Community | January 20, 2009 | 31 comments

Bush protest, shoes thrown at white house

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/19/bush-protest-shoes-thrown_n_159223.html

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Chango2000
President Bush was given an Iraqi-journalist-style sendoff on his last full day in office Monday, as tourists and demonstrators lobbed shoes, pumps, boots, sandals and Crocs from Pennsylvania Avenue onto the White House lawn.

Before launching the operation live, the shoe-chuckers took target practice in Dupont Circle on a 20-foot-tall blow up doll of the outgoing president, decked out in the flight suit he wore aboard the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier.

Unlike Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi reporter who inspired the protest, none of the shoe-throwers in the group were arrested. (Later that day, reports NBC, one man was arrested for chucking a shoe at the White House.)

Marching down Connecticut Avenue with handfuls of footwear, the group of about a hundred was on the receiving end of enthusiastic honks, thumbs-up and waves from people in the street.

The reception was almost as warm from the people guarding the White House.
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31 comments // Bush protest, shoes thrown at white house

  • kezzy
    • 0
      kezzy  

    • Oh heavens sake it's his last day! The man was the president of the USA and he is treated like a dog. Give the man a break!

    • 3 years ago
  • Conniepae
    • 0
      Conniepae  

    • A President earns respect. George W. did not earn my respect!!!!! It has been 8 long years since the Supreme Court superseded the will of the people and stopped the count. George W. lived up to my darkest fears 8 years ago.

      No amount of shoe throwing can surpass the stain George W. has put on this country. We can be proud of today, without whitewashing the sins of yesterday.

    • 3 years ago
  • arcticspirit
    • 0
      arcticspirit  

    • Does anyone have respect for the office of the President? Apparently not. And you know something, that's kinda sad.

      I did not vote for Obama, but I truly want him to do well, and that is a gut felt and honest statement.

      Why don't people focus more on the positive instead of trying to shame our country further? A massive show of support for Obama and welcome for him would have been much more cool.

      But I think some people are stuck in a negative cycle.

    • 3 years ago
  • ClareW
    • 0
      ClareW  

    • Is anyone else really irritated that it took the Americans this long to realise this about Bush? Where was all the shoe-throwing three years ago?!

    • 3 years ago
  • keithponder
  • ecto_man3
  • WhiteNoise
    • 0
      WhiteNoise  
    • Image

    • “Bush is uneasily incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinary uneducated and apparently quite proud of all these things.” – Christopher Hitchens

      “Even a banana Republican would be distressed to discover how much of our nation’s treasury has been siphoned off by our vice president in the interest of his Cosa Nostra company, Halliburton, the lawless gang of mercenaries set loose by his administration in the Middle East. I have known for a long time that the media of the U.S. and too many of its elected officials give not a flying fuck for the welfare of this republic. “ – Gore Vidal

      "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not traitor, he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared." - Cicero, 42 B.C.

      The 43 who helped make Bush the worst ever
      http://current.com/items/89722922/the_43_who_helped_make_bush_the_worst_ever.htm

    • 3 years ago
  • Dipitydodah
  • charfman
  • Conniepae
    • 0
      Conniepae  

    • Ah yes, clownpuncher is something we should all aspire to. The name says it all. No thanks. I don't want to be a clownpuncher. What kind of character does it take to wanna punch a clown? Sad!

      A person who chooses a name like clownpuncher, criticizing people who throw shoes at the White House. Wanna talk about lack of class?

    • 3 years ago
  • charfman
    • 0
      charfman  

    • Bush was incompetent...
      He definitely earned the low ratings...
      But he's not responsible for everything bad that's happening...
      It's easy to make him the scapegoat...
      The terrorists have succeeded in destroying the power, prestige, and the respect of the president...

      Yes we can... hope... Obama will make change...
      Bush is history...

    • 3 years ago
  • Liberal_Extinction
  • khromadjo
  • PrimeTime
    • 0
      PrimeTime  

    • yes obama lovers showing peace and happiness in a great way by supporting a muslim reported who direspected our whole nation with that shoe not just stupid bush. Please people understand that if you think this funny then hit yourself with a shoe b/c thats what that little hairy islam reporter did to each of us as americans.

    • 3 years ago
  • Conniepae
    • 0
      Conniepae  
    • PrimeTime:

      You are probably more correct than not. We are guilty by association as much as the Iraqi people were for Saddam Hussein. Many people in Iraq suffered and are still suffering because they had a leader who was less than kind. George W. used fixed facts to start the war in Iraq. No one stopped him. No one held him accountable. I guess we are all deserving of the shoe. I don’t know if the reporter disrespected us as much as George W. did by starting a war of choice in our name, using a forged document.

      Shock and Awe was real. People in Iraq felt the wrath of the U.S. military, even though they were not guilty. No one to date has given justification for the war. They have tried to spin it, but spin is not truth, it’s distorted truth, trying to justify wrong. I think a shoe is light, compared to bombs.

    • 3 years ago
  • clownpuncher
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • That's great. Now allow him to move to his two million dollar mansion in Texas and forget the blood we all have on our hands for allowing this illegal war ( Downing Street Memo) to happen besides all of the abuses to our Constitution. I notice also that not one in the crowds fawning over Obama at the Lincoln Memorial celebrity celebration asked Obama to work to rescind the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, or condemn him for voting for wiretapping, or for voting for the Wall Street bailout that put our entire economic system under their control, or mentioned his enabling Bush from Congress as well. No one has to answer for anything in this country anymore and if you mention it, well, you're just a party pooper when it is actually being a good American to question these things.

      And throwing shoes of course makes for good photo ops to show that Americans are "angry", but to me it is too little too late. We should have thrown the book at him, not our shoes. Oh, and don't forget, no one lost their job as a result of 9.11 but we can forget that now too because the government told us what to think about that as well. All we got was some Congressional whitewash report like we got after JFK was murdered with all of the excuses, lies, and rewrite of history we will surely get and accept now that Bush is gone and everybody is overcome by their love for Obama in this honeymoon stage.

      So people will enjoy their revelry today and forget it all and that's fine. But when the confetti of the parades clears and tomorrow is the same as today, how many who threw those shoes will even give a damn about getting up and doing something different tomorrow to actually change this country? In the days of Jefferson Bush would have met more than just shoes being thrown as his fate. What has happened to this country regarding people really showing courage?

    • 3 years ago
  • cheezynuts
  • purplefox
    • 0
      purplefox  

    • I love that show throwing has become a symbol of protest against the Bush regime. I wonder if it'll live on to become protest tradition.

    • 3 years ago
  • numinant
  • eden49
  • pookie666
    • 0
      pookie666  

    • i wonder if people threw their own shoes and went home barefooted or they specially brought shoes to throw at the white house/bush.

    • 3 years ago
  • chelseaf89
  • unclematt
  • Kepano
    • 0
      Kepano  

    • Wonder what his response to this will be? Possibly? WTF Americans I did a great job a President for you causing this Global Crisis and Chaos amongst Nations.

    • 3 years ago
  • picKFishStudios
  • bishopobispo
  • chelseaf89
  • pinchot
    • 0
      pinchot  

    • its good that the people are showing our real feelings we have to him, since the media obviously will not portray his legacy accurately and is still kissing his ass.

    • 3 years ago
  • justright
  • Egnatius212
  • Chango2000
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