I find it amazing.
Some fool in Iraq takes his shoes off and throws them at President Bush. The President ducks and the first one misses him demonstrating quick reflexes. The second one he sees coming and dodges it. In postmortems the President pretty laughed the event off.
But then the amazing stuff happened. All the networks had 'special analysts' on to explain what happened. The analysis went like this. If a person takes his or her shoes off their feet, and throws those shoes at a person speaking in front of the group, that demonstrates disrespect on the part of the shoe thrower and a contempt for the potential receiver of the flying shoe.
So, in the Middle East, if you take a shoe off and throw it at someone, it is an act of disrespect and contempt.
As opposed to the United State where, when you take a shoe off and throw it at someone, it is an act of, what, respect and high regard?
At the Party Conventions this past summer not one speaker for either party was given the respect of having shoes thrown at them. Either this demonstrates a complete lack of regard for the speakers or, in the United States, if you take a shoe off and throw it at someone, it is an act of disrespect and contempt. Which, of course, it obviously is.
I am not an expert on all things cultural but if someone had called me up and asked me what the thrower was trying to express to the President, I would have at least guessed on the disrespect angle. Duh.
I guess that there isn't too much else in the news.
1 comment:
I know! My mother-in-law talked about the same thing, we were apparently unaware of the culture where throwing your shoe was a sign of respect, hence all the confusion over what this guy was trying to get across!
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