When presidents dream of leaving a legacy, they probably don't think about creating a brand-new version of the dunk tank.
Yet last week in front of the White House, the American version of the latest rage in political demonstrations against the administration of President George W. Bush set a pattern many of us hope to see repeated at county fairs everywhere.
All you need is a large pile of assorted footwear and someone willing to wear a big papier-mâché George Bush head.
Big Head George dodged and ducked as passers-by on Pennsylvania Avenue took turns shouting insults and hurling shoes at the papier-mâché president.
"See if you can dodge this, you draft dodger!" shouted a military veteran, launching a pair of combat boots. "For torturing human beings!" yelled another protester, throwing flip-flops.
The Iraqi television journalist Muntader al-Zaidi became an instant celebrity by throwing his shoes at Bush at a press conference inside the super-secure Green Zone in Baghdad while denouncing Bush as a "dog" for murdering innocent men, women and children in that country.
Al-Zaidi committed a serious breach of journalistic ethics, of course, by failing to remain impassive while a major politician on his farewell world tour stood up to publicly mouth his last lies about why the most massive military power on Earth invaded a tiny country with no weapons of mass destruction.
As our mothers used to say, throwing shoes is funny until someone puts an eye out. But the dangers associated with flying footwear pale in comparison to the real deaths that have taken place in Iraq since Bush's war began more than five years ago.
The official death toll is now approaching 200,000, including more than 4,200 Americans. To kill that many Iraqis in their own country is beyond rude.
A Saudi Arabian businessman immediately offered $10 million to buy one of al-Zaidi's famous shoes. Not even NBA stars have ever dared to market a $20 million pair of shoes.
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Tragically, the iconic shoes themselves reportedly were destroyed in an Iraqi government laboratory through rigorous testing to determine whether the shoes contained explosives or any substances more hazardous than Shinola.
Istanbul's Baydan Shoe Co., which manufactured al-Zaidi's shoes, has been besieged with orders. A new run of 15,000 pairs of the black leather oxford now known as "The Bush Shoe" went into production last week for Iraq. A British shoe distributor has ordered 95,000 pairs for Europe and an American company has ordered 18,000. As Baydan's general manager noted, Bush finally "served some good purpose to the economy before he left."
Bush-Style Justice
Before al-Zaidi himself can cash in on his worldwide popularity, he has to survive the justice system of Iraq. That's pretty frightening considering that the primary architects of so-called Iraqi justice were the Bush administration managers of the Abu Ghraib prison.
Hundreds of lawyers from around the world have offered to represent al-Zaidi pro bono, but he could be facing up to seven years in prison "for committing an act of aggression against a visiting head of state."
If the Iraqis are determined to administer justice "Bush style," they could hold al-Zaidi without even charging him with a crime, as we do with hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and in secret gulags in the former Soviet Union.
Crimes involving the misuse of footwear in Iraq apparently are taken much more seriously than, say, massacres of civilians committed by employees of Blackwater, the private U.S. security contractor, who are exempt from prosecution under Iraqi laws written by the Bush administration.
Speaking of justice, al-Zaidi's near-miss with a couple of oxfords may be the only punishment Bush ever receives for gross violations of international law and our own Constitution. With one of the worst presidencies in our nation's history coming to an end after wrecking our reputation around the world and our economy at home, there is very little appetite for pawing through the rubble of the last eight years.
We would much rather look hopefully to the future, especially with President-Elect Barack Obama assembling a class-act administration eager to create jobs and improve health care for all of us left behind by Bush's single-minded push to increase the profits of the wealthy few at our expense.
Killing and maiming thousands of young Americans along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to make profits for Halliburton and other no-bid contractors was indeed a crime against humanity. So was failing to act on the global devastation of our planet to increase corporate dividends.
But don't expect George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or any of their co-conspirators to ever stand trial for their crimes. We'll have to settle for flinging shoes at caricatures of the guilty in honor of the journalist who pioneered an exciting, new, footloose form of media commentary.
What's your take?
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