Flying Shoes and Pies in the face

Norm Geras attacked the shoe-throwing incident (about which I opined here) from a different point of view, and much overlooked by all the schadenfreude bloogers or jubilant media . He points out that the attack was much more than just a symbolic act of protest and insult; it was an aggressive assault.

And of course, he is right when he says: "aiming a shoe at a person's face is a form, precisely, of violent assault. How much damage it would do if it succeeded would depend on the weight and hardness of the shoe, the velocity of the throw, and where and how it struck the victim."

In Canada, there is a sort of a reprehensible tradition of pie-ing political figures for whatever reason. The pie, presumably made of dough and cream, is a soft marshmallowy substance which can hardly harm the recipient, except to annoy and cause a mess. Yet any such pie assault is treated with the the utmost seriousness as an violent assault. As you can see, from the clip I provided, those leaders who were pied did not seem amused, or even remotely gracious about it, the way George Bush was.

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Update: Roland calls this clip "pure gold" and so it is.