01.19.09
World Demonstrations of Stupidity
The family of the guy who threw a shoe at President Bush is filing a lawsuit against the Iraqi Prime Minister and the exiting President, stating that his human rights have been violated in prison because he keeps getting beat up. In addition, the family claims the man did “nothing wrong”.
Two problems here: The first is that there is a very clear shot of this guy hurling his shoe across a press room and to be sure, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such an honest look of fear on the President’s face. Afterwards, the guy admitted the offense (like he had a choice). How can you turn around and say he did nothing wrong? You don’t have to agree with the law for it to still be a law, and it seems fairly accurate to say that throwing a shoe a the US President constitutes aggravated assault on a foreign head of state. The only simpler way to translate that law is to say, “throwing your shoe at someone else’s president”. So very obviously, he did something wrong.
The second problem is the whole human rights issue. Are the other inmates now hired state officials, bound by some sort of oath? Look, I don’t agree with it, but people get beat up in prison. Everybody knows that. You can’t blame a head of state for the behavior of prison inmates. You wanted to take a stand and do something stupid and now you’re whining about the consequences like the world has done you some sort of harm. What happened to the tough guy who was (poorly) assaulting elected officals in front of news cameras only a month or two ago? You don’t want inmates to pummel you, don’t throw things at people. Especially important people with bodyguards.
Man, I’d hate to tell you what the inmates do to squirrely, whining men in US prisons.