Shoes & Scams

By Baxter

We cats have to weigh in to politely applaud the Iraqi journalist who, um, threw his shoes at George W. Bush.

Think about it: You're in a press conference with the very person who bombed and invaded your country, and killed tens of thousands of your fellow citizens, for nothing. You're furious, but you probably don't want to throw your cellphone or your iPod (too expensive, although we can't tell from the video what brand the flying footwear were). All we can say is that we're sorry the man didn't wear size fourteens. And if cats wore stuff on our feet, we'd be throwing them at Bush, too.

But we must digress from this brave man's Eliza Doolittle moment to also comment on the "suspicious fire" at Sarah Palin's church in Wasilla. To say: Oh, please. Spare us.

Yeah, we cats find this fire pretty suspicious, all right. As in, the folks at Wasilla Bible just figured out how to get themselves a brand-new building. Just burn the existing one down and get all of Palin's biggest fans to pay to rebuild it!

What a crock. The only question that remains: How soon will our friend who occasionally gets Republican solicitations find a fundraising appeal in his mailbox — signed by "Sarah," of course?

UPDATE: We now understand (thank you, New York Times) that throwing shoes is one of the highest insults you can give in the Arab world. Good! And aside from the fact that we fully expect some creative person stateside to do a delicious parody on this incident — Cinderella throwing her glass slippers, Dorothy hurling her ruby ones — we'd like to offer a word of advice to all who wished the shoes had hit their target: Hang on. Today in Montreal we saw a French translation of The Audacity of Hope in a shop window. With a tag that said, "Par le Nouveau President des Etats-Unis."

Ahhhhhh, what a wonderful feeling. The bad days are almost over. Hope is on the way.