"Untied"11x14 oil on canvas board
All politicians, if they are to experience any longevity in their chosen field, must effectively hone their ability at press conferences to duck and dodge the constant salvoes from self serving journalists. Last Sunday in Baghdad, President Bush took that skill set to a new level. So slick was he in avoiding those POTUS bound projectiles (size 10), that no less a purveyor of talent than Don King marveled at his nimble athletic reflexes. Yes, yes I know, the shoe flinging was intended as an extreme insult, and it played out as such to the Arab audience. But ...well, how can I put this? With all apologies to the culture police, it really looked rather buffoon-ish to us Occidentals.
I don’t know, maybe it just gets kind of lost in the translation. I suppose it is possible that we just don’t appreciate the profound and serious nature of airborne leather crafted footwear, but my guess is that rather than feeling insulted, most Americans feel as embarrassed for our Arab brethren as we were for our Soviet comrades when Khrushchev had his shoe-crazed moment at the UN a half century ago. You can’t think of Nikita today without the mental image of him exhorting the cohorts in his delegation to join him in banging his shoe on the desk in the General Assembly. In an odd sort of way, the Mother of All Insults on Baghdadiya TV was more reminiscent of Johnny Carson’s “Carnac the Magnificent” to American cable news audiences -chastising Ed McMahon with his curse, “May the fleas of one thousand camels infest your armpits”. It’s hard to be insulted while you’re stifling a chuckle (or a McMahon style chortle).
Perhaps its true, after all, that Western culture cannot possibly understand today’s Arab culture on anything close to a visceral level. Nothing illustrates that more clearly than a particular reaction to the shoe flinging incident. The flinger in question, Muntader al-Zaidi, was given an award for “courage” by Wa Attassimou, a Libyan group headed by Khaddafi’s daughter, Aicha. In looking over the list of finalists for this award, Aicha apparently was unimpressed with daily acts of valor that would command the respect and humble admiration of the average American citizen. True heroic bravery is ubiquitous in that struggling nation. No, Aicha Khadddafi (a lawyer who offered to defend Saddam Hussein after his capture, according to Reuters) chose to recognize the false bravado of an Iraqi Geraldo Rivera. She claimed he represented “a victory for human rights across the world.” Maybe. But it begs some obvious questions.
Foremost among them is, why, given Mr. al-Zaidi’s great intestinal fortitude, did he keep both shoes tightly laced and secured around his feet during the entirety of Saddam’s reign? Surely he must have been aware of Hussein’s appalling human rights record, even against his own people. As a television journalist, he surely would have at least googled “Halabja.” A well aimed wing tip in Saddam’s direction was certainly in order. That would have been a real act of courage - and it would have gotten him and his entire family murdered. Courage in the face of a reign of terror is rare. It creates a fear so powerful that it often leads to paralysis. The long nightmare of Saddam's reign of terror has been broken, which was made clear by the grandstanding of an Iraqi journalist. And the man largely responsible for breaking that reign by committing - rightly or wrongly - American lives and treasure was ducking a pair of shoes at a Baghdad press conference.
I don’t know, maybe it just gets kind of lost in the translation. I suppose it is possible that we just don’t appreciate the profound and serious nature of airborne leather crafted footwear, but my guess is that rather than feeling insulted, most Americans feel as embarrassed for our Arab brethren as we were for our Soviet comrades when Khrushchev had his shoe-crazed moment at the UN a half century ago. You can’t think of Nikita today without the mental image of him exhorting the cohorts in his delegation to join him in banging his shoe on the desk in the General Assembly. In an odd sort of way, the Mother of All Insults on Baghdadiya TV was more reminiscent of Johnny Carson’s “Carnac the Magnificent” to American cable news audiences -chastising Ed McMahon with his curse, “May the fleas of one thousand camels infest your armpits”. It’s hard to be insulted while you’re stifling a chuckle (or a McMahon style chortle).
Perhaps its true, after all, that Western culture cannot possibly understand today’s Arab culture on anything close to a visceral level. Nothing illustrates that more clearly than a particular reaction to the shoe flinging incident. The flinger in question, Muntader al-Zaidi, was given an award for “courage” by Wa Attassimou, a Libyan group headed by Khaddafi’s daughter, Aicha. In looking over the list of finalists for this award, Aicha apparently was unimpressed with daily acts of valor that would command the respect and humble admiration of the average American citizen. True heroic bravery is ubiquitous in that struggling nation. No, Aicha Khadddafi (a lawyer who offered to defend Saddam Hussein after his capture, according to Reuters) chose to recognize the false bravado of an Iraqi Geraldo Rivera. She claimed he represented “a victory for human rights across the world.” Maybe. But it begs some obvious questions.
Foremost among them is, why, given Mr. al-Zaidi’s great intestinal fortitude, did he keep both shoes tightly laced and secured around his feet during the entirety of Saddam’s reign? Surely he must have been aware of Hussein’s appalling human rights record, even against his own people. As a television journalist, he surely would have at least googled “Halabja.” A well aimed wing tip in Saddam’s direction was certainly in order. That would have been a real act of courage - and it would have gotten him and his entire family murdered. Courage in the face of a reign of terror is rare. It creates a fear so powerful that it often leads to paralysis. The long nightmare of Saddam's reign of terror has been broken, which was made clear by the grandstanding of an Iraqi journalist. And the man largely responsible for breaking that reign by committing - rightly or wrongly - American lives and treasure was ducking a pair of shoes at a Baghdad press conference.
