Editorial: Courtesy, professionalism and respect

Issue of September 19, 2009/ 29 Elul 5769

Remember the Iraqi guy who threw his shoes at President Bush? Muntadhar Al-Zaidi got out of jail Tuesday after serving time for “assaulting a foreign head of state on an official visit to Iraq.”

The 30-year-old television journalist was unapologetic, according to CNN. He was draped in an Iraqi flag as he told fellow reporters, “I got my chance and I didn't miss it.” He made no claim to heroism, calling himself “a person with a stance. I saw my country burning.”

Throwing shoes and calling someone a dog are two of the worst insults in Islamic culture, and Al-Zaidi did both, during a news conference that then-President Bush held during a surprise visit to Iraq. Mr. Bush was unhurt and laughed off the barefooted assault.

Al-Zaidi had just one apology, to fellow journalists who felt that he had acted unprofessionally.

“Professionalism does not preclude nationalism,” he said in his own defense.

He makes a good point, one that may ring in a familiar way to journalists who cover their own, Jewish community.

Professionalism does not preclude nationalism, true, nor patriotism, or sensitivity to communal concerns, or to Halachic concerns, for that matter, say about Lashon Horah, or even pikuach nefesh (saving a life), which crops up from time to time in this business.

So we can see Al-Zaidi's point of view, after a fashion.

Compare and contrast Al-Zaidi's public outburst with the exclamation, “You lie!” directed at President Obama last week by Congressman Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, as the President addressed a televised joint session of Congress about his largely unpopular health care reform proposal.

Wilson will not go to jail, obviously, not should he; the worst official action will be the  House resolution critical of his discourtesy.

In fact, while many people are bothered by what Wilson did, many others are not only undisturbed by his uncouth display, but applauded it, or so says Wilson's re-election campaign bank account, which apparently has swelled by millions of dollars since his tantrum on Sept. 9.

If Wilson feels strongly about the proposed changes to our health care system, he's entitled to say so, but that doesn't make his outburst appropriate or right.

Heckling is a common form of dissent but the nasty tone taken by protesters at the recent town hall meetings on health care, and on Wilson's very public heckling of the President, spotlight everything that is wrong about the current political climate, with its extreme partisanship and lack of civility.

The United States Congress is not the British Parliament, and it's not the Knesset, where incivility is a usual state of affairs. A measure of respect for the office of the President of the United States is necessary — no, demanded — and must be maintained, if only as a matter of our collective self-respect.

If anything good can be said about Wilson's tantrum perhaps they are first, that he kept his shoes on, and second, thank goodness he's not Jewish.