Okay, I got what I wanted for Christmas.
A few days ago I wrote a diary about having George W. Bush brought to my house tied up in a red bow (just like Clark Griswold's boss in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation) so he could explain to me exactly why he's ruined my son's Christmas - as well as his safety, security and his environment.
So while I didn't get to personally shove my Christmas tree up George W.'s ass, watching the shoes whiz by his head was almost as good. In fact, it was better because I didn't actually have to stomach seeing George W's actual ass.
And because I didn't actually have to suffer being tackled to the ground, dragged off and end up being taken into custody without my shoes.
I am feeling almost guilty today for so thoroughly enjoying seeing Muntathar al Zaidi, 29, brought to his breaking point and doing exactly what should have been done to Bush long ago by our Congress, by our mainstream media, by SOMEONE who should have stood up to Bush and delivered the message that his actions are UNACCEPTABLE to humanity.
I want to know where he is today. I am wondering where his shoes are. I want to see them on ebay, raising a million dollars for his defense. I want us here on KOS to promise today, that we will not applaud the message Zaidi delivered to Bush and then let him suffer the consequences alone.
Yesterday I tried to find out where the reporter and his shoes were. I searched and while I can find tons of reports on the incident, I can't yet see much followup on what happened to Zaidi, and his shoes.
I hear MSNBC reporting now that there are protests demanding his release.
McClatchy Newspapers reported yesterday that it was unclear if Zaidi was hurt and that late on Sunday, his employer,Cairo-based Baghdadiyah Television, demanded Zaidi's release from Iraqi custody.
"Any action taken against Muntathar will remind us of the actions and behaviors taken by the reign of the dictator and the violence, the random arrests, the mass graves and confiscations of freedom from the people," the board of Baghdadiyah said.
And as a journalist myself, my heart goes out to Zaidi, who apparently has a human being inside his journalistic exterior, and that human being just had enough. How many journalists have tried to get attention drawn to the atrocities of this war and have been bumped from the front page or television screen by Britney Spears or some other such nonsense?
Friends said Zaidi covered the U.S. bombing of Baghdad's Sadr City area earlier this year and had been "emotionally influenced" by the destruction he'd seen. They also said he'd been kidnapped in 2007 and held for three days by Shiite Muslim gunmen.
I have never been in the military. I don't know the kinds of training our military has before entering into battle to prepare the human being for what it is about to endure.
But as a journalist, I got no such training. Granted I haven't been sent into a war zone, but I've seen and covered violence and death. No one can prepare you to see a dead father pulled from a lake while his children collapse in agony on the shore. Or to discover how an industry can rape an environment while government agencies designed to prevent it can only impose fines after the damage is done - after the innocent people living around the polluter die of cancer. You print the obituaries of those you've interviewed for the story, but other than that, the pollution is still there. The company still operates and the EPA still fiddles.
I got into journalism because I care. That's the only training I have, outside of the mechanics of journalism. Writing about injustice is my therapy, but so many times those stories get buried or cut or killed because there isn't enough space or the paper wants quantity instead of quality because quality is just too expensive. They want me to do more stories because they have less reporters.
So journalists are left knowing the truth, with no way to draw attention to the truth. We can write about the truth, but it needs a vehicle to be delivered, and it needs an ear that wants to hear it.
Sometimes being a journalist reminds me of that poor WalMart worker being trampled to death and people just kept right on shopping, totally ignoring the end of the man's life and his fellow employees pleading with the customers to give a shit.
Imagine standing in your front yard one day, watching your neighbor being murdered and while you scream at the top of your lungs that your neighbor is dying, no one even turns to listen to you. What would that experience do to you over time?
Would you take off your shoes and throw them at the killer? Would you do something extreme to draw attention to the crime and do all you could to stop it? Anyone who is human would do that.
The Dart Center For Journalism and Trauma says even journalists aren't above having a human reaction to violence and injustice. (The Dart Center is a global network of journalists, journalism educators and health professionals dedicated to improving media coverage of trauma, conflict and tragedy. The Center also addresses the consequences of such coverage for those working in journalism.)
Journalists face unusual challenges when covering violent or mass tragedies. They interact with victims dealing with extraordinary grief. Journalists who cover any "blood-and-guts" beat often construct a needed and appropriate professional wall between themselves and the survivors and other witnesses they interview. But after sitting and talking with people who have suffered great loss, the same wall may impede the need of journalists to react to their own exposure to tragedy.
Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies wrote the following for Poynter.org on September 15, 2001:
"Reporters, photojournalists, engineers, soundmen and field producers often work elbow to elbow with emergency workers. Journalists’ symptoms of traumatic stress are remarkably similar to those of police officers and firefighters who work in the immediate aftermath of tragedy, yet journalists typically receive little support after they file their stories. While public-safety workers are offered debriefings and counseling after a trauma, journalists are merely assigned another story."
So those of you who see the demise of any real journalism in this country, take a look at this situation. The journalists who put themselves out there, covering the injustice, the tragedy, the violence, file their stories and fight to have them see the light of day. As a journalist, my mission is to make a difference.
But those reporters who put themselves on the line to make a difference, receive little support after they file their stories, and are just left holding the proverbial shoe. Or having their limbs blown off. Or losing the ability to write because they had their fingers crushed while covering a story. Off to workers' compensation court. Career over. But the desire to make a difference doesn't just die with the finger amputation.
So many journalists ask themselves, Why risk it? Why not just crank out the feel-good stories and keep my limbs and fingers and career? Why keep fighting to die or end up being tackled by the Secret Service after throwing a shoe at the President? Journalists don't start out this way, training them to be lazy is part of the job, and they are rewarded for their laziness because they stay alive, or sane, and their stories get published.
We all know why Zaidi did this. But what worries me is what happens to him now. That we will all move on to Christmas and New Year's and the Inauguration, and he will likely be forgotten, like all the other journalists who died or were mutilated physically or mentally in the line of duty. I don't want to forget him. He is like me. He is me. He did what no one else had the courage to do. He has a human being inside who was outraged at what he saw.
Not to be outraged is the crime. Not to throw shoes is the crime.