Muntazer al-Zaidi Must Be Celebrated in Song and Ballad

December 17, 2008

Seriously, the man is fabulous. For the past eight years, Bush-hating activities have existed at a level that can best be summed up as “lame-ass”. There have been protest marches with bad slogans. There have been riots in Lucknow where Hindus and Muslims beat each other up (or vice versa), but Bush himself escaped unscathed. He wasn’t even anywhere near Lucknow. There’s been a persistent falase rumour about him serving plastic turkey to the troops. At a time when people were sick of him and the Iraq war, he couldn’t be defeated in an election, for crying out loud. You have to ask what the hell people have been doing.

And now, this man does with forty days of a Bush presidency to go what people couldn’t do in eight years before him: take direct action against the man himself, and hurls a pair of shoes at him. While violence is deplorable, it has to be admitted that his directness is admirable. No shilly-shallying for this man of action.

The incident also shows the declining standards in Presidential manliness. When Theodore Roosevelt was shot on the campaign trail, he just kept on giving his speech. When Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan, he took it in the lung like a man and told Nancy Reagan that he’d forgotten to duck. Bush ducked, when faced with nothing more dangerous than shoes. Deplorable. One can only hope Obama turns out less feeble.