I think G.W. Bush was very adept at dodging not one, but two shoes thrown consecutively. He was a natural. I think the thrower was at closer range and didn't toss em' like a girl either.
The shoe was on the other foot in 2008, when an Iraqi journalist threw two shoes at then-President George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference. At that time, ABC and CBS referred to the shoe-thrower as a "celebrity" and "folk hero" who "thrilled the Arab world."
And this was true. The guy was a celebrity in the Arab world.
In 2008, concerns over Bush's safety were less important to the networks, who seized on that shoe-throwing incident as a gaffe that showed his unpopularity.
This is patently false. The media did not refer to Bush's shoe throwing incident as a gaffe, showing his unpopularity.
Question is: Is the show thrower last week a celebrity that thrilled the Tea Party world?
I fully agree that the media painted Bush's shoe thrower as a folk hero, in the Arab world. And he was. And Bush is unpopular, in the Arab world. The media was reporting the facts.
Hillary Clinton had a shoe thrown at her. Is the media supposed to report that she is unpopular in the U.S.? That the shoe thrower was a folk hero? No, because neither of these characterizations would be true.
They weren't reporting the facts in their comments regarding Hillary and her shoe-thrower. There was nothing "frighening" about a shoe that missed her by six feet. There was nothing was nothing "difficult to watch" about the video. Tell me how those comments were legitimate reporting? Tell me how they actually applied to the facts, which were that a young woman threw a shoe at Clinton that missed?
Tell me how it is those same kinds of comments were not made regarding a foreign journalist throwing a pair of shoes at the President of the United States? Tell me how it is not frightening that someone was able to get that close to the leader of the free world and throw an object -- any object -- at him?
Have you ever heard of the idiot sportscasters who was going to throw a tennis ball at Hubert Humphrey's field box at old Metropolitan Stadium when he threw out the first pitch when he was Veep? (I looked briefly for a link online, and I'm sure there is one, but not on the first few pages of Google, so I'll let it go for now.) Fortunately his broadcast partner convinced him during a commercial break that would be a really bad idea, and the media uniformly vilified the dumb-you-know-what for being that stupid. Had the Secret Service seen him winding up, they would have shot him dead on the spot. They seem to have the same reaction to Hillary's shoe thrower. Not one word, as I recall nor can find online, was said about the danger to George W. Bush. That is very telling, and if you don't see it, I'd have to say that is because, for whatever reason, you don't want to.
The people being quoted in your "news" story are commenting on a news story. They are not reporting the news.
NBC Today co-host Tamron Hall was particularly melodramatic: "I mean, but how scary is that?...Had it hit her, that would have been awful. It would have been awful." Weatherman Al Roker added: "Jeez, that's frightening." Hall declared: "It's hard for me to watch, actually.
Here's what the Iraqi government had to say about Bush's incident: A statement from Mr. Maliki’s government described the shoe-throwing as a “shameful, savage act that is not related to journalism in any way.” It called on Al Baghdadia, the Cairo-based satellite television network for which Mr. Zaidi works, to publicly apologize.