The Right to Throw

  

                                                              As my regular reader knows, I’m not a very political animal but once in a while something gets my goat and this morning there it was: a sculptured tribute to the journalist who threw a shoe at George Bush. 

It was inevitable that Mr Al-Zaidi would become an overnight celebrity because that’s how childish the news media have become. News reports are here today and wrapping the garbage tomorrow, so no great harm done there. But a sculpture is a more enduring reminder. And so to counter-balance all those people who think the shoe-thrower is some kind of hero I’d just like to say that it is thanks to George Bush and his allies that Mr Al-Zaidi now lives in a country where he is free to insult and attack politicians. Under Saddam Hussein he’d have been taken out and shot. 

I can’t read Arabic but I hope the inscription under that sofa-sized shoe includes a tribute to all those soldiers who gave their lives so that Iraqis might be free to throw shoes. Yeah. Right.

                                                                      

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