Globe and Mail columnist Rick Salutin described Munater al-Zaidi's gesture towards U.S. President George W. Bush on Dec. 14 as "symbolic and non-violent."
I don't think his act was unprofessional, as claimed by Haroon Siddiqui in the Toronto Star, or a Globe and Mail editorial - since I don't see journalism as a profession, not the way medicine or shoemaking is. It lacks a unique body of knowledge and depends on a skill everyone has language - plus the exercise of normal virtues such as common sense, skepticism, observation and integrity.
The humour, restraint and non-violence - or, at most, symbolic violence - Muntader al-Zaidi showed are a welcome antidote to the common stereotypes about some inherent Muslim impulse to violence. Violence is a human trait. It's certainly just as Christian - wars of religion, Crusades, world wars, the Holocaust - and Jewish, if you consider the historical books of the Old Testament or the 41-year occupation of Palestinian land. ...
Symbolic acts are therapeutic for people who feel, like many Iraqis and Palestinians, humiliated. You not only lose your homes and lives, you lose your sense of dignity. A restrained, controlled act helps restore that sense. You could see it in the creativity of people raising shoes on poles in recent demos demanding U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, or pelting military convoys with shoes - rather than blowing them up with IEDs, which assault terrified young soldiers instead of the decision-makers. The latter are rarely exposed, except at press conferences, where the indignity can descend on them, if they have to dodge around like targets in a dunk tank.
Such acts can even be helpful for the targets. "This is a gift from the Iraqis ... you dog!" yelled the shoe thrower. But he gave George Bush a chance to look quick on his feet and more astute than he ever did after 9/11. Remember his doltish "analysis": It's because they hate us for our freedoms. Here he called it an "interesting way for a person to express himself" - as if it gave him something to reflect on, for once. So it was a gift.
As for journalists, the brave Irish reporter Patrick Cockburn said the toss would "gladden the heart of any journalist forced to attend these tedious, useless and almost invariably obsequious" sessions with visiting Western leaders. Journalists are citizens, too, with civic obligations. Meeting leaders isn't their "privilege," as The Globe editorial claimed; it's their duty and right. But if you merely ask tough questions, you won't get called on again, likely won't be invited next time, and may lose your job.
If Salutin ever calls a news conference and I'm there, I guess I could run a little experiment and toss my size-12s at his head and see whether he finds it to be a symbolic, humorous and non-violent act.
I do agree that journalism isn't a profession, but that's besides the point. You're called upon to act professionally when entrusted with covering a major news event such as a presidential news conference for your employer.
Any reporter who did what al-Zaidi did wouldn't have a job for very long, and rightfully so.
Personally, I'd have rather seen al-Zaidi act tough by grilling Bush over the carnage he's caused.
However, as Salutin has noted, one can be too tough in this business. Some politicians have been known to boycott journos who don't play the game according to their rules. But if you're really a journalist (instead of a grasping careerist with one eye to future favours), you ignore the rules.
Siddiqui
Haroon Siddiqui, the Toronto Star columnist, didn't deal very much with the professionalism of al-Zaidi's last great act of defiance. Instead, he tried to put the act and reaction into context in his Dec. 18 column:
... Our media have suffused Zaidi's act and outburst with too much anthropological significance: "Showing the sole of shoes is considered an extreme insult in Arab culture." "Dog is considered an unclean animal."
This doggone Orientalism distracts us from the bigger picture.
At least 100,000 Iraqis are dead. More than 2 million are refugees in Syria and Jordan. Another 2 million are internally displaced. Infrastructure has been wiped out.
The military surge that Bush hailed in Baghdad as "one of the greatest successes in the history of the United States military" is a success only in that Iraqis are dying just in the dozens, not hundreds, every day.
The sectarian massacres let loose by the occupation have been stopped only by the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad and other cities. Gone are the mixed Shiite, Sunni and Christian neighbourhoods that were a model for the Middle East. Scared people now live in religious and ethnic ghettoes behind barricades, walls and checkpoints. ...
Tossing shoes at a visitor, like shoving a pie in a politician's face, is a minor misdemeanour compared to the countless crimes committed by Bush and his gangs in Iraq.