — that is to say, in the time that Washington was racking up that excess, using that money for something-or-other; the time from when President Bush took office to now — the cost of a family health insurance premium has gone up 87%; the number of uninsured people has gone up 19%; the number of families living in poverty has gone up 19%; real median household income has dropped 1%; and corporate profits have gone up 68%.