"This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog!" shouted Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi as he hurled his first shoe at George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference on December 14, 2008. He launched the second a moment later: "This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq!" Bush ducked both throws. Al-Zaidi was hauled off, sentenced to three years for assaulting a foreign head of state (later cut to one), and released after nine months.
In Arab culture, shoes are unclean, which makes throwing one a grave insult. Posters of Bush with shoes attached went up across the Middle East, and Condoleezza Rice was nicknamed "kundara" — "shoe." In Tikrit, somebody built a ten-foot copper statue of al-Zaidi's loafer; police ordered it taken down soon after.
Wikipedia's running list of shoe-throwing incidents tracks copycats across India, China, Iran, Turkey, Australia, and beyond. In February 2009, a German student named Martin Jahnke threw a shoe at Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao during a speech at Cambridge University, demanding, "How can the university prostitute itself with this dictator here?" That April, Indian journalist Jarnail Singh flung a shoe at Home Minister P. Chidambaram, saying simply, "I protest."
Years later, al-Zaidi told CBS News his only regret was that he "only had two shoes."
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