2. Maybe I am just becoming a grouch in my old age, but I did not find the shoe incident funny. I found it pretty terrifying, actually, that a man could stand up and shout something and get two good tosses off at THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES while the President has to do his own defense.
I don’t care if our President is Bozo the Clown or that cat that is constantly shitting outside the litterbox or whatever other annoying scary thing you can think of, what if those had been, I don’t know, ceramic knives?
I don’t know. Maybe it will seem funny in a day or two but right now it just seems like everyone is laughing at the fact that we just watched a massive Secret Service failure.
Tiny Cat Pants 
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2. I know, that was my thought too. I mean this specific situation is kinda funny, but my first thought was that it brings up the larger problem of how horrific our president’s protection was in a foreign country no less.
I really think W lucky that it wasn’t a couple bullets – but, when you consider all that W has done to that country, does anyone expect the people of Iraq to act respectfully to the man? Sometimes people do reap what they sow.
Oh, and W trying to pass it all off as if the guy was just out to get attention for himself…God save us, our president is such an incredible dolt.
I thought the same thing on the Secret Service. Nobody willing to take a SHOE for the guy? C’mon.
As for W playing it off, I for once don’t think he’s that stupid … I think he’s twisting the knife.
when you consider all that W has done to that country, does anyone expect the people of Iraq to act respectfully to the man?
That’s all the more reason that the Secret Service should have been on their top game. One shoe, I can somewhat understand, but the second (with a fairly substantial time gap in between)?
The first thing I thought was the line from Austin Powers: “I mean, really, who throws a shoe?”
The second thing I thought was the whole secret service fail.
Yeah, I’m certainly not blaming the guy for wanting to throw shoes at Bush. And I’m not saying that he has a right to expect anyone in Iraq to great him with open arms.
But that has nothing (except from the angle that Dolphin brings up) to do with looking at it from an angle of a possible Secret Service failure.
And, yeah, Samantha Y, I completely agree. I thought Bush was playing it off as a twisting of the knife, too. Lord help me, because I hate the man, but I thought he played that incredibly well.
ah yes, the poor Iraqi’s, pining for the good old days under Sadam and sons.
And who could forget all the brave journalists who confronted and denounced them?
[crickets chirping]
I realize that it’s the internet so what I’m about to ask is like asking your dog not to each the sandwich you leave on the floor, but is it really so hard to imagine that the Iraqis would both not be pining for the good old days under Saddam and also not be very pleased with how things are going?
I’d be damn pissed off if my house was on fire and the fireman who came in to rescue me punched me in the face repeatedly on his way out the door with me.
And what if the brave Iraqi reporter (who works for a Baathist TV station in Egypt) was simply an outraged supporter of Sadam, still angry that he was overthrown and executed?
You have noticed that there are still Islamic terrorists?
Do you think they’re going to start sending us chocolates and flowers just as soon as Obama is inaugurated?
Are you just going to ask an increasingly bizarre series of non-sequiturs? Or do you have a point that involves something other than ranting?
You know, what struck me was something altogether different. One reason the Secret Service was taken by surprise, surely, is that everyone allowed into that press conference already had been frisked, metal detected, and vetted — repeatedly. (I’m not saying that that means it’s OK for them to sit in the back room and play pinochle, but surely they had every reason to think that the crowd was safe.) And in this familiar, repeatedly vetted crowd of respectable, accredited journalists there is still someone so angry that he will take the risk (because you know he’ll lose his job, maybe go to jail) of hurling insults at Bush. These are the folks who are doing OK under the new situation; these are the ones Bush felt so likely to be sympathetic to him that he went over there to get some goodbye applause. And even they don’t like him.
Oh, and about #1? No southerners in the cabinet is true as generally defined, but Richardson was born and currently resides south of the Mason-Dixon line and Napolitano currently resides there. I’m just saying.
I doubt Bush ever believes that a crowd of reporters (of any nationality) is going to be sympathetic.
He was, and is, the dissident president.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008281
Hell, I’d have been part of the 70% who “generally disapprove of the way he’s been handling his job as president,” if I’d ever been polled.
But I believe he’d have won a third term if the constitution hadn’t been amended.
Maybe this “redhatrob” is another Wingnut Welfare baby on the payroll of the Bush Legacy Project, or whatever they’re calling the lame attempt to cover Bush’s ass on his way out. With stupidity like that being regurgitated, who cares?
