No Laughing Matter

I am bewildered, as if stumbling around in a dream. Why is the throwing of shoes by an Iraqi reporter at President Bush not receiving more attention? Why is the attention that it is receiving limited to:

• amusement over anything anti-Bush
• amusement over a social curiosity
• outrage, in the Middle East, over the detention of the reporter

Perhaps I have missed it, but there should be outrage over a physical attack on the President of the United States and questions as to why the Secret Service did not immediately put themselves between the projectiles and the President. The goofy nature of the event and the unpopularity of the President have obscured the more important facts. This is not about shoes or George W. Bush. A citizen of a foreign country directly and physically assaulted the person and therefore the office of President of the United States. It is utterly irrelevant that Mr. Bush himself laughed off the event.

It is troubling that our "entertainmedia" have obscured a serious event. Legitimate protest has its limits. It is one thing for someone to burn a flag or an effigy in protest and quite another to launch a physical attack, however harmless, at a person holding office.

I am fairly certain that no one would be laughing had an American reporter acted in a similar fashion when the President of Iran visited the U.N.