Dubya and the shoe taboo

Strange happenings in Baghdad, as the outgoing Dubya suffers "the worst insult in the Arab world"—assault by footwear. The foot being the lowest part of the body, this is as bad as it gets, apparently; it takes me back to a cheerful montage of images from Iraq in 2003, when Iraqis seemed to be queuing up to rub the soles of their shoes against portraits of the vanquished Saddam. Now every journalist and blogger can polish up their pearl of wisdom one more time and explain, paceWikipedia, just how profound the contempt this gesture indicates is.

I'm interested, though, in a rather more pragmatic question: just how effective is it to insult someone in an alien cultural idiom? Bush, naturally enough, looked bewildered, but he ducked speedily and seemed none the worse for wear afterwards. Gordon Brown, I suspect, would have stolidly absorbed the blows; Obama would probably have caught one shoe in each hand before throwing them across the room for three points into a waiting waste-paper basket. But none of them, surely, would actually have been offended. The message would have come across much more clearly if the journalist had done something more traditionally American, like casting aspersions on the president's parentage, motor vehicle, football team, taste in music, or pretzel-consuming ability; while simultaneously performing a thoroughly international gesture for emphasis.

After all, it's common courtesy to research the ways of foreign visitors so that one doesn't accidentally offend them. By the same logic, it's surely common sense to research the ways in which one can cause maximum offense to foreign visitors. In America and Britain, footwear-lobbing (not to mention wellie wanging) is a jolly, even a folksy, kind of sport, like Morris dancing or buffalo chip throwing: more likely to raise a smile than hackles, with the possible exception of a well-aimed high heel. Then again, were George Bush to invite his critic to join him in lobbing a few Texan buffalo chips, I imagine the Iraqi would soon be begging for shoes…