But back to the fact-based world: B., as I understand it, everyone entering the room had been searched nine ways to Sunday. So a shoe probably was the most lethal thing available to be hurled at the Chimperor (sadly). Also, in Iraqi culture throwing one’s shoes at another is not intended to do harm, but it is intended as an insult. Any superficial harm that would have been caused by a direct hit would only have been an added bonus.
I don’t mean this to be pointed at anyone specifically, but I’m finding the notion that we* are going to be able to walk away from Iraq at any point without paying some heavy tangible price. Some of it is already being paid by tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers (not to mention the ones who are already dead). But the vile arrogance of Bush– to show his face in Baghdad after all he’s responsible for– is beyond redemption. The more I think about it, I’m only sorry that the Secret Service picked a harmless and highly secure moment to have their lapse. Because if Bush and his cronies don’t pay a mortal price for Iraq, then the check is going to be handed down to us. And we’ll have earned it.
*and I mean all of us, since ‘we the people’ let the Bush administration get off scot free for mass murder and the destruction of a society
Edit: “I’m finding the notion…” quite offensive and ludicrous. I shouldn’t write when I get pissed off.
C’mon B,
Things can be horrible and funny at the same time. Like when my pants fall down in public.
i find the shoe incident effing hilarious. what nm said, these folks had surely been vetted and frisked to a fare-thee-well; but what’s the secret service gonna do, demand that reporters attend press conferences barefoot? that wouldn’t go over well.
only thing better would’ve been for somebody to land the fucker a custard pie right in the face instead. i’d pee myself laughing at that kind of footage.
The dissident president? …
hah.
His administration has played the media like a fiddle for the last 8 years. He’s as much a dissident as I am the Virgin Mary.
Merely exhiiting the sole of one’s shoe is an indication of disrespect in the Arabic world as I recall from my multi-cultural training. Throwing a shoe (or smacking the fallen status of Saddan with one, as was reported in the media over half a decade ago when we first went for a visit) shows an even higher level of contempt.
THe first show was surely a surprise to the Secret Service but the second one? FAIL.
The Secret Service fail didn’t even occur to me. I was too busy laughing and being incredibly impressed by his reflexes. Had I been in his situation, I would have a welt (ha ha) on my forehead.
B, I think you are going crochet-y (must be the afghan in the making). The whole incident stemmed from what seems to me like a cynical press opportunity, gone amuck, just like McCain’s visit to that souk (surrounded by troops he walks unprotected through the market).
Bush went to Iraq on his legacy tour, to push his line that democracy has landed in Iraq (mission accomplished), and spin away his administration’s opposition to elements in the status of forces agreement and its capitulation to Iraqi demands (too many of each to detail in parentheses).
He went in secret (his schedule said he’d be somewhere else) but this time he at least arrives in the day time (last time when he flew in under cover of darkness, so progress can perhaps be said to have been made).
A press conference is called; but this press is less tractable than ours (even the NYT published a mea culpa over not questioning the rationale and evidence for war more closely), and a shoe–two shoes–are thrown.
The Bush administration just can’t catch a break.
Condi Rice then goes on television to spin the incident as proof of democracy and freedom, but when she spoke I heard echoes of Donald Rumsfeld’s “Freedom is untidy” line and remembered, too, how al-Jazeera was called out as “biased” (although Dick Cheney requires tv sets in hotels in which he stays to be set on Fox before he enters the room–God forbid he heard actual “fair and unbiased” news) and Iraqi newspapers are censored (and manipulated, with the US paying to plant stories) and targeted under both US and Iraqi rule (early in the war journalists claimed they were targeted in US military strikes and list of those killed is long).
The shoe-thrower is now in custody, while a just released report says the justice system under Maliki’s government is rife with injustice (indefinite detentions, beatings in detention, etc–oh, sounds like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and Bagram and…).
And when Bush speaks at that press conference to say victory is almost won, I wonder just how he’s defining victory now: he’s speaking to an Iraqi audience, after all, so he can’t mean “we beat you guys,” which must mean victory now means “we beat the extremists” (he can’t mean “the anti democratic forces,” because the history of elections in Iraq shows that 1) we wanted them delayed, 2) they went forward only with Sistani’s insistence, 3) the voting didn’t occur throughout the country, 4) many of those pushed by the US as candidates were exiles who had spent years and years outside the country, many of them, ahem, in Iran), which means soon Bush will be claiming that he has indeed won the “war on terror” (as he once called it).
Bah, humbug, I say. January 20th can’t come too soon for me.