"Shoes"

Here is a unique situation. Maybe even an only in San Francisco sort of thing. As anyone watching the news knows, President George Bush made an unannounced trip to Iraq. Basically, he wanted to gloat over his presumed victory. You know what happened. An Iraqi journalist took off his shoes and threw them at Bush. With the first shoe he yelled, “This is your farewell, Dog!” With the second shoe he yelled something about Bush being responsible for the deaths of millions. Can't argue with that. After what seemed like an extraordinary delay in response time, another Iraqi journalist stepped in front of him while a few more civilians wrestled him to the ground. The secret service eventually ducked their heads in and took control of the guy. I guess if Bush doesn’t give a fuck anymore they don’t either. I hope Obama has a better detail assigned to him than those dudes. At least this time when Bush was declaring victory he didn’t have a Mission Accomplished banner hanging behind him.

Anyway, I posted a simple note on facebook and on my status update that I was going to send a pair of shoes to the White House. I didn’t think anything more after that. But then, I started to get e-mails both private and on facebook from people who thought I should donate my shoes to Goodwill or some other organization like that. Good idea. But the pair of shoes I bought came from Goodwill. Another person was angry that I would be wasting shoes in these dire times and suggested I give a pair to a homeless person. I don’t know a lot of homeless guys with a liking for 80’s Nikes in size 5. This went on all night. E-mail after e-mail from friends and strangers who thought it was a dumb idea or thought it just wasn’t worth it or of course the bleeding heart liberal response of, give the shoes to the poor! Some e-mails were typical of conservatives. "If that guy would of thrown his shoes at Saddam, he wouldn't of left the room alive, ass-hole!" Hey, no disagreement about that. Saddam was a bad dude. What everyone conveniently forgets is, He was not only on our CIA payroll during his war with Iran, but we were the country that not only sold him those biological weapons he used on the Kurds, we also gave him satellite photos complete with wind direction to make there delivery even more lethal. So please, spare me the shit about how much better the country is now.
A few were with me. Everyone wanted to know why. What was my thinking here? Here is my thinking. A few years ago CBS had a show on the air named Jericho. CBS canceled the show. The fans were not too happy about this. In one of the last episodes to air the hero of the show is sent a note from the bad guys demanding their surrender. The hero sends back a one word response that was also the response an allied commander gave a German commander in world war two when he was asked to surrender; “Nuts.”

This is what the fans did to show their disapproval with CBS for cutting their favorite show. They sent canned nuts to CBS corporate headquarters. In just a few days CBS had thousands of containers and packages filled with nuts. CBS attempting to get the upper hand in the war of PR announced they would be considering the fans wishes but in the mean time they would be re- gifting the nuts by sending them to the troops serving in Iraq.
MMMM, yummy! Because isn’t that exactly what you would want if you were pinned down under machine gun fire all day in 130 degree heat? Salty mixed nuts doesn’t seem like the snack I would pick. Long story short, the show got picked up by another network. If Americans can be moved to action by the death of a TV show why can’t the least we do is recognize just what a total fuck up the President has been these last eight years with an act of civil disobedience like mailing him old shoes? Personally, I am going to send his library a box of them every month till the day he dies.

Ah America. You know what this has taught me? That Americans are willing to let bygones be bygones but if you fuck with our TV shows you will get a dramatic and unique response from us.