Sole baring

If you dont like the news,make some yourself. Thats what senior journalist Jarnail Singh seemed to be thinking when he flung his shoe at Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram,apparently dissatisfied with his justification of Jagdish Tytler. The visuals were riveting,but the replays must bring home the danger in such conduct.

There was a time when one was told to walk a mile in someones shoes before you criticise them. Now,the norm appears to be more like if youre at the end of your tether,simply pick up your shoe and hurl it hard at the object of your anger. Iraqi TV reporter Muntader al-Zaidi kicked up the first notable storm when he flung both his shoes at George W. Bush,who exhibited lightning sharp reflexes as he ducked,and even made a crack about seeing the sole of his assailant a self-mocking reference to his assertion of having looked into Putins soul. Zaidi was clapped behind bars for three years,but became something of a local hero an orphanage in Tikrit even briefly put up a stone sculpture of the shoe. A viral video game called Sock and awe where anyone gets to bean the erstwhile president,was a brief Internet sensation. A few months later,a protester in Cambridge chucked a shoe at Chinese premier Wen Jiabao,though he missed by a mile. Of course,shoe throwing is a hoary tradition in some parts of the world and our own variations like chappal garlands meant to indicate utter contempt for the target.

But journalists are meant to embarrass authority by the force of their work,not their footwear. Jarnail Singh let down his profession when he expressed personal frustration at a press conference. And to add to the absurdity,the Shiromani Akali Dal has gone and offered him Rs 2 lakh for eloquently expressing the pent-up anger of the Sikh community. Such gestures of reward pervert the parameters of political argument. Political arguments are settled with,well,argument,not by this rush to anoint as icons men who momentarily lose their cool or surrender to the temptation for instant notoriety. What would those who hail such shoe-throwing want? That political contestation be conducted as competitive shoe-throwing? There is no principled point to be salvaged from such conduct. As for Jarnail Singhs act,if press conferences replicate airport security,thanks to these stunts,it debases a profession that is meant to maintain an adversarial edge,without allowing their own emotional biases to affect their work. Or maybe he just misunderstood the meaning of shoe-leather reporting.