-of footwear

-of footwear by jgrimsrud

Monday, 15 December 2008, 13:37
Filed under: -of funny, -of jgrimsrud, -of politik

in news from bush’s victory lap–you’ve probably seen it, but the still shot is worth a long, deep gander:

yeah, what he said (via the new york times):

“This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” He then threw a shoe at Mr. Bush, who ducked and narrowly avoided it. As stunned security agents and guards, officials and journalists watched, Mr. Zaidi then threw his other shoe, shouting in Arabic, “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!”

a comment at the slog (where you can see the video) led me to this piece in the wall street journal back in 2003, explaining shoe-pelting of saddam statues:

The foot occupies the lowest rung in the bodily hierarchy and the shoe, in addition to being something in which the foot is placed, is in constant contact with dirt, soil and worse. The sole of the shoe is the most unclean part of an unclean object. In northern India, where I grew up, the exhortation “Jooté maro!” (“Hit him with shoes!”) was invoked when one sought to administer the most demeaning punishment. (Another footwear tidbit: The effigies of unpopular politicians in India are regularly garlanded with shoes and paraded down the streets.)

In the Muslim world, according to Hume Horan, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, “to have the sole of the shoe directed toward one is pretty much the equivalent of someone in our culture giving you the finger.” Matthew Gordon, a historian of Islam, says that since one takes one’s shoes off before entering a mosque–as a way of maintaining the purity of the place of worship–“the use of a shoe as something to hit you with is an inversion, directing impurity and pollution at the object of the beating.”

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