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One Small Note About Shoes

Published by marco on

The following post was written about a month ago and never published. The context is that of the show-throwing furor that has ebbed somewhat lately.


For a solid week, at least half of the political cartoon output of the world has involved shoes. It is well-known that the media suffers from a severe dearth of imagination but there is no reason to display this deficiency with such pride.

As far as shoes go, this author had two immediate thoughts on seeing the video footage:

  1. Bush is pretty quick for an older fella; his quick reflexes were the only thing that kept the first shoe from nailing him right in the forehead.
  2. Where the hell was the secret service on the second shoe?

I imagine the overreaction to the reporter’s act currently playing out in the courts of Iraq is born of embarrassment for not having stopped the second shoe from even being thrown. This sets a precedent for only allowing naked reporters to question the president … or for Obama to bring his 10-inch–thick lucite walls from the acceptance speech everywhere he goes. Because if a shoe is a weapon, a reporter in the front row could easily have thrown a piping-hot cup of tea at the president and the secret service wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.

Once again, it seems that the purveyors of the idea that any situation is completely controllable are making a lot of sound and fury to cover up the fallacy of their world view. They need us to believe it so they can maintain their control. But, the truth is, the best way to keep people from throwing shoes—or piping-hot cups of tea—at you is to stop being such a huge asshole.