Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqi TV reporter who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad last December, was released from prison on September 15 after serving nine months of a one-year sentence. (Throwing a shoe at a person is considered highly disrespectful in Islamic culture.) Immediately hailed as a hero in the Arab, Muslim, and NPR-listening worlds last winter for his act of defiance — he yelled “This is your farewell kiss, you dog!” and “This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq!” as he hurled each shoe at Bush — al-Zeidi emerged from prison into a world with a new American president and a decreased U.S. military presence in his home country. Now, in a loosely translated Popdose exclusive, he speaks out about his experience.
When I went into prison last year, I was 29 years old. Now I am 30 years old. I am a man now, and in prison I was the man, as you Americans say. People made T-shirts. A game on the Internet called Sock and Awe was created by people with much time on their hands. (It is fun. Play it. You could waste your life in worse ways.) And the video of me throwing my shoes at President George Bush “went viral,” I was told. My prison guards even threw me a birthday party in January. They gave me bright green shoes with holes on the top side that are called Crocs. It was amusing at first.
Many things can change in a short amount of time, however. The zeitgeist — it has shifted. The world has moved on. My people say to me, “The sectarian violence is not like it was, Muntadhar, and this new American president, unlike the previous one, he has a brain.”
Now there is a very bad crime wave, however, and it is led by the same people who almost pushed Iraq into a civil war. They cannot find jobs, so they kidnap and demand ransoms instead. Learn new skills, gentlemen. Take computer classes. Oh, that is right, I have forgotten — there is no electricity to run the computers! Carry on then, sectarian thugs.
I went ahead and used Cloth’s name, but it turns out he was using an alias inspired by Deep Throat, from All the President’s Men. He duped me, but I’m not mad. The way I see it, we both got what we wanted, and neither of us had to look at the other one naked.
According to congressional aide Mark Cloth, who wished to remain anonymous but didn’t bribe me enough to warrant serious consideration, Wilson was seen drinking 12-ounce cups of espresso for several hours before the president’s speech. The fourth-term conservative Republican lawmaker was also “high on pro-life and a two-day marathon of Lou Dobbs Tonight on his DVR.”
Here at Popdose and throughout the Western world, this week’s (admittedly consumerist) Beatlemania revival has offered plenty of opportunities to reflect on their music, their influence … the astounding greed of their record label over a 45-year period … (Did EMI really have to sell the stereo and mono mixes separately, particularly considering that every album from Please Please Me to Revolver was short enough that they could have easily crammed both versions onto a single CD?) But as long as we’re sitting around dissecting the effects of the remastering process on “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” or tapping colored buttons in time to the scrolling visuals on the Rock Band version of “Revolution,” we may as well pause to marvel at the historical import of the Beatles’ efforts – and John’s in particular – to use their stardom to advance causes and engage in social commentary. In this, as in their music, they created a template that has been imitated and amended by generations of celebrities in their wake, for better and for worse. 