Tossing Shoes - all that is seems?

international | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis

Tuesday December 16, 2008 18:23

by thoughtful type who only sees meticulous planning

One thing is sure this is one explanation of a meme we'll remember.

Everyone knows that an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at GW Bush in Bagdhad in December 2008. It's a story which got its global media coverage with predictable attitudes and spin & could easily be forgotten, were it not for a few factoids & considerations as well as precedents. Which I'd like to share with people here without going into too much pseudo-analytic expertise.

It's all about how shoe tossing was immediately explained to "us" as having resonance with muslims in general and Iraqi's in particular.

each a well worn step on the grapevine of global mass emotional interchange

* An meme of contemporary western culture of the last 5 years has been the habit of throwing discarded sneakers, trainers, plimsoles and general sportswear shodding over phone lines which was linked to Iraq in underground US culture.

* Muntada Al Zaidi missed coz Bush ducked the projectiles so well.

* Mr al Zaidi is alledgedly getting a kicking in custody.

* Journalists might have to forego their gucci loafers at press conferences in future.

* A Saudi business man has offered 10 million US dollars (still a lot of money) for each of the shoes when they are returned to their owner and no longer considered evidence. [If he is convicted of the only appropriate charge which appears to have been cooked up - "attempted assault on a visiting head of state" he'll get his shoes back in 7 years] 10 million dollars may still be a lot of money & enough for him to frame the other shoe as a holy relic.

So here are some links to ensure that this story gets it proper place in our serious considerations of :

* how quick GW Bush ducked.
* how slow the US Secret Service were to take a projectile.
* how many things journalists and normally only screened for obvious weapons might be tempted to through at world leaders in future.
* how a youth cultural habit which to most appeared inexplicable may have been rooted in the movie "Wag the Dog" which was released in 2005 but was itself based on the book "American Hero" a 1993 satirical conspiracy theory novel written by Larry Beinhart. It speculated that Operation DESERT STORM had been scripted and choreographed as a ploy to get George H.W. Bush reelected to a second term (taking their cues from Margaret Thatcher's similar invasion of the Falkland Islands), while at the same time analyzing exactly why that conflict had been so popular. The book formed the inspiration and basis for the 1997 film, Wag the Dog. It was republished in 2005 as Wag the Dog: A Novel .......... in that motion picture Wag the Dog, a spin doctor flings shoes into trees as a part of a campaign to call attention to a fictional war hero

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe_tossing

& so I'd like to remind you of that moment when supposedly the Iraqi people in general and those ofd Baghdad in particular took of their precious footwear & if not threw them, certainly used them as improvised blunt instruments upon the recently deposed Saddam Hussein's statue. & how it was all really - yes really so fictional and spin. & that is the Youtube link, but the explanatory photos of the selected crowd and assistance by US tanks were in their day made available on indymedia sites including this one.

Indeed in the best of way of crafted memes the toppling of Hussein & the attack of the shoes became our history.
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Al Zaidi's wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muthathar_al_Zaidi
his facebook campaign http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=52545687584
his brother (pictured ) describes his current custody conditions http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/16/shoe-protes...-iraq

Solidarity Shoe throwing things are popping up all over a certain part of the world. It makes the woeful fad of throwing shoes over pylons in the west of the last year's look.........lame.