[News] Finally, A Journalist We Can Look Up To!

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff12152008.html

December 15, 2008


Finally, A Journalist We Can Look Up To!


A Hero of Our Time: Muntadar al-Zaidi

By DAVE LINDORFF

When Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi heaved 
his two shoes at the head of President George W. 
Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, he did 
something that the White House press corps should have done years ago.

Al-Zaidi listened to Bush blather that the 
half-decade of war he had initiated with the 
illegal invasion of Iraq had been “necessary for 
US security, Iraqi stability (sic) and world 
peace” and something just snapped. The television 
correspondent, who had been kidnapped and held 
for a while last year by Shiite militants, pulled 
off a shoe and threw it at Bush­a serious insult 
in Iraqi culture­and shouted “This is a farewell 
kiss, you dog!”  When the first shoe missed its 
target, he grabbed a second shoe and heaved it 
too, causing the president to duck a second time 
as al-Zaidi shouted, “This is from the widows, 
the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq!”

I’ll admit, listening to Bush lie his way through 
eight years of press conferences, while 
pre-selected reporters played along and pretended 
to get his attention so they could ask questions 
which had been submitted and vetted in advance, I 
have felt like throwing my shoes at the television set.

Al-Zaidi, who paid for his courageous act of 
protest by being brutally beaten by security 
guards, is a hero of the profession.  He stopped 
taking the president’s BS and called him what he 
is: a murderer and a criminal, with the blood of 
perhaps upwards of a million Iraqis on his hands. 
Al-Zaidi used what was supposed to be a staged 
photo-op for the president as an opportunity to 
speak up for those whose lives have been ruined 
by this president­the ones our suck-up journalists routinely ignore.

I’m not suggesting that journalists should 
routinely leave presidential press conferences in 
their stocking feet.  We have different ways of 
expressing our sentiments to people we feel have 
insulted our intelligence than throwing shoes at 
them, but it would be nice to see a journalist or 
two flip the president the bird when he lies so 
blatantly to them. Or they could all get up and 
just walk out, leaving him standing alone at the presidential lectern.

It’s time for the press corps to stop treating 
presidents like royalty.  If he accomplished 
anything at all in eight years in office, 
President Bush has demonstrated that, to the 
contrary, the president is a very ordinary­and in 
his case a rather less than ordinary­man. The 
office of president deserves no more respect than 
that of the mayor of Detroit, or of Wasilla.

My suggestion is that the press corps use the 
remaining five weeks of the Bush administration 
to develop a new relationship with the 
presidency­one in which they drop all the phony 
propriety and tradition and start acting like 
boisterous newshounds of old, barking questions, 
laughing cruelly at inane answers, demanding 
follow-ups when they are given the run-around, 
and, where necessary, walking out, or perhaps tossing the occasional shoe.

The journalism profession was a full-blown 
disaster and an utter disgrace during the Bush 
administration, and with all the crises facing 
the country and the world, in part because of 
that failure on their part, we cannot afford to 
have them continue that failure into the Obama administration.

With the Bush administration reduced to a running 
joke at this point, it gives the journalism 
profession a chance to redeem itself by using 
these few remaining weeks to establish a new 
tradition for presidential press conferences and 
photo-ops­one that can continue on into the new presidency.

Meanwhile, I’m suggesting that my alma mater, the 
Columbia University Graduate School of 
Journalism, hire al=Zaidi to teach a class in 
press conference journalism techniques. They 
should make it a multi-year appointment, because 
if he left after just one year, his would be difficult shoes to fill.

NOTE: Speaking of shoes and the White House, Skip 
Mendler of Honesdale, PA has a great idea. He 
suggests that everyone who is disgusted with the 
outgoing Bush/Cheney administration send a shoe 
to the White House. Just imagine a pile up of a 
million smelly old running shoes in the White 
House mailroom! I think he's got something. Spread the word!

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist 
and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for 
Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now in 
paperback). His work is available at 
<http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/>www.thiscantbehappening.net




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