Double-Edged Shoes

This video is amazing.

Not only for the sheer and almost enviable audacity of the shoe-hurling Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi but for the catlike dodgeball skills our lame-duck President managed to show off. The man moves fast for his age.

But like all internet memes, this has solicited all kinds of different responses, and as is typical of such situations the reality of the event and its reprecussions are often miles away from the silliness of what the meme itself hath wrought.

While silly flash games have sprung up everywhere and animated gifs have remixed the event, al-Zeidi has been kept locked away from his family since the event and today an Iraqi judge decreed that the journalist had been unjustly beaten immediately following the incident.

"Until now, neither an attorney nor anyone from his family has seen him and this is clear evidence that Muntadhar was under intense torture," said al-Zaidi's brother Uday, according to the Associated Press. And while neither President Bush or Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki are pressing charges, the case still cannot be dropped.

Even today, post-election, with Bush on the way out and the Iraq war a clear mistake to just about everyone, displays of dissent receive the harshest treatment. Hopefully the Orwellian nightmare that has been the Bush Administration will not continue to be the American legacy.