No. 55 George Bush and the Flying Shoe

As you may know, Jeffman’s not one to discuss American politics. An entire campaign of murky presidential electioneering has just crawled back under the rock from whence it came and Jeffman didn’t as much as squeak.

This is simply because A) he doesn’t care, and B) he’s in no hurry to experience the unfortunate end of a bullet delivered by some ‘offended’ NRA-type, exercising both his right to bear arms and his right to travel to other countries whilst doing so.

However, I couldn’t let the Iraqi shoe-flinging incident slip without at least tickling the subject’s belly and seeing what pops out.

Here we have the outgoing President of the USA and professional tuning fork, George W. Bush, accosted by a pair of wayward shoes. Man alive!

Now it’s not in Jeffman’s nature to raise so much as a smile, but on this occasion he allowed an exception to the rule and mistreated himself to a wee giggle. A more bizzare sight you’d be hard-pressed to find this year. Here you have a nation’s leader and possibly one of the most unpopular men in the world at present, ducking items of clothing (albeit impressively for his age), on TV, in a room packed out with journalists. You just can’t write this stuff.

If you were to measure a politician’s worth by the manner in which they left office, well at the top end of the scale you’d have the undoubtedly popular JFK, cut off in his prime by a stray bullet or three. And lurking right down the bottom there’d be George, harangued by a flying shoe. This brings to mind a similar incident involving Richard Nixon and a hurled trilby, just prior to his resignation.

But the real question here has to be not how this was allowed to happen, or even why the Secret Service hadn’t reduced the Iraqi journo’s head to a cloud of red and grey mist the moment he cast an admiring glance in Clarks shop window and thought, ‘hmm… those slip-ons would go well with my beige slacks’

The real question is how on Earth did he miss? At that range? Twice!!!

’twas a poor showing all round, really. One has to suppose that the notion of a school fete and coconut-shy would be lost on the Iraqi nation.

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