The recent incident where Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi flung not one but two shoes at US President George Bush seems to have caught the fancy of the people. While Zaidi cools his heels in prison, nursing a bruised rib or two, makers of the now famous Ducati Model 271 ‘Bush shoe’ seem to be minting money. Agencies reported that the Istanbul based Bayden shoe company has been swamped with orders for 300,000 new pairs of the notorious shoe. Wonder if all of them are the size ten shoes that Bush sought to downplay in his post- press conference remarks. The byproduct of the incident is that it created 100 new jobs in Turkey.

The internet now has several versions of the “Throw a shoe at Bush” game. You can download one here (The Shoe game) which has been doing the rounds on email. The Israeli company Mind 360 actually claims that its Bush Shoe Incident Game  measures your response time and provides brain training for leadership (something Bush desperately needs!). Catch another boring game called Bye Bye Bush here. A more interesting version which allows the Arab world to vent their ire is the Shoe Bush Worldwide game which allows you to yell in either English or Arabic and whack Bush with your choice of shoe. Once you get the shoe on his face thrice, it comes with an offer to buy a “I whacked Bush with a shoe in cyberspace” T shirt and cap. The Whackometer today showed that the maximum whacks came from America.

George W Bush called the incident ‘a sign of free society’. I was wondering if we in India, the largest democracy, exercised this freedom, how many of our top politicians would get this shoe-bash as a gift from its citizens.