Shoes to the Wind: The Humbling of our Cowboy

Eight years ago -- guns blazing --a western swagger and a barrage of simple malapropisms like “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully,” or “you teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test,” our cowboy president George W. Bush rode on into the White House on a stolen horse wearing a shiny new pair of cowboy boots.

He was a tough guy. He talked straight. He was the Cowboy in Chief. Four years later he got himself a really tough fightin’ new horse and rode around the White House and the land promising to “defend our country” against evil doers and no-gooders, spouting off about the mouth, like cowboys do: “Of course we’re after Iraq…eh…Saddam Hussein…I mean bin Laden” and “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”

He’s fallen off the horse and I can’t think of a more public falling than to have a shoe hurled at your head by an Iraqi cameraman Muntadar al-Zaidi. Shoes – ya’ll. Not just one shoe -- but two shoes! Two size ten shoes went flying through the air with the intent to hit the leader of our country in the noggin.

When I first saw the footage I laughed. I laughed a lot. I played it over again on youtube and even called a couple of friends to check out the shameful shoeing of our president. After the giggles ended I was falling asleep when something occurred to me. “That’s kind of fucked up! You can’t go around throwing shoes at people, can you!”

I’ve been angry with our President! Many of us are incensed by the arrogance and his thoughtless way in which he governed our nation. But it’s never occurred to me that a shoe should be thrown at his head.

I then became a little obsessed with the choice of footwear as a weapon. What kind of shoes were they? Never mind the cultural significance of a show but just imagine if those shoes had been a strappy pair of Manolo Blahniks -- what would have happened if one of those heels had pierced his beady little eyes. That’s not cool.

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What if it had been a hearty Michael Kors wedge? Imagine that flying through the air and knocking him up against the head leaving him with some kind of amnesia. If we think he’s forgotten about the truth and devastation his choices had caused before -- does he really need a medical excuse? What if had been a hooker stiletto -- that ended up lodged in the front of his head? That would be awful! He could have been rendered incapacitated -- and though we have very few days left-- I can’t imagine what kind of 11th hour damage Cheney could cause.

Thank goodness his reflexes are better than his decision making. He dodged the footwear and is only left with the bitter scar of public embarrassment.

Now, I haven’t walked a mile in his cowboy boots -- and publicly he has dismissed the incident as “bizarre.” But beyond the bizarre nature, beyond the ludicrous nature of the shoeing, the almost comical shoe-cloaked justice, must be humbling.

He has said recently, “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility lies with me.” And “My biggest regret was failure of Iraq Intelligence.”

His latest confessions seem to point to a broken cowboy. This of course in no way makes up for the loss of lives of our troops or the Iraqi lives that were lost -- not a bit. It for sure does not make up for the lies and misleading and subsequent failings of our “Decider in Chief.”

It does however, give me hope that at the end of a rodeo that even a fallen cowboy in the twilight of his presidency may try to dismount with just a tiny, minuscule bit of grace. If not -- we can all send our shoes to his new home in Dallas